a festival prayer
There's quite a few big festivals this weekend, and enthusiasts usually forget until they actually get on site that they can bring a few frustrations along with all the excitement. I'd forgotten until Paul posted it the other day that Pip Wilson wrote this great prayer for the unique atmosphere of Greenbelt:
Help us remember that the idiot who cut us up in traffic
is a single Mother who has worked nine hours that day
and is rushing to Greenbelt to cook a meal and settle the kids down so they can have a good first day at the festival
and spend a few precious moments with her friends
who have saved hard to get to Greenbelt.
Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man
who can’t handle his change correctly is a worried YMCA Hostel resident
who is behind in his rent and cannot afford the cheapest hotdog on site.
At the same time balancing his apprehension over his fear
of not getting on well with the group he came with.
Remind us Lord, that the scary looking young woman
rolling her eyes and cannot stop moving her body,
is a recovering slave to addictions
that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.
Remind us that the scars of the self harming woman,
scarred for life,
is just like me with my scars
that hinder and equip at the same time.
And remember that we, maybe,
can just hide ours better.
Help us to remember that the old couple
walking annoyingly slow through the festival site
and blocking our process
are savouring this moment,
knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week,
this will be the last year that they will be at Greenbelt together.
Creator God, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us,
the greatest gift is love.
That it is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear.
But those for who,
on first impressions,
make us shudder, or sigh or grunt with irritability.
Open our soul and press your finger tip right on that part,
the part to raise your love to the surface.
So it touches the practical.
The proactive.
The love department
© Pip Wilson
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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Hi Maggi, a great post and two very valid points. To be fair to the young Newman, he was only 19 at the time, three years below the usual age. He also thought that he had been advised wrongly on what books to read, ’six months hard reading thrown away’ he said. But it didn’t do him any harm in the end.