While I was in Spokane, I created a prayer as part of Sabbath practice. It was not so much a new prayer, but an amalgam of existing prayers including lines from the 23rd Psalm, which I recall imperfectly. The prayer served as a great way to stop, slow down, and catch my breath.
Stuart Kestenbaum memorized the 23rd Psalm, but suggests recalling its exact order was challenging. He captured its essential message, one of goodness and mercy wherever we are in a particular day and life. Sabbath happens when we need it. It is that moment, regardless of beliefs, when we pause and catch our breath. It allows us to catch up to the our self, so to speak, even in simple tasks like opening doors.
The only psalm I had memorized was the 23rd
and now I find myself searching for the order
of the phrases knowing it ends with surely
goodness and mercy will follow me
all the days of my life and I will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever only I remember
seeing a new translation from the original Hebrew
and forever wasn’t forever but a long time
which is different from forever although
even a long time today would be
good enough for me even a minute entering
the House would be good enough for me,
even a hand on the door or dropping today’s
newspaper on the stoop or looking in the windows
that are reflecting this morning’s clouds in first light.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
I love this! I do the same! I go over and over it in my mind till I get the order right! Good verse to mull over in your mind I think!
It is as it says so much and think each time we mull something new is revealed.
Yes that is so true!
how wonderful to renew old teachings
making them fresh and relevant in this moment!
That is a beautiful way of understanding it. We are always reconstructing meaning in new contexts.
Psalm 23 is the only one I memorized too.
I know the words and the theme, but not the order.
I get the order mixed up too.
Beautiful Ivon
Thank you David.
I haven’t seen you for a long time.
I am slowly figuring out a new schedule and it has been slower going than I thought it would be.
How beautiful! I did an exercise like this once in my Psalms class a few college semesters ago.
My personal prayer was part of a hospitality and leadership retreat based on largely Old Testament passages.