Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart
A
You alone are God in heaven, exalted and benevolent,
yours is the power, and yours, forgiveness.
Yours is healing and yours, abundance.
Yours are the gifts and yours alone grace.
Yours atonement and yours protection.
Yours is creation beyond knowing.
Yours are arts beyond discovery.
Yours are bounds beyond measure.
You are the beginning and you are the end.
Since the light of your mercy is never obscured
by the darkness of anger,
you are not subject to disease in any form.
You are too lofty for words, an image beyond depiction,
a quantity beyond weighing,
the breadth of whose glory is unbounded,
the reach of whose incisive power is indescribable,
the absoluteness of whose supermacy is limitless,
the compassion of whose good works is unflagging.
You turned, according to the Prophet,
1
the shadow of death into dawn.
You willingly descended into Tartarus,
the prison of those detained below,
where even the door of prayer was sealed
to free the captive and damned souls
with the commanding sword of
your victorious word.
You cut the bindings of wretched death
and dispelled the suspicion of sin.
2
Turn toward me, trembling in the confines
of my squalid cell,
3 fettered by sin,
mortally wounded by the troublemaker's arrows.
B
Remember me, Lord of all, benefactor,
light in the darkness, treasure of blessing,
merciful, compassionate, kind, mighty,
powerful beyond telling, understanding, or words,
equal to all crises, you who are, in the words
of Jacob, always ready to do the impossible.
4
O fire that clears away sin's underbrush,
blazing ray that illumines every
great mystery, remember me, blessed one,
5
with mercy rather than legalisms,
with forbearance rather than vengeance,
with lenience rather than evidence,
so that you weigh my sins with your kindness
and not with judgment.
For by the first, my burden is light,
but by the second, I am damned forever.
C
Now, cure me, O kindness,
even as you did the ear of the one
who attacked you.
6
Take away the whipping winds of death
from this sinner, so that the calm of
your almighty spirit might rest in me.
Unto you all glory, now and forever.
Amen.
