Prayers That Would Double As Excellent Pickup Lines If I Possessed Even An Ounce Of Real Courage -The Toast

Prayers That Would Double As Excellent Pickup Lines If I Possessed Even An Ounce Of Real Courage

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

on January 19, 2016 in Relationships

“I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always! Show me how to live.”

“Relieve me of this fear and direct my attention to what you would have me be.”

“I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.”

“I devoutly adore you, O hidden one,
Truly hidden beneath these appearances.
My whole heart submits to you,
And in contemplating you, It surrenders itself completely.
Sight, touch, taste are all deceived in their judgment of you,
But hearing suffices firmly to believe.”

“I am heartily sorry
for having offended Thee
and I detest my faults
above every other evil
because they displease Thee.
Who, in Thy infinite wisdom,
art so deserving of all my love
and I firmly resolve
with the help of Thy grace
never more to offend Thee
and to amend my life.”

“From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me.”

“You with me, you before me, you behind me,
You in me, you beneath me, you above me,
You on my right, you on my left,
You where I lie, you where I sit, you where I arise.”

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

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+61 Vote up Vote down

hithisisnom 156p · 479 weeks ago

Are a lot of these parallels deliberate, St. Teresa-style? The last one...seems deliberate.

+28 Vote up Vote down

atlasblue85 140p · 479 weeks ago

I recognize that last prayer as the basis of one of the most annoying children's choir songs of all time. Don't use that version as a pickup line.

3 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+92 Vote up Vote down

grumblyqueer 139p · 479 weeks ago

Anything John Done has ever wrItten. The pickup lines are secretly prayers and the spiritual stuff is secretly pickup lines.

4 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+77 Vote up Vote down

sueyres 153p · 479 weeks ago

"Lord, grant me chastity and continence... but not yet."

1 reply · active 479 weeks ago

+35 Vote up Vote down

OoTheHumanities 121p · 479 weeks ago

I desire to be consulted. I will forfeit that for no human nor deity.

+106 Vote up Vote down

middlemarch 137p · 479 weeks ago

"Grant me chastity... But not yet ;) ;) ;) - St. Augie. (PS Also send pics.)"

5 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+31 Vote up Vote down

LacaunaKale 128p · 479 weeks ago

"As we seek to know and do your will,
open our ears to Listen, our eyes to See,
our hearts to Love, our minds to Learn,
our lips to Speak, our hands to Serve."

(I'm going to be struck by lightning now, aren't I?)

+10 Vote up Vote down

brzzzz · 479 weeks ago

c.f. also all St. John of the Cross.

1 reply · active 479 weeks ago

+32 Vote up Vote down

evieskye 118p · 479 weeks ago

Any other Calvin grads read the first one and flash back to the school motto?
Which would also be an excellent pickup line, "I offer my heart to you, promptly and sincerely"

6 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+24 Vote up Vote down

catweazlol 142p · 479 weeks ago

Was that last one written by Sting?

+114 Vote up Vote down

deleted5506423 144p · 479 weeks ago

Apparently Mallory's crush didn't get the hint from "A Guide To Flirting With Plausible Deniability," so we're back to this again.

2 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+51 Vote up Vote down

suzynjackson 117p · 479 weeks ago

This is completely off topic, but I just wanted to tell Mallory this: you are doing a fucking awesome job as Prudie!!!

1 reply · active 479 weeks ago

+15 Vote up Vote down

hithisisnom 156p · 479 weeks ago

Teach my heart this day where and how to see you,
Where and how to find you.
You have made me and remade me,
And you have bestowed on me
All the good things I possess,
And still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that
For which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
For I cannot seek you
Unless you teach me,
Or find you
Unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire,
Let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you,
Let me love you when I find you.

I am missing out on prayers, apparently

+54 Vote up Vote down

Frumiosa 141p · 479 weeks ago

All of these assume a lot of patience on behalf of the solicitee, tbh.

7 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+27 Vote up Vote down

sheistolerable · 479 weeks ago

"God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
*meaningful look*

+47 Vote up Vote down

crawlkill 129p · 479 weeks ago

hey baby, I can't promise about each day, but I'll give you your daily bread tomorrow morning

I may not be good at this

2 replies · active 478 weeks ago

+48 Vote up Vote down

MopRocks 118p · 479 weeks ago

“You with me, you before me, you behind me,
You in me, you beneath me, you above me,
You on my right, you on my left,
You where I lie, you where I sit, you where I arise.”

I MEAN. *fans self*

2 replies · active 479 weeks ago

+26 Vote up Vote down

msobelgravitar 86p · 479 weeks ago

the last one is about positions, right?

+5 Vote up Vote down

walrathem 106p · 479 weeks ago

I'm so glad I never saw the "Deliver Me" one until today because that would have messed me up in high school with the level of impossible that would be for me.

+28 Vote up Vote down

PettyVengeanceFetish 88p · 479 weeks ago

I am disappointed in myself that in all my years growing up catholic I never once thought to make a double entendre out of a prayer

+20 Vote up Vote down

Readerbeth · 479 weeks ago

I would be sincerely terrified both OF and FOR anyone who asked me to do with them as I would, and to relieve them of the bondage of self.

Unless there were some very serious discussions of hard limits and safewords, beforehand. (But not as pickup lines.)

+12 Vote up Vote down

irishup 110p · 479 weeks ago

"I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed"

Because it's so much easier to execute your Irish Goodbye, when it's not *your* home.

+11 Vote up Vote down

50MinuteMermaid · 479 weeks ago

That last one is...St. Patrick's Breastplate? (haha breastplate) and I think it sounds a little less intimate when you put "Christ" back in where all the "you"s went. Or at least, a little less position-explicit. But wow that switch worked out really well and I intend to use it at every possible opportunity (read: maybe once in my life).

1 reply · active 479 weeks ago

+29 Vote up Vote down

Readerbeth · 479 weeks ago

As a lapsed Catholic in college, I had a group of Christian friends interested in helping me find Jesus. They introduced me to some delightful prayers, including one that was very heavy on the "I'm down on my knees, submissive before you, O Lord" rhetoric. I nearly broke a rib from suppressed laughter when I realized they were all completely earnestly clueless.

+17 Vote up Vote down

maryoftheassumptions 99p · 479 weeks ago

Well, see, there's a strand of Catholic mysticism where this is, like...not TOTALLY overtly the point? but the whole sublimation of their sex drive into "Jesus is my bridegroom" is a very real and deliberate thing. So prayers in that school do tend to read that much more like love/sex poetry.

1 reply · active 477 weeks ago

+16 Vote up Vote down

redheadedwolf 115p · 479 weeks ago

Man, these remind me of how skittish and commitment-averse all the forceful religious stuff made me, growing up. It's all just a LITTLE INTENSE, y'know, and I'm really not ready to surrender myself quite that completely just yet. I hear the word's a pretty big place with an awful lot of books and music and movies, and I'd like to go check them out first.

"SURRENDER YOURSELF TO GOD"
no thank you. maybe later.

+10 Vote up Vote down

alula_auburn 106p · 479 weeks ago

"Let us enter into the house of knowledge of ourselves," and/or ""You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light."

OTOH, the mood I'm in at the moment "All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well," would probably do me, especially if I knew the speaker was a cat person.

+2 Vote up Vote down

yda · 479 weeks ago

This inspires me to try Conan's prayer to Crom as a pick-up line next time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBMY3VV5AMA

+5 Vote up Vote down

Loaded_Dice 87p · 479 weeks ago

Mallory. Marry me.

+4 Vote up Vote down

Cassandra · 479 weeks ago

This reminds me of the poem "The Dark Night of the Soul" by St John of the Cross, a 16th century Carmelite friar. I first heard it set to lovely music by Loreena McKennit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA) and I had NO IDEA that it was actually describing some Christian mystical experience of the soul's pursuit of God, and was *not* actually about two young people in rapturous, swoony love. Man, there's a lot to be said for some expressions Christian holiness. I really missed out in being brought up Muslim.

+1 Vote up Vote down

al3ab-banat01 87p · 464 weeks ago

نجدد ترحابنا بكم في العاب بنات التي تعتبر من افضل الالعاب على الاطلاق وعندها جمهور كبير جدا وهي بدورها تتضمن التلبيس والمكياج وكذلك الطبخ وتلعبها البنات بكترة واصبحت مشهورة جدا في السنين الاخيرة مما جعل مواقع الالعاب تصبح كتيرة وهناك كتير منها مشهورة متل فرايف و كيزي ومواقع اخرى كما ان هناك ايضا موقع جميل عربي يقدم تشكيلة من العاب بنات مميزة ومتجددة يوميا هذا النوع بدوره يشمل اصناف كتيرة سنتعرف عليها الان ومن بينها العاب الطبخ الدي يملك معجبين كتر جدا ويعتبر هو الاول تم يليه العاب التلبيس وهذا الآخر ممتع ويحبه الكتير لان التلبيس تعشقه البنات اكتر من الاولاد وهذا امر بديهي ومعروف وبعده بالتتابع يوجد العاب المكياج او الميك اب نوع جميل ومحبوب عند الصغار والكبار ويبقى في الاخير نوع قص الشعر وهو الاقل اهتماما

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