Fold 4: Unfold The Desire
Fold 4 of the collect form is like Fold 2; it’s expanding, uncovering, and unpacking more about the longing or desire we named in Fold 3.
In Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, Pádraig Ó Tuama writes of the fourth fold that this fold “gives a reason why this is the one desire.”
My weekend last week was filled with Spiritual Director training. We spent two afternoons of our time together in small groups in supervision. Part of the holistic understanding of Spiritual Direction is that a Spiritual Director engages in supervision regularly. It’s a practice of “turning over stones,” as my wise trainers say. We bring something that entangles us or catches our attention regularly. With the others in our small group, we try to understand more about ourselves and the way God is reaching her hand out to us, so we can do that better for the people we journey with.
Turning over stones is a practice of attentiveness and surprise. Sometimes we turn over a stone and find another stone. Sometimes there are tender green roots other times, we find a bug or worm, which scurries towards the dark when light hits. We don’t know what we will see, in both a literal and figurative sense.
Fold 4 is an invitation to understand the desire or longing we stated a bit more. We might write four or five lines and cross out three or four. It’s not about the words or the length; it’s about the clarity, intention, and energy that lies beneath.
With each fold of the collect, we are invited to understand more, of ourselves and the world in which we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)
So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us. Let’s claw ourselves out from graves we’ve dug let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up, and out, and around. The world is big, and wide, and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable and full of meaning.
-Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, Pádraig Ó Tuama
Please feel share a collect you’ve written in the comments.