Prayer time 24 June 2026
God alone suffices
Download a PDF of the prayer script
Orientation
Welcome. It's good to be here with you tonight.
Over these past weeks we have been learning — or remembering — how to receive. How to listen. How to see. How to sense. How to turn the will.
Tonight we begin something new. Over the next four weeks we are going to pray with some of the oldest prayers in the Christian tradition — prayers that were formed, like us, inside conditions that did not improve on demand. We are going to hear them first as they were written. And then we are going to receive them into the language of what we know to be true.
This four-week arc is called Going Through. The mystics did not find a way around the darkness. They found that the darkness, when met with unmixed attention given entirely to God, became the very ground of encounter. Simone Weil called it absolutely unmixed attention. Eckhart called it Gelassenheit, releasement. Fox called it the Golden Key. Six centuries, one movement: stop attending to the problem. Give your whole attention to God. That giving is the prayer. Tonight the theme is surrender. Not the surrender of defeat, but the surrender that stops adding the second layer of suffering. The fighting against what is.
You can come back to any of these four weeks whenever you need them. These prayers are written to be returned to.
A word before we begin. The reworkings you'll hear tonight are mine, clumsy and provisional, offered in the spirit of exploration rather than correction or improvement. If the original prayer is home to you, please return to the original as your working prayer. We're not trying to improve on anything here. We're simply finding, together, the path of least resistance to honest prayer. Come as you are. Pray as you can. And return to these prayers and choose the version that feels best for you.
Let us pray.
Relaxation
Original Prayer: Peace Prayer, attributed to St Francis of Assisi.
We'll take a moment to relax and settle where we are.
Let everything that has been holding you tightly today begin to loosen. What has been holding you? What has made the body tense and the mind tired? Do a full body sweep, as slow as you can. No rush. The jaw. The shoulders. The hands. Let your hands fall open.
Breathe in. And as you breathe out, let the body do what it already knows how to do. It has been breathing without your help all day. Let it do what it knows to do, without striving, without struggle, without effort.
We breathe. We relax. We remember.
Let it wash over you without effort.
THE ORIGINAL
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Attributed to St Francis of Assisi, 1181 to 1226; earliest written source c.1912.
THE UNITY REWORK — Affirmative I Am Statements
Lord, Life, the God of my understanding, Christ within,
I am an expression of divine peace.
Where there appears to be hatred, I am love;
Where there appears to be injury, I am pardon;
Where there appears doubt, I am faith;
Where there appears despair, I am hope;
Where there appears darkness, I am light;
Where there appears deep, sunken sadness, I am joy.
O Divine Mind, I affirm that I not so much seek to be myself consoled, but affirm I am consolation,
that I release the need to be understood and instead I am the understanding,
and I am the loving.
In giving, I receive.
In releasing, I am released.
It is in this surrender that I discover the life that was always already here.
Concentration
Original Prayer: The Jesus Prayer, Eastern Orthodox tradition.
Concentration asks us to turn. To turn away from the perceived issues, worries, concerns, illness, difficulties, and toward God. We are not doing a spiritual bypass. We are never ignoring pain or death or dying or sadness, but in stillness, and in silence, we turn toward God. The turning is itself a moment of prayer.
This is the oldest continuous prayer in the Christian East. It has been prayed without ceasing for over a thousand years, in monasteries, in fields, in prisons, on sickbeds. It was prayed by people whose conditions did not improve. It was their attention, placed entirely on God, that was the prayer.
Hear it first as it was always said:
THE ORIGINAL
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.
Eastern Orthodox tradition; found in the Philokalia, compiled 4th to 15th centuries.
[Silence. Breathe with it.]
THE UNITY REWORK — Affirmative Poetry
The Christ in me looks on me with mercy already given.
I do not petition from outside. I remember from within.
The part of me that believed it must earn its way back in
was never outside to begin with.
The sun does not decide to give light. Light is its nature.
Mercy is God's nature. And I am made of God.
Therefore mercy is my nature too.
The prayer is the remembering.
I rest in this.
Meditation
Original Prayer: Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, c.1393.
Now we go deeper. A spoken prayer, then five minutes of silence.
Julian wrote this prayer after a series of visions she received while gravely ill. She did not know if she would live. What came to her in that place was not comfort in the ordinary sense. It was a claim. A theological claim made from inside the darkness.
THE ORIGINAL
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well. Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore it was shewed? For Love. Thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end.
And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, c.1393.
THE UNITY REWORK — After the Manner of the Psalms
Can my heart remember?
Does my soul recall?
Return to the knowing. Live close to it from now on.
Love is the point.
And who is showing it to me?
Why, Love is showing me.
And who is Love?
You are Love.
And I am Love, to you.
And Love is as us, among us.
Love is here.
And why?
Because Love does this.
This is what Love does.
There is nothing greater, nor more important to remember, than this.
And all shall be well.
All is well.
And all that has been, has been well.
For in all manner of thing, Love has been showing itself to us.
Now we move into five minutes of silence. Let the words rest. Let what is real come forward.
I'll bring us back.
[Silence. Minimum 5 minutes. Ocean Fal-Cav ambience, used with permission.]
Realisation
Original Prayer: St Patrick's Breastplate, Christ with me section.
Now we declare what is true.
This prayer is over a thousand years old. It was prayed by people living in conditions of genuine physical danger. It is not a prayer about feeling safe. It is a prayer about reality, about where the Christ actually is.
Hear it:
THE ORIGINAL
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
St Patrick's Breastplate, Old Irish, 8th century; trans. Cecil Frances Alexander, 1889.
THE UNITY REWORK — Affirmative Declarations
We affirm together:
The Christ is not somewhere else looking in. The Christ is the life I am living from.
Christ in me, the hope of glory, here, now, in this body, in this prayer room.
Christ before me, divine intelligence already moving into what I cannot see.
Christ behind me, the love that has sustained every step my life has taken.
Christ beneath me, the ground that has never given way.
Christ above me, the vision that holds what I cannot yet imagine.
Christ on my right, Christ on my left. I am encircled by a love that has no gaps.
When I lie down, the Christ is present.
When I sit in the waiting, the Christ is present.
When I arise and face what is coming, the Christ is present.
In every person who holds me in their heart tonight; the Christ.
In every word spoken in care for me; the Christ.
In every eye that sees me as I truly am; the Christ.
Christ is here.
Appreciation
Original Prayer: Teresa de Avila, Nada te turbe.
We close with this.
Teresa de Avila:
THE ORIGINAL
Nada te turbe,
nada te espante.
Todo se pasa.
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.
Teresa de Avila, 1515 to 1582, Nada te turbe.
Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you.
All things pass.
God does not change.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.
[Silence]
THE UNITY REWORK — Declarative Affirmations
At the level of my true being, nothing disturbs me.
Nothing frightens the Christ that lives in me.
All things pass. This condition will pass, or I will be transformed within it. In either case, I will be held.
God does not change. The sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere does not shift in response to my circumstances. I am held, even in this.
I have God. I have the presence that is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.
I lack nothing that matters.
God alone suffices.
God alone suffices.
God alone suffices.
My dear, praying friends:
Go from here in that knowledge.
The light of God surrounds us.
The love of God enfolds us.
The power of God protects us.
The presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
James Dillet Freeman, Prayer of Protection, 1947.
Tihei mauri ora.
Prepared by Jacinda Faloon-Cavander for Unity of NZ