Ten years ago this week, a small group of original Bridgefolk participants and leaders met together to talk, pray and discern. How should we follow through on our initial meeting in Pennsylvania in 1999? What kind of community are we becoming? How will participants know if they are “members?” Should we have a common discipline of prayer, the way religious orders do? What will bind our life together when we depart? It would be good to at least have a common prayer that would resonate equally with Mennonites and Catholics, they decided, but what might that be?
In the middle of the night, one of Bridgefolk’s co-founders found the following prayer taking shape, got up, and wrote it down. When he shared it with the others the next day, the group embraced it as a simple answer to many of our questions:
- If someone can pray this prayer with all their heart, he or she is Bridgefolk.
- Our rule would be to pray this prayer daily, and live accordingly.
On this 10th anniversary of the Bridgefolk prayer, therefore, we invite you to pray our common prayer today, to make or renew your commitment to pray it daily, and to live out the groanings we share for a Church of unity, nonviolence, and faithfulness to our Lord Jesus Christ. Continue reading “Praying the Bridgefolk prayer – 10 years and counting”