Prayers of Artists, Prayers for Artists
Phaedra Taylor, preparing her work (image by Holly Fish)
I've been collecting prayers for artists and from artists for years. Included below are a number that have caught my attention. There are plenty more, of course, such as here or here or here. But perhaps one of these here may be of use to you or to artists in your community, perhaps even become a prayer that settles into the heart and turns into a source of daily rumination. As Richard Foster has said, to pray is to become a different kind of person. "All who have walked with God," he writes, "have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives." It is a beautiful and powerful thing when prayer becomes the deliberate, ongoing, even unconscious, business of an artist's life.
A Prayer for Artists
(Bryan Brown, one-time worship pastor at Christ Church in Austin and the worship leader of the Transforming Culture symposium in 2008, adapted from Herbert Whittaker's "Prayer for the Artists" [1987].)
Lord, remember your artists. Have mercy upon them and remember with compassion all those that reflect the good, the ill, the strengths and the weaknesses of the human spirit.
Remember those who raise their voices in unending song, those who pour their souls into music loud and soft.
Remember those who put pigment to surface, carve wood and stone and marble, who work base metals into beauty, those building upwards from the earth toward heaven.
Remember those who put thought to paper by computer and by pen; the poets who delve, the playwrights who analyze and proclaim, the dreamers-up of narrative, all those who work with the light and shadows of film.
Remember the actors moved by Spirit and dancers moving through space.
Remember all these artists whom you have placed among us, for are they not, O Lord, the fellows of your inspiration? Do they not, Lord God, bring to your people great proof of your divinity and our part in it?
Remember your artists and show them mercy and compassion that they may do the same and so uplift all your people. That they may cry forth your praises, as we do here.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
From The Book of Common Prayer
(17. For Church Musicians and Artists)
O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Prayer for Artists
(From "Prayers of Our Heart" by Vienna Cobb Andersen)
Bless the creators, O God of creation, who by their gifts make the world a more joyful and beautiful realm. Through their labors they teach us to see more clearly the truth around us. In their inspiration they call forth wonder and awe in our own living. In their hope and vision they remind us that life is holy. Bless all who create in your image, O God of creation. Pour your Spirit upon them that their hearts may sing and their works be fulfilling. Amen.
Prayer for Vocation in Daily Work (in the arts or any vocation)
(From Venite by Robert Benson)
Deliver us from the service of self alone, that we may do the work You have given us to do, in truth and beauty and for the common good, for the sake of the One who comes among us as One who serves. Amen.
Two Prayers by Flannery O'Connor
(A journal kept by the twenty-one-year-old Flannery O'Connor, whilst studying at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1946, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, titled A Prayer Journal. The New Yorker published a few excerpts of her prayers, one of which I include here. It is so very much her, yet we can hear our own voices in it too.)
"Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted. That is so far from what I deserve, of course, that I am naturally struck with the nerve of it.... All boils down to grace, I suppose."
"Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and myself is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.
I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.
I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do. I have prayed to You about this with my mind and my nerves on it and strung my nerves into a tension over it and said, 'oh God, please', and 'I must', and 'please, please'. I have not asked You, I feel, in the right way. Let me henceforth ask You with resignation--that not being or meant to be a slacking up in prayer but a less frenzied kind, realizing that the frenzy is caused by an eagerness for what I want and not a spiritual trust. I do not with to presume. I want to love.
Oh God, please make my mind clear.
Please make it clean.
I ask You for a greater love for my holy Mother and I ask her for a greater love for You.
Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.
I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them. My attention is always very fugitive. This way I have it every instant. I can feel a warmth of love heating me when I think & write this to You. Please do not let the explanations of the psychologists about this make it turn suddenly cold. My intellect is so limited, Lord, that I can only trust in You to preserve me as I should be."
For the Artist at the Start of Day
(From John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us)
May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,
A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.
May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.
A Collect Prayer for Creation
(From Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life)
Maker of heaven and earth, all your creatures, animate and inanimate, stand before you.
In Christ, who stands at the center of creation, we see how mysteriously well-pleasing it is to you.
In Christ, the mediator of the whole world, we see how broken it is.
In Christ, the firstborn of creation, we discover its final destiny: new creation!
May we take pleasure in your creation as you take good pleasure in it.
May we care for the earth as you lovingly care for it.
And may we offer up all the creative work of our hands in praise of you, in service of our neighbor, and in anticipation of that day when the cosmos shall be made forever alive.
In the Triune Name.
Amen.
An Artist's Prayer (unknown)
O Creator God, you have filled the world with beauty: your divine presence can be seen in all your works. Open our eyes to behold and experience life with the richness and fullness intended for each one of us by you; that by rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with thanksgiving and gladness, for the sake of him through whom all things were made.
O Lord Jesus Christ our God: be ever present with your servants here who seek, through gifts of art which you have generously bestowed, to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth. Empower us by your Holy Spirit to work the works of conceptual innovators, visual theologians, and skilled technicians; help us to be humbly mindful of your continual help and manifold grace.
Remember, O Lord, those artists among us who suffer in the midst of distressing circumstances. Comfort, defend and surround them with your peace. Guide them through these present uncertainties with the confidence that you will never fail or forsake them.
Remember, O Lord, those artists among us who are struggling with spiritual doubts and frustrations; remember those who are ready to abandon the church and institutional religion. Reveal yourself to them anew. Draw their hearts close to you. Rekindle dying passions and a once vibrant faith that they may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated unto you now and forever more.
Remember, O Lord, those artists among us who are creatively depleted, burned out, and stuck. Grant them a fresh vision, renewed inspiration, holy wisdom and plentiful opportunities for continual success.
Remember, O Lord, those friends and patrons of the arts. Grant that their numbers, support and encouragement may multiply; that the work of our hands may continue uninterrupted. Save each one of us from selfish use of what you have given, that together we may accomplish those things to which we have been called.
Remember, O Lord, the secular art community. Increase its reverence for the mysteries of life. Break down barriers of hostility, soften hardened hearts, give the gatekeepers of culture new insights into your purposes and desires. Raise up, in this and every land, evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, to minister to those creative souls who know you now; grant insightful sensitivity to Christians proclaiming the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Remember, O Lord, our brothers and sisters in Christ who have misjudged and unknowingly mistreated us because we are artists. Life the veil from their covered eyes to understand and discern the rightful place of art both within and outside the church. Remove hatred and prejudice from our hearts that we may lead a godly life of concord, always mindful of the grace and patience you continually bestow upon us.
O, Eternal God: grant us to be faithful unto death with the talents and gifts you have entrusted to us. May we live our lives in fervent service to you. May we rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. May we patiently run the race that is set before us until that day when we cast our works of art at your feet, and we hear you say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the reward I have prepared for you.”
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
A Prayer for Artists
(From one of my students at Fuller Theological Seminary, David Wade)
May you know that you know you are loved.
May you work the field before you and find bread there.
May the stories that you tell, more than anything, be spaces where you meet the Living God. In each draft, abandonment, completion, dream, may you find altars. Rocks of remembrance. Intimacies.
May it be fun!
May darkness unto you be seeds of light, and may you never walk the darkness alone.
Amen.
A Prayer of an Artist
(Over the course of my years as a pastor in Austin, I put to paper the sorts of things I prayed for the artists under my care and for myself as well. This is the result of that effort.)
Father God, Creator of all things, seen and unseen, we praise you for the works of your hand. We declare that you are sovereign over our lives, and that you are the originator of all good things. We humbly ask that you would grant us new ideas, even now. Bless our labours. Fulfill your creative purposes in us today.
Jesus Christ, Word of God, Icon of God, we praise you for sanctifying the earth in your incarnation, confirming the goodness of the physical world of stone, wood, metal, wind and fire and flesh. We ask that you would rule our imaginations with wisdom and love. Deliver us from fear and pride. Great Carpenter: teach us, guide us, aid us in our work today.
Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of life, Power and Fire, we praise you for sustaining all things in being, energizing them with vitality, and ushering them to their future and final state of glory. Purify our souls; scour our hearts; re-order our minds; strengthen our bodies. Free us to be playful today.
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Three in One, we worship you, we acclaim you, we love you. We praise you for the extravagant love that you demonstrate in the creation of this world. We bless you, and we ask that you would form in us a community of artists that reflect the Divine Community, marked by self-giving love, infectious joy and the desire to honor and glorify the name of God; for Christ’s sake and for the sake of this world. Amen.
(Vincent Wei-Cheng Lin, who heads up the Taiwan Campus Crusade for Christ Arts Ministry, translated my prayer above into traditional Chinese. I was very encouraged by this.)
An Iconographer's Prayer
Teach me, Lord, to use wisely the time which You have given me and to work well without wasting a second. Teach me to profit from my past mistakes without falling into a gnawing doubt. Teach me to anticipate the project without worry, to imagine the work without despair if it should turn out differently. Teach me to unite haste and slowness, serenity and ardor, zeal and peace.
Help me at the beginning of the work when I am the weakest. Help me in the middle of the work when my attention must be sustained. And especially fill all the emptiness of my work with Your Presence. Lord, in all the work of my hands, bestow Your Grace so that it can speak to others and my mistake can speak to me alone. Keep me in the hope of perfection, without which I would lose heart, yet keep me from achieving perfection, for surely I would be lost in arrogance.
Purify my sight when I am doing poorly, for one is never sure that the work will turn out badly; Yet when I am doing well, one is never sure that the work will turn out well. Lord, let me never forget that all knowledge is in vain unless there is work. And all work is empty unless there is love. And all love is hollow unless it binds me both to others and to You.
Lord, teach me to pray with my hands, my arms, and all my strength. Remind me that the work of my hands belongs to You and that it is fitting to return this gift to You. Yet, if I work for the pleasure of others, like a flowering plant in the evening I will wither. But if I work for the love of goodness, I will remain in goodness. And the time to work for goodness and for Your Glory is now.
Andy Price, HopeArts Festival (2003)