For Humility

Help me, O God,

To have the humility to sit at the feet of great art,
whether it is a painting or a person on the street,
a scene from a movie or a score from a musical,
a sunset or a psalm,
and to look and to listen and to receive
what is being offered me there.

Give me the grace to submit to its scrutiny,
seeking not to do something to it,
but that it might do something to me;
seeking not in some way to judge it,
but that it might in some way judge me...

(A prayer by Ken Gire from his book, Windows of the Soul, p. 94; the art is "In the Beginning," by internationally-renowned artist Makoto Fujimura)

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