Go with me, God
A prayer for God to find us where anger takes us, by Ted Loder (My Heart in my Mouth).
O God, I know it’s a long, hard trip out of anger and retreat to any repair of the breech, and beginning degree of a longed-for intimacy.
Go with me, with us, as you went with Adam and Eve and all the us’s ever since, some to healing avail.
Go with me, God, through honest self-knowledge to a proportioned humility, from fevered accusation to accurate apology, from delicious aggrievement to a shared cup of forgiveness, from stunting addiction to my biases to crediting the other’s side, a glimpsing of the larger, inclusive view seen by four eyes or more, instead of two.
Go with me, God, on this long trip of listening and letting go, all the winding ways toward seeing myself truly, seeing where I am and who, and how I got here, seeing all my misbegotten pride, all my blighting misperception of others, and mostly of you.
Go with me, God, on this walk on the narrow ridge, enabling me to stand my ground without betraying it in passivity or disguising it in manipulating, or in false modesty, an hypocrisy worse than blind pride; to stand my ground humbly so as not to deny others theirs, or invading theirs with ridicule.
Grant me courage to say what I mean and honestly mean what I say, without judging what others say or mean, and so making myself trustworthy, transforming anger into the energy to make new things possible.
O God, it is not just a way back that I’m praying for, but a way to a different place than habit has worn out, a home I never had before. I sense it takes a trip of many turns, returns and many years to make, remake, and make again.
Go with me, to keep me from getting lost, or being too reluctantly ashamed to take the first demanding steps that will be the beginning now of that lifetime journey to the self I so passionately long to be, to those I love and lost awhile, and so to those in the shimmering web of this human family I’m in for good, and so to you, who, I am praying, waits close to welcome and go limping home with me. Amen.
