Jack concluded our session on May 8 with a benediction. A prayer. And said we could post it. The benediction is based on “A Concluding Prayer” from his 2007 book The Weakness of God (see the original on pages 283-299.) He also wove some of my brief readings and comments for that morning. The benediction also drew from a rewrite of The Lord’s Prayer in Jack’s 1997 book The Prayers and Tears of Jacque Derrida, ( page 308).
Deep gratitude to Jack for making Second Saturday Conversation an event. A gift. With his presence. And blessing. A Theopoetics of Grace.
Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God.
Let us remember that we are in the presencing of God, of the coming-to-presence of God.
Let us remember that we are in the presence of God, but that God is not a presence but a coming
which disturbs the peace of the present, which pries the present open
to what is coming.
We pray you, come.
May your time come. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.
We long for you to come, yearn for you, like deer for running streams.
When will you come?
Give us this time, we pray you, the time of your coming and of welcoming, the time of giving
and forgiving, the time to come, of justice to come.
May justice come and wash over us like water over the land.
We pray you, come
We who? Who are we?
We are the one who do not know who we are.
We are the nameless ones, made restless by the trembling of an indiscernible event.
Praying, weeping, sighing, dreaming of your coming, sending up our prayers like wounded
words.
Praying for the truth of the event, for the courage of the truth, for the courage to welcome the
event.
Praying not to get lost, not to get any more lost than we already are
Praying that our prayers to heaven go, to somewhere go
We are turned to you, à-Dieu, to God, by God
as to a distant rumbling of something coming, of something we know not what.
We are shaken by the trauma of the name of God, which is the name of the promise to make all
things new.
We are the ones who have become a question to ourselves,
We are restless hearts, quivering under a silent and obscure call
We are the blind, praying in the dark, de profundis, praying to be able to pray, hanging on by a
prayer, praying to know how to pray, which is already a prayer, prayer’s first prayer
Is it God who calls?
Who knows who is calling?
God only knows.
When will you come?|
Believe us, you are in our memory.
We promise that we will recall all that you have been, yes, and keep you in our heart, yes, every
day, every hour. Forgive us for all that we have forgotten and silenced, as we forgive others.
When will you come?
Lord, when did we see hungry and give you to eat?
Is that you, Lord?
The truth of the event is not a name but a deed.
Go in peace.
Shalom.
Come.
Yes, yes.
A-Dieu.
Amen
So much resonated for me in this illuminating conversation with Jack Caputo. For me, the discovery (and reconnection) of the “The Everything in my life”, bringing me back again and again to God, as Tillich describes as “Ground of Being”. Here is a final stanza of a poem I wrote as one attempt to express this for myself. Thank you!
And, the Everything in my life,
Is also the collective call, the inner stirrings to new awakenings,
The resonant and reverberating spiritual invocation,
With sincere and spiritual invitations,
My Everything is the heralding voice into essential being,
And the conscious commitment to the pause and present living.
© Roger Arendse 20190406