How to Live in this Time, Center, and Pray
(maybe even with your feet!)

A lawyer, trying to trick Jesus, asked him which was the greatest commandment. And Jesus said,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:34-40)

This Lent, I am inviting us to a collective Lenten Practice – Praying for Our Neighbors – on Tuesdays at 2:00 pm (or whenever you are able). If you’re in the midst of your daily routine, I invite you to pause at 2:00 on Tuesdays (2 on 2s-day!) and pray.

Pray for the neighbors you know – the people next door, the woman who brightens the neighborhood with her flowers, the ones who put trash in your cans and dump snow on your side of the sidewalk, and the kids who live nearby. And pray for the neighbors you don’t know – the family on the next block with the star math student whose father is undocumented, the shopkeeper from Bangladesh, the woman who runs the halaal takeaway restaurant, the family not far from us in Eagleville who were asleep when federal agents burst into their bedrooms, or the students bravely expressing their hopes and concerns about the world we have handed down to them.

If you feel moved to “pray with your feet,” consider joining other people of faith at the weekly Community Interfaith Prayer Service in response to ICE activity, co-led by two of our local UCC clergy. They meet every Tuesday at 2:00 pm at the corner of Marshall and George Street in Norristown.

Wherever you are, however you pray, and whatever form your faith is taking in this time, know you are not alone. You are connected to a holy fabric of community and humanity. You are claimed and held by God. On the next page is a beautiful prayer for centering your spirit in a turbulent time, written by the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman* in 1953.

Peace,

Pastor Linda

*Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was an American theologian, author, minister, and civil rights leader whose theology of radical nonviolence deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. He authored over 20 books, including Jesus and the Disinherited. 

How Good to Center Down!
By Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.
With full intensity we seek, ere thicket passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;
A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos.

 We look at ourselves in this waiting moment—the kinds of people we are.
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?
Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused?
For what end do we make sacrifices?
Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all of the jangling echoes of our turbulence,
there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being.
Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!

Read the Full Enlightener