My behavior tortures me.
I can’t hide from You, Omniscient God. You know how much my behavior tortures me.
I don’t act well. My manners show desperate fluctuations. I usually travel between extremes.
My condition oppresses me so much, God, often I exhibit a bad picture of myself.
My relationships with other people are not developing well at all. One day I seem stupidly rude and impolite, and the next day I reach a level of over-politeness.
My own family doesn’t know how to deal with me, how to face me. I am their problem, although I don’t want to be.
Help me, Jesus, Eternal, Fitting, and Unrepeatable Example of behavior. Fix me.
Plant in my heart the true politeness. A politeness that is calm, proper, and Christian, and that will not degenerate into sweet-sounding words and ridiculous bowings.
Cultivate in me respect and love toward others, fellow workers, friends, relatives, acquaintances and strangers, so that I may talk to them as I ought to, and not hurt them.
Grace me with self-rule, so that I can control my movements and gestures and my words.
That I can govern my temper. That I tame my anger and my excitement, and that I surpass momentary moods.
Please, Lord, teach me a good behavior (James 3:13). Guide me in the right direction in mastering it.
Stay by me, my Teacher and Guide of good behavior. And if I make mistakes in how I act, don’t turn these mistakes in the direction of provoking clashes and traumatizing my brethren, friends, and fellow human beings.
I want so much, I want everything
God, I want so much. See, I want everything. I long to scale the heights of the spirit. But the dizziness that the fall brings fascinates me unimaginably.
What an insufferable dichotomy! A division that loosens colossal powers in me. What torment!
For hours, for days I would like to be an eagle. My heart would mount up to You effortlessly, Lord. It calls for You.
If I could, I ‘d fly from peak to peak, all at once higher and higher up. So that I might meet You free from everything earthly and sinful. My face drawn by the beauty of Your face would not see anything else.
The world beneath my feet would seem erased, dead. A rubbish heap.
The fall attracts me so much! Satan guides my imagination into places full of the intoxicating aroma of evil flowers. Temptation makes me dizzy.
It seems to me that I am walking on the edge of the roof of a house, and wherever I am I’ll fall, and I’ll go splat on the hot pavement.
Father of compassion (II Corinthians 1:3), feel compunction for me. Let this splitting stop. For so many years the war has not subsided in my chest. At least let some truce be called. Deaden within me the devil’s cohort. Give the victory to the one who thirsts for You.
Steady every step of mine that I take to draw near You. Make me more and more Your seeker. Give me the joy of going up to Your summits. Thus the field with marshes and mud will attract me less.
Incomparable Unifier, bring unity in my broken being.
~Taken from Speaking to God, by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America. Speaking to God was originally published in Greek in 1960 by the Christian Student Union, Athens, Greece, and is now available in English.
