Treasury of Prayer – Fiery K. Tarot

for Tarot Vidente, since they liked the other one : )

Taken from Treasury of Prayer: Prayers of Hope and Faith

The poem “The Hundred Fourth Psalm” by Henry Vaughan . I think he did a really nice job:

Up, O my soul, and bless the Lord. O God,
My God, how great, how very great art Thou!
Honor and Majesty have their abode
With Thee and crown Thy brow.

Thou Clothest Thyself with light, as with a robe,
And the high, glorious heavens Thy mighty hand
Doth spread like curtains round about this globe
Of air and sea and land.

The beams of Thy bright chambers Thou dost lay
In the deep waters, which no eye can find;
The clouds Thy chariots are, and Thy pathway
The wings of the swift wind.

In Thy celestial, gladsome messages
Dispatched to holy souls sick with desire
And love of Thee, each willing angel is
Thy minister of fire.

Thy arm unmovable forever laid
And founded the firm earth; then with the deep
As with a veil Thou hidst it; Thy floods played
Above the mountains steep.

At Thy rebuke they fled; at the known voice
Of their Lord’s thunder they retired apace:
Some up the mountains passed by secret ways,
Some downwards to their place.

O Lord my God, how many and how rare
Are Thy great works! In wisdom hast Thou made
Them all, and this the earth and every blade
Of grass we tread, declare.

Thou sendest Thy spirit forth, and they revive;
The frozen earth’s dead face Thou dost renew.
Thus Thou Thy glory through the world dost drive
And to Thy works art true.

Thine eyes behold the earth, and the whole stage
Is moved and trembles; the hills melt and smoke
With Thy least touch; lightnings and winds that rage
At Thy rebuke are broke.

Therefore as long as Thou wilt give me breath
I will in songs to Thy great name employ
That gift of Thine, and to my day of death
Thou shalt be all my joy.

I’ll spice my thoughts with Thee, and from Thy word
Gather true comforts; but the wicked liver
Shall be consumed. O my soul, bless they Lord!
Yea, bless thou Him forever!

– Henry Vaughan

“Learning to Pray”
taken from Treasury of Prayer: Prayers of Hope and Faith

by Marjorie Holmes

You know, Lord, how well You know, the years when I didn’t pray (or didn’t think I prayed). How could I pray to someone whose very existence I doubted? How could I ask for help from a force I spurned?
Yet all the while I was hungering for You, groping to find Your hand as I stumbled in the darkness of my needs . . . “If I could pray,” I thought. “If I could only learn to pray.”
But I felt foolish when I tried; I felt phony, insincere. My doubts seemed to rise up like a mockery between us. And You knew my follies and faults all too well. My tongue was inarticulate – it winced to form the words. My own self-scorn made me impotent, dumb.
I would get up from my fumbling so called prayers with an empty heart, feeling rejected, turned away. (Was there some secret rubric others had discovered? Some key that would make the heavens open, unlock the special doors?)

I was wrong. In a while, maybe from sheer persistence, something began to happen within me. A sense of being accepted, however unworthy. (no -not merely accepted, welcome, welcomed home!) And the deep excited stirrings of trust in a power I could not see.

Then I went to the formula You gave in the Sermon on the Mount.
“Our Father who are in heaven.” How kind that seems. “Hallowed be Thy name.” The gentle beginnings of worship . . .

“Thy kingdom come” (within me). “Thy will be done” (take over my life, I”m not doing so well) “on earth as it is in heaven.” (I like this earth. I don’t know about heaven, but it must be a wonderful place.)

“Give us this day our daily bread” (just enough for today, Lord, enough time and money and strength to get through this one day) . . . “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive” (are my trespasses blocking the road to You? and my lack of forgiveness for those who’ve hurt me?).

“Lead us not into temptation” (this I don’t understand – You couldn’t, You wouldn’t – just hang on to me when I am tempted, give me the will not to yield). “Deliver us from evil” (yes, yes, that’s what I mean – deliverance).

“For Thine is the power and the glory forever and ever.” (It is, it is, it hast to be, and the more often I admit it, express it, the more I know it’s true!)
So in this way I began to get deliverance, Lord. The deliverance I sought. From self-doubt, which was so deeply enmeshed with my doubts of You.

And to learn the fundamentals of prayer: worship, submission, acceptance, plea, and then more worship to seal it. And I began to know then as I realize now that worship itself is the key. The magic key. Prayer brings You close when we come not merely seeking help, but because we want to be with You.

***

“Prayer of Praise”
by Saint Augustine

But let my soul praise Thee that it may love Thee,
And let it tell Thee Thy mercies that it may praise Thee.
Without ceasing Thy whole creation speaks Thy praise-
The spirit of every man by the words that his mouth directs to Thee,
Animals and lifeless matter by the mouth of those who look upon them.
That so our soul rises out of its mortal weariness unto Thee,
Helped upward by the things Thou hast made
And passing beyond them unto Thee who has wonderfully made them:
And there refreshment is and strength unfailing. Amen.