For Today -- Peace (Hear my Prayer, O Lord)

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others. -- Thomas a Kempis

I have a peaceful, happy kind of exhaustion this morning.  On reading this morning about peace, the only thing that really comes to mind is the old prayer from childhood from Psalms 143 including how I remembered it.  (Love that I thought in homonyms!):

Here [sic] my prayer, O Lord. 

Hear my prayer, O Lord. 

Incline Thy ear to us, 

And grant us Thy Peace.

In this cool, watery sunshine morning, I wanted to hear this prayer sung.  Perhaps I should not have been surprised but this prayer has many variants in song, the most well known being by Purcell and then other versions by Felix Mendelssohn and Dvorak.  I love all three composers but none is the version I remember from childhood. 

We used this as a simple supplication in the middle of the service, I think.  I found it, in part, in this arrangement of Protestant hymns called, If My People Will Pray with "Hear our Prayer, O Lord."  The part I remember is the piano prelude and then the part at minute 2.56 in this recording:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdzj3bkZU5M  This was arranged by Keith Christopher but I don't know who is the original composer. 

Then I searched a bit more -- and I found it!  This Response is what we sang when I was a child and I have relied on to this day.  It's from the 1959 Psalter Hymnal and was composed by George Whelpton (English-American, 1847-1930):  www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ51zJRfUds   There is something in its simplicity and faith that I find so comforting.  It channels peace in four simple lines. 

Back to the original quote for this morning about peace by medieval Dutch cleric, Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471).  I love that he also wrote this:

I have sought everywhere for peace, but I have found it not save in nooks and in books.

but this too:

At the Day of Judgment we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done. [The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, ch. 3]

I am reminded that as much of one of the gifts of my program is peace, I have to work for it.  For in Recovery, two of our tools are reading and writing but this is a practical program of action first and foremost:

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.  We constantly remind ourselves that we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done."  We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.  We become much more efficient.  We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.

...

It works-- it really does.

We [alcoholics] are undisciplined.  So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.

But that is not all.  There is action and more action.  "Faith without works is dead." [Big Book, p.87-88].

Hear my prayer, O Lord.