Ordain Me.
Ordain me to covenant,
To discern in community,
to ask daily,
Where does my most urgent calling connect with the world’s greatest need?
To listen for the answer we all make.
Ordain me to serve at Love’s Holy feast
To share the grain of paradise,
And taste the wine of peace.
To put the leaf in the table and fling the doors open wide,
To call out,
Holy Spirit, transform the elements,
Change us body, mind and soul.
Ordain me to preach
Awake to the questions, which burn like a fire in my bones
To care and discern what the impact will be
Grounded and yet learning to reach (grounded and yet stretching my fingers like a child to the shelf just out of reach)
Call me to connect with Love’s Holy Name.
Ordain me to serve
Calm near the bedside
Present to lift and unbind, to draw living water
To celebrate and baptize
To mourn and to cry,
To write and to organize
To sweep and clean when the time is right.
Ordain me to weave
To listen and learn, to celebrate the truths born in other faiths
To draw fine threads of stories from half a world away though my tapestry,
Theirs and ours vibrant but not possessed
All connected, woven and rewoven honoring the strength and integrity of each thread.
Ordain me to learn
To stretch and study, to get uncomfortable, to grow
To connect, to walk in new places around the city, across the globe
To love new faces, especially those who don’t agree with me
to look for the sacred seeded deep within.
Ordain me to be brave, resilient and strong
To have courage in the trying times;
To thoughtfully challenge and lovingly change.
To hear helpful critique and let go of pain;
Differentiated and present
Ordain me to rest
To curl up tight, overcoming sleepless nights,
Greeting the cheerful birds of dawn.
To watch the snow gently fall,
Refreshed by an afternoon at home on my couch.
Ordain me to say no
To say no, that I might really say yes.
To discern, to ask is this right for me;
Is this what I am called to do and to be,
Is this my bearing or am I floating with the current of the stream?
Ordain me to a life of discipline,
To know the dancers freedom
Emerges out of with each studied step
And numbered position.
To read, to study, to pray
To listen, to love, to learn in that same way.
Ordain me to eat food that’s not always fast
To savor dinners that nourish the soul,
Where stories are told once, than again,
And new ideas hatched.
Ordain me to love the body I am in,
Not for what it could be but for all that it is;
For the dynamics of strength and flexibility which call us to rise and to be
Durable and vulnerable, a mystery of grace
Commission me to feed it what it needs, to honor its complexity
To rest and to move as each have a season.
Ordain me to love my body
When it’s love, commission me to love madly
To dive in deep, joyfully melting in communion
Without regret and relish the tarnish some would label sin.
Ordain me to live in community
To connect, to transform this sense of isolation,
That makes the world feel cold and the city
Desolate.
Open my eyes;
enliven me,
that I might
Be.