Some Everyday Prayers

A Celtic prayer from the Carmina Gadelica:

I make this bed
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
In the name of the night we were conceived,
In the name of the night that we were born,
In the name of the day we were baptised,
In the name of each night, each day,
Each angel that is in the heavens.

A prayer by Michael Leunig, cartoonist and writer of prayers in The Age, an Australian daily paper:

We give thanks for the invention of the handle.
Without it there would be many things we couldn’t hold on to.
As for the things we can’t hold on to anyway, let us gracefully accept their ungraspable nature and celebrate all things elusive, fleeting and intangible.
They mystify us and make us receptive to truth and beauty.
We celebrate and give thanks. Amen.

And a prayer (adapted slightly because our bins are green and black, not purple) from the end of John Davies’ article ‘Reading the Everyday’ published in Third Way magazine, but downloadable (free!) from http://urblog.typepad.com/urblog/files/john_davies_3rd_way.pdf. We could even make this one responsive (!):

We give thanks for the wheelie bin
Receptacle of all our rubbish
Carrier-away of our cast-offs, unused goods, undigested foodstuffs, nappies, wrappers, broken electrical items and all the discarded clutter of out cupboards and our lives.
A blessing on those who make it their work to collect these bins together and pour their contents into a waiting lorry, labouring through soaking rain and stinking heat on behalf of the rest of us wasteful citizens.
A blessing on those who wheel out the bins for their forgetful or frail neighbours, and wheel them in again afterwards.
A blessing on those who brighten up their wheelie bins by painting on them pictures of flowers, favourite TV characters or cartoonish self-portraits.
We give thanks for the wheelie bin
Receptacle of all our rubbish
Give us patience with those who use our wheelie bins as playthings: climbing on them, racing down the road in them like plastic chariots, setting them on fire;
Give us strength to push our full and heavy bins to the roadside when we are feeling feeble on bin collection morning;
Keep us clam if in a moment of panic we should think our bin has gone, wheeled away up the road or into oblivion.
Help us to recycle, and bless those who want to help us to recycle more.
Help us to use less packaging, and bless those who want to sell us things with less packaging on them.
Give us grace to care about our waste and the way it affects our city’s space.
We give thanks for the wheelie bin
Receptacle of all our rubbish