Old Prayers

[izhilzha]

Tonight, during the worship at my church, a psalm and a John Donne poem were read.

Both of them, I have used as prayers myself, in the past. I don't mean once or twice; I mean I've lived with these words breathing in and out of me. Yet until tonight, I don't think I'd ever heard anyone use either one in a church setting.

Comments

[lizamanynames]

I don't think I've heard either of those before - but they ARE beautiful.

I tend to repeat the Lord's Prayer, and The New Creed of the United Church of Canada:

We are not alone,
we live in God's world.

We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

But mostly I sing hymes. I've got over a hundred I know all the words to and call up from memory when appropriate.

[izhilzha]

That's pretty cool; I only recently memorized the older Creeds.

And I wish I knew hymns! Unfortunately (at least in that one regard), I was raised in a charsimatic/Pentacostal church, so praise songs are much more familiar to me. Or were. I'm picking up some hymns from my current Presbyterian church; and when I was in Canada for school, I went to an Anglican church and they also sang hymns.

[lizamanynames]

Wheras I'm really not familiar with praise songs - or at least don't know the term.

[kerravonsen]

They're songs that are too newfangled to be called hymns. Y'know, like being less than a century old... (grin)

[lizamanynames]

*laughs*

Ah! As my denomination is less than a century old, we just call those "Hymns" too.

Selah

[lizamanynames]

"And I wish I knew hymns