Ed Hays's blog

When I finish praying apart from others,
as the final word of prayer
drifts away beyond reach of ears,
I listen for the Great Amen.

Adopt a Guide

Bookstores are adoption agencies, bringing together not parents and children, but rather readers and authors. Good booksellers can tell simply by the glint in a reader’s eyes if that person is hungry for spiritual wisdom and will take good care of the author they adopt. Bookstore adoption counselors over the years have learned how to recognize those best suited for this or that author adoptee.

O spirit of God’s eternal springtime heart,
grant me the virtue of elasticity.

Make my heart as boundless as my Beloved’s heart,
which at this moment is creating
new galaxies and infant suns.

May I join you, cosmic congregation of galaxies,
as you dance with delight before our God.
You spin and leap with brilliant bursts of light,
never tiring of your sacred circle-play.

Taoist Tradition

We are born gentle and weak. At death we are hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. When they die they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending are the disciples of death. The gentle and yielding are the disciples of life.
Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching

Death is the greatest terrorist! So feared an enemy is death that we avoid thinking about it, unless forced to do so as when attending a funeral. We even find the word death unspeakable, and so replace died with “passed.” In prayer, we refer to the dead as the “deceased” or “departed.”

The road home, O God, seems long
and at times is difficult and painful.

Grant me a holy communion, a compani9onship with others,
as I journey homeward to you.

I live in times of great trial:
an age of change sits at my door.

Primeval Religious Wonder

Because the distance between us and our closest star, Proxima Centauri, is so vast, we measure it not in miles but in the speed of light. Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 light years away! A light year is the distance light travels in one year: 5,787 trillion miles!

I unite myself with ancient memories that sleep within.
Ancestors of long ago whose fears have left their fingerprints upon me,
remind me of my holy communion with that river of humanity
that flows through my soul.
May this flame be my autumn sacred fire.

A Speed Limit for Life
When I was a kid during the Great Depression, a popular free entertainment for my family — except for the cost of gas which was only ten cents a gallon — was going for a drive in the Nebraska countryside. Driving out of the city we enjoyed looking at the corn, the other crops, and the colorful wildflowers along the highway.

Inside this visible world is another hidden world, the subatomic world. The term used to describe what happens inside this subatomic world is quantum vacuum. Amazingly, 90 percent of each atom is empty space, a vacuum. And the electrons and particles inside each atom appear to be whirling around as they come forth from “nothingness,” only to again disappear back into it.

Fear of Being Out of Control
When you feel you are in control, you feel reassured and comforted, even if it is an illusion. We see an example of this in the common fear of flying. In America, only a few hundred people at most die in airplane crashes each year, while over forty-four thousand die in motor vehicle accidents!

Starving with a Full Pantry
One of my favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton, in his preface to Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, summed up my belief about wonders when he wrote, “The world will never starve for wonders, but only for want of wonder.” Paradoxically, this insightful sentence was used as an inscription in 1944 on the General Motors Building at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition.

Jazz Up Your Life
Our lives are crowded with old routines that we play out each day note for note just as we have done for countless yesterdays. Daily habits, of course, make life easier since no thought is required to do the next task, but habits also deaden. So consider improvising on your daily life.

The Womb of Wonders
The Englishman Richard Blechynden ran the tea concession at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. On one very hot Missouri summer day, not a single fairgoer stopped to purchase a cup of hot tea at his stand.

Turn on the light -- and wonder

The next time you flip a switch and an electric light comes on, pause to wonder. As you turn on that light, what you are witnessing is matter being liberated into energy.

In these summer days when you next enjoy eating watermelon, recall a saying of the followers of the Prophet Mohammed: “A watermelon produces a thousand good works!” This Islamic saying originated when watermelons were mostly eaten out-of-doors so, their seeds dropped to the ground to become the source of countless new watermelon plants.

Living Deliberately
Henry David Thoreau said that the reason he went off to live alone in a small hut near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, was “to live deliberately.”

Psalm of the Miraculous Holy Waters

Jerusalem’s sacred pool at Bethesda,
whose hallowed waters healed the sick,
O Lourdes’ miraculous spring
whose waters wondrously cure cripples,
O Ganges, holy river of Hindu India,
whose primal waters wash away sins,
what can you offer this poor pilgrim,
homestuck and hungry for healing?

The Psalm of Forever
Forever is a holy word
I’ve stolen from God’s vocabulary
that I dare to utter
when speaking of my love for you.

Psalm of the Liberty Bell Prayer
Hear, O Lord, the sound of my liberty bell,
along with my prayer that rings out
my personal declaration of independence,
the liberty I seek from all that now enslaves me.

Psalm of the Hungry Mystery

To what can I compare you, O Holy Mystery;
is there on earth or in the heavens
anything to which you can be likened?

Psalm of God's Good Time

Divine Friend, I feel sorry
for those whose clocks
have faces that are circled
with terrible things
rather than twelve numbers.

Psalm of the Holy Power

In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Power.

In the name of the Holy Power, may I be kind
when I'm needled toward the edge of rudeness.
In the name of the Holy Power, may I be patient
when I'm at the end of my rope.
In the name of the Power to be nonjudgmental,
may I have the discipline to not be judge and jury.
In the name of the Power to pardon, may I forgive
when I've grown tired of practicing forgiveness.

Pentecostal Psalm of No-Tongues

Blowtorch Spirit-Giver of Gifts,
who descended as flaming tongues
on the disciples knotted together in prayer,
come now aflame in me.
Twist my tongue into a fiery knot,
so tight as to be speechless.

Psalm of the Brooding Spirit

Come, Spirit of the Holy, brood over me,
huddling henlike as you once did
over the dark, swirling waters of chaos
on Creation Eve.

Psalm of a Mystical Blind Lover

Jesus of Galilee -- whose face drew lovers
as honey draws flies -- help this blind "fly."
St. Paul was thrown from his horse,
blinded by a glorious bright vision of you.
Saints and mystics in every century
have had similar visions of you and your mother.
Such visions continue to this very day.

Blessing Prayer for a Garden

Lord of Creation,
who planted Your own garden called Eden,
come and bless this soil
which is to be our garden.

God is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
God is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 27

My Beloved One,
how easily do I allow fear
to be the soil of my life.

In the beginning, Lord God,
You alone existed: eternally one
yet pregnant in the fullness of unity.

Full to overflowing,
You, Father of All Life, exploded outward
in a billion bits and pieces.