This summer at camp, one of our weekly activities was a prayer experience that at first seemed bizarre, but quickly became one of the most memorable and experiential parts of camp for both our staff as well as the students and adults who came. It's funny how God will bring things to mind that you have completely forgotten about. Just today, I got an email from Amy--a fellow staffer from the summer--asking if I had a copy of that prayer experience--it was a series of quotes and verses and statements to ponder. I'd written several of those passages in my journal, and was searching out those entries when I read Jen's latest post and realized that the prayer that she's quoting by Thomas Merton was one of my favorite passages from that prayer experience. I hope Jen doesn't mind, but I'm including that prayer here along with a few others that I found particularly touching.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust in You always. Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

~Thomas Merton

O Divine Love, conceal yourself; leap over our suffering, make us obedient! Mystify us, arouse and confuse us. Shatter all our illusions and plans so that we lose our way, and see neither path nor light until we have found you, where you are to be found and in your true form--in the peace of solitude, in prayer, in submission, in suffering, and in flight from idle talk and worldly affairs.

~Jean-Pierre DeCaussade

'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back from captivity.'

~Jeremiah 29:11-14a

Dear Jesus, send your Spirit on us so that we will be taught to pray. Prayer is hard, requiring great effort, but when done, effortless. I confess I have never liked to pray. Prayer is too much like begging. So I have to pray that your generous Spirit will teach me to beg. I beg you to help all of us discover that our lives are constituted by prayer, so that we may be in your world one mighty, joyous prayer. Make us so rested by such prayer, so content to be Your people, that we will kill no more. Amen.

~Stanley Hauerwas

Find me here. Speak to me. I want to feel you. I need to hear you. You are the light that is leading me to the place where I find peace again. You are the strength that keeps me walking. You are the hope that keeps me trusting. You are the life to my soul. You are my purpose. You are everything. And how can I stand here with you, and not be moved by you? Would you tell me how could it be any better than this? You calm the storms and you give me rest. You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall. You still my heart and you take my breath away. Would you take me in? Would you take me deeper now? And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you? Would you tell me how could it be any better than this? Because you're all I want, you're all I need. You are everything. Everything.

~"Everything" by Lifehouse, from the album No Name Faces