David Roberts, lithograph, Encampment at the Foot of Mount Serbal, 1839
Second Station: Awareness
Listening prayer: stop for a moment. Pay attention to the ambient sounds around you. Note them. Try to hear behind the sounds around you the silence within you.
Sometimes shock drives you to repentance in the first place. But sometimes forgiveness comes with surprise. Be open to the upside-down inside-out gospel-ness of Christian astonishment. Soul work is full of pearls of great price: a crucified thief the first to join Jesus in paradise, late-day laborers paid in full, a prodigal's foolish Dad wasting his time watching the horizon, the crummy son received with a party. In Jesus' parable, the son's healing revelation comes to him while competing for bean pods in the pigsty.
Holy One, come to my aid.
Guide me, inspire me, instruct me, protect me, be with me as I go out and as I return. Amen
The Story of the Prodigal Son
Then Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them.
A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.
So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.
