Morning Meditation: Friday, September 5, 2025

Holy, as I suppose I dare to call you 
without pretending to know anything about you 
but infinite capacity everywhere & always
& in particular certain goodness to me. 
Yours is the crumpling, to my sister-in-law terrifying thunder,
yours the candelabra buds sticky in Spring, 
Christ’s mercy, 
the gloomy wisdom of godless Freud: 
yours the lost souls in ill-attended wards,
those agonized thro’ the world 
It this instant of time, all evil men, 
Belsen, Omaha Beach,— 
incomprehensible to man your ways. 
May be the Devil after all exists. 
‘I don’t try to reconcile anything’ said the poet at eighty, 
‘This is a damned strange world.’ 
Man is ruining the pleasant earth & man. 
What at last, my Lord, will you allow? 
Postpone till after my children’s deaths your doom 
if it be thy ineffable, inevitable will. 
I say ‘Thy kingdom come’, it means nothing to me. 
Hast Thou prepared astonishments for man? 
One sudden Coming? Many so believe. 
So not, without knowing anything, do I. 
― John Berryman 

ROMANS 1:14-17
¹⁴ I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. ¹⁵ So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. ¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

THE PRAYER OF GENERAL CONFESSION
Almighty and most merciful Father; we have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done’ and there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; according thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

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