| Prayer | Before us it is blessed, behind us it is blessed, Below us it is blessed, above us it is blessed, Around us it is blessed as we set out with Christ. Our speech is blessed as we set out for God. With beauty before us, with beauty behind us, With beauty below us, with beauty above us, With beauty around us, we set out for a holy place indeed. Prayer Walks, Traditional Navaho Prayer |
| Meditation | To learn the scriptures is easy, to live them, hard. The search for the Real is no simple matter. Deep in my looking, the last words vanished. Joyous and silent, the waking that met me there. From Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, ed. by Jane Hirschield, 1994 Harper Collins Publishers, p. 124 by Lal Ded (14th c.?) |
| Affirmation | God says, “You are church.” I feel it, in my body, the movement in my solar plexus when I say, “church.” If Jesus is the Word, and the church is the body of Christ, and we are one with Christ’s body through communion, then church is our body, too. Therefore, my body is church, My body is temple, and it is good. by Allison Addicott |
| Prayer | God of seed and growth and harvest, creator of need, creator of satisfaction; give us, we pray, our daily bread, sufficient and assured for all. Give us also, we pray, the bread of life, and we shall have a care to feed the hungry, and to seek for peace and justice in the world. Help us, then, to remember and to know that you are our life today, and every day; you are the food we need, now and forever. God, give us work till our life shall end, and life till our work is done. Look kindly on our world, our God, as we suffer and struggle with one another. Look kindly on your Church, driven by the same necessity; and may the light we have seen in Jesus illuminate and brighten all the world. Amen. Give Us Today Our Daily Bread, from Zealand Prayer Book, 1989 Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. Harper Collins Publishers, p.125 |
| Meditation | What Do sad people have in Common? It seems They have all built a shrine To the past And often go there And do a strange wail and Worship. What is the beginning of Happiness? It is to stop being So religious. Like That. Stop Being So Religious by Hafiz |
| Affirmation | Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. from The Color Purple by Alice Walker |
| Prayer | Spirit of comfort and longing, enfold my fear, unclothe me of my pride, unweave my thoughts, uncomplicate my heart, and give me surrender: that I may tell my wounds, lay down my work, and greet the dark. Spirit of Comfort and Longing by Janet Morley |
| Meditation | Each of us wrestles with God Let us stand by that Even if we are defeated And put out of joint Each of us wrestles with God Who waits to be used A struggle waits for us. Each of us is blessed Let us believe that Even if we want to give up Give us the brazenness to demand more Make us hunger after you Teach us to pray: I will not leave you That simply cannot be everything A blessing awaits us. Each of us has a secret name It is written in God’s hand Those who love us read it One day we will be called Land of reconciliation Bank that forgives its debtors Digger of wells in the desert God’s name awaits us. The Unknown God from A Theology for Skeptics by Dorothee Soelle |
| Affirmation | Bill stared toward the Virgin, and he began to see her as the archetypal mother, not the literal Mother of God, but the source of all nourishment and hope. He could speak to that Mother, and it would mean something. At last he could pray, and the words would not be empty. from And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts, p. 538 |