Wedding Love
By Peter B. Panagore
August 2010

Touched the hands of the wedding couple to bless them during the ceremony. Lost my mind for moments, lost all words for moments, the buzz of love off their hands coursing to my heart, nearly buckled my knees. Caught myself. Found the words. Went on.

Rev. Peter Panagore 

First Radio Parish Church of America 

Maine State House Prayer 
March 4, 2010

(This prayer is an homage to my brilliant teacher, my story teller, Rev. Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a.k.a Brother Blue, who passed on just months ago.)

So Let’s Pray,
God, you gots no age, you ain’t young, and you ain’t old,
God, you gots no body -- no woman parts an no man parts,
No fingers no toes; you ain’t blond or brunette, and you ain’t bald.

You bigger than me.
Bigger than all we.
Bigger than stars.
Bigger than ideas.
But you ain’t go no size neither,
And you’s so small you fits right inside of every tiny tiny thing.
You gots me baffled. Whatever you is, is not what I am, but I AM cause you IS.
What is we to make of that?

Folks shouting "it’s a miracle!" -- that baby what got saved from that tree come crashin downinside his daddy’s house, booming into baby’s room, smashin all around that momma’s boy, leavin even twigs tucked inside his nappies, next to his sweet sweet baby’s bottom, during Snowicane that roared tempestuously tearing up Maine — winds howlin to 90, snows falling in feet, folks claimin it’s a baby miracle!

God, you dun saved that baby, but, man o’man, what about them poor folk in Concepcion, Chile, or Port of the Prince, Haiti, where’s their miracle? You gots me baffled. Why save a little baby boy when you lets thousands go collect their great re-ward? And why let them Wall Street rich make off with our National loot, while letting the mackerel canners go belly up?

Maybe because we gots it wrong. Maybe your finger, if you gots one (which you don’t) ain’t in the stew a’stirring. Maybe it’s up to us to straighten up this mess as best we can. Maybe your love for us be so strong you let us have our way, and maybe you just plain gets out of the way a’nature doing her thing, letting her do what she does best, tossing up storms, shaking the earth, and all that whatnot.

Maybe what you gives us, God, is each other, to figure all this out. Maybe we ain’t really Whigs or Torries, conservatives or liberals, dems or that’s, maybe we all just one people under God, under you, indivisible, working the best we can for the biggest best, for the most folks. If that’s the truth, then we all asks you, steer us, right here, right now, today, in dis place and dis space, and if we argues and pushes back and forth with words, then let it all be for the good, and let the good be done, ‘cause God, we need the help.

Ahhhhhhh and Amen.

Prayer
Maine State Senate
February 17, 2009

Rev. Peter Panagore

Humor me, hold hands across the aisle.

This is a literal act with figurative implications.

Unfortunately, I’m going to need my hands unheld, to pray.

Dear God,

Every time hard times come, we make it through

And walk on out. It takes will power and direction

And action together and we’re asking you, God, to make

The crooked path, straight again that we might

Walk free of the burdens of this bad economy.

With You, tomorrow will be better than today;

We believe, that our Maine community, our people;

With Your insight God,

Can aim for a brighter future,

And that we can build our way out of this mess,

Through vision,

Through innovation

Through industry,

Through sweat,

Through neighborliness,

Through better government

For the sake of business,
For the sake of the truck driver, the fisherman, the teacher,

The day laborer, the unemployed, the elderly and the children.

God, I’m calling on you, up there, out there, in here,

To roll up your sleeves, to put your back into it, put your mind into it,

To help these folks standing in front of you today, hand in hand, to remember

That all of us are smarter than one of us, and
That together we’ll succeed.

Amen.

The House of Representatives in the State of Maine
First Radio Parish Church of America
The Reverend Peter B. Panagore
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Let’s Pray.

Dear God,

They were up all night,
These leaders of Maine,
Who made the hard choices,
Who made the tough decisions,
Who did what they could with what they had
For the benefit of the state as a whole.

The attacks have begun,
The dissatisfaction
The accusations
And the ramifications
For being leaders
For acting
For choosing when

There was no good solution,
No miracle to cure what ailed us
It was dollars and sense,
Dollars and S E N S E,
There was only cutting
As little and as large as possible,
And sadly pushing a burden
Onto communities and persons
Onto those who can least
Afford it.

We know that.
There was no help for it
But to pass a yoke
On to those who struggle most
And have valid needs, and
Onto towns who must now
Shoulder the minds of school children
Upon their tax burdened backs, and
On to churches who will dig deeper
To supply human services to human beings

This is no condemnation, God, it is a lamentation,
Just an appraisal of where we are in this together.
Bottom line, God, there was little choice for our leaders,
We can’t spend money we don’t have,
For justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, We simply need more than we have more water, more streams
We ask your help in shoveling out the mud of this regrettable blockage
And in this inevitable season in which we find ourselves.

These leaders of Maine,
Did what had to be done
They balanced what they could
In a situation that no one wants to be in
And not many may praise them, but
We will, God, right now, we will praise them for their courage to compromise
For their forthrightly making decisions that open them to attack
For doing what had to be done and
For making do with what they found.

Our state is pretty stove up, God; now it’s time to look to the future
And build an economy that will take compromise and vision,
Hard work and innovation,
And with Your willingness, bring prosperity.
Keep an eye our leaders, God.Give them backbone,
Give them thoughtfulness, give them frugality and compassion
In all they do.

Amen.

Prayer Poem for the Maine State Senate Feburary 2008
by Peter B. Panagore

Let’s Pray a poem.

Hey God,
This is for your people
who,

Satisfy one side and
Alienate the other.

Stand rigidly and
Snap like a spruce in a gale;
Intractable,
Regrettable.

Stand fluidly and
Flex like a birch in a gale;
Collaborative,
Beneficial.

Solutions through
Compromise are
Inclusive of all your people.

Satisfying fully none, but
Bipartisan and fruitful.

Bless these leadership women,
Bless these leadership men,
With an honorable wisdom
That reaches between the aisles
With open hands and open minds, with
Plainly spoken strong thoughts creating
New ideas forged from opposing ideas.

Banish rancor;
Banish ideology;
Banish sound bites;
Banish diminishing labels;
Stand for your people,
Stand with your people,
Stand by your people,
The grand majority of us who
Stand in the wide, wide middle.

It’s time for true change;
It’s time for inspiration,
It’s time for hope;
It’s time for tough choices
And true solutions,
Not brokered on the backs of the poor,
Nor picked from the pockets of the rich.
It’s time for give and take,
On both aisle sides
with gains for all for
A new Maine
For a new day
In a re-America.

Bless this day, God of All,
Bless this chamber, God of truth, and
Lead us in the middle way.

Amen.

Ice Water Baptism

pbpanagore

.

Turning

I leap a town dug drainage ditch

filled with a long-line-pile of brown plowed snow.
I bash a bit past the bare-fingered chock cherries,

dormant at the road’s edge & enter the frozen lowlands,

where nearly no one walks.

Squirrels live in these woodlands, & if winged fairies have a home anywhere—

it’s here among these low lumps of

snow-coated mosses and gnarled spruce roots,

Above me is a spruce green tree canopy;

beyond that, is the blue-gray of a clouding sky;

from where winter’s frozen snows and rains came to cover & to bury;

Around me are the red rough barked trees all lacking low branches

making walking easy; &

beneath each splashing foot is the sopping wet of snow melt,

Flat water gathers, & streams & cuts a water channel, a

miniature canyon through the aqua-green ice,

a chilling lively rivulet rippling and rushing,

Flowing toward an ice hole,

and there the short stream disappears below,

gurgling away; Bending low, I

Cup the flow of coldness from an icy pool,

scooping-up handfuls to my uncovered head, &

wet my short shorn hair with the freezing water & suddenly

I realize I am internally asking a blessing for myself in the

name of the Maker of me— the

One who Was, Who Is, and Who will always Be,

“Bless me Well of Life, for I am less than You,

You are oceans, you are clouds, you are snow and rain,

You are ice, You are melt, You are stream, and me?

I am a single scattered spruce needle blown down by winter winds,

one among millions, sweep me to yourself,

but leave me unharmed,

unchanged; let me flow inside Your stream, but leave me whole, and alone,

This solid little self of mine doesn’t want to know that the price for holy wholeness,

of joining in the flow

is my wholly wetted soul soundly letting go.

A Man on Skates

by pbpanagore

Effortlessly– gliding on parallel rails

Riding a Canadian Clipper wind

Blowing at his back,

Sailing– downwind his

Red parka unzipped with

Corners held extended

Clenched in mittened fists,

Standing stone still,

Speeding over the eel pond;

Winter’s Ideal ice

The first, the best,

Elastic and black containing a

Million captured ice air bubbles;

Frozen like ancient cold constellations

Galaxies beneath his steel blades

Stone-ground and sharp

Enough to cut

A man,

A Creature

Momentarily enraptured

Fleetingly euphoric

Soaring on the ice

Approaching the immovable

Ponds end, and

Loving the beauty

Of being briefly human.

On a Busy Boulevard

By pbpanagore

On a busy city boulevard

In midtown Manhattan

I bumped into God.

I ask you, “How often does that happen?”

“Here’s my chance!” I said to myself.

I didn’t want to waste God’s time, so

I asked directly—

“God, what is your real name?”

Silence.

God stared at me.

“God, that’s a little rude, don’t you think,

staring and not answering?” I asked.

More silence, and then—

In musical voice that ranged baritone, tenor,

soprano, bass and alto,

God pronounced—

“My name is unspeakable.”

God leaned in,

Whispering singing a song for me,

On the sidewalk in front of me, behind me,

Even above me,

Everybody heard,

Babies stopped crying,

Taxis stopped maneuvering,

Shoppers stopped shopping,

Walkers and hawkers, stopped hawking and walking.

Entranced and charmed by the most angelic,

Enchanting, and most utterly human and holy supernatural,

song of inner nature song ever sung—

(read rapidly, smoothly)

“I am,

I happen,

I occur I come to pass,

I come into being,

I come about,

I arise, appear, become, establish,

bring about, abide, remain,

continue, and institute.

“I be in,

I be at,

I be with,

I be done, I be situated,

I be among, within, and without

I be,

I accompany,

I is;

I am.”

Suddenly, Shazam!
God, was done and gone!

And we in the city,

Alone again,

Breathed slow and long, and

Moved along

To chores and work and

On to destinations,

But we heard,

We heard It together.

Advent Wildflower

By pbpanagore

Wild flowers blossom in a sheltered strip

Along the road side above the bay;

There I plucked a pair — hawkweed and clover— to tuck into

The felt band of my fedora which I wore against the

Low, late sun;

18 degrees above the horizon—

That’s what I heard is the height of the sun

Before the winter solstice comes, and it seems true

If my watering eyes are to be believed;

Pick up trucks and town trucks with Fisher plows affixed

And windows rolled down, flannelled elbows poking out, roll by

When winter’s icy ways should be closing in on us -

Instead we play pick-up soccer in our sunny shirtsleeves

With only a cooling ocean