Impatient to be away
A prayer to close a meeting
Impatient to be away now,
to move from the focussed space of this meeting
to the liminal spaces of transition and journey –
we have our minds on the business of leaving;
locating devices and gathering up notes
instead of dwelling in the moment
as we are reluctantly
reminded to pay lip service
to an ancient rite –
a prayer;
a moment
to hold
Together…
Reminded into returning,
in body and thought,
to a substantial task
we are unwilling to commit to…
All of us, however unconsciously,
would prefer to shirk this…
We’ve done enough,
we’ve had a good meeting,
or a bad one, so
why this piety now?
Why this uncomfortable accommodation
of awkward religiosity?
But
I’d like to invite you into this discomfort,
just for a moment,
to lean in,
please,
and bring to awareness to
what flinches within you;
what cringes and wishes for escape,
and consider as you do
the energy it holds,
all that potential
like a broken promise…
We take this moment
to remember that there are more worlds
than one
that we move through.
We take this moment,
call it prayer,
to realise
that the world of the meeting
must integrate
with the world of reality –
even if only that …
we take this moment to remember that
there are more worlds
than one that we move through
and to be valid,
to integrate the world of this meeting
with the real world,
to be more than a talking shop
but a work-shop;
to be valid,
these worlds
that we move through
must meet and join, must integrate.
So we hold
a moment
to make real, to embody
the aspiration, the decision,
To invite the unworldly, the ‘otherly’, the future and the present
Meet.
And, having recognised one another here,
we make blessing,
this blessing,
we take blessing,
and go…
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