Processing with God: Narrative Lectionary, Liturgy, Prayers
For All the Beauty*
Sing to the Lord a new song, praise God’s Holy Name.
For another child has claimed their name and identity!
Sing with thanksgiving and pray for protection! For every single person who has to defend and define and redefine on a regular basis. May they feel protected and loved.
Send out the birth announcement, for God’s beloved has found more beauty in themselves to rejoice in!
God, we know you are beyond binary. Black and white are but human lines drawn in the sand. He, she, they, xi, ze, zir, hir, co and ey; You know and recognize and use all of the pronouns! Your name is a pronoun! You are the great I am, the we, the they that is God!
Whenever we discover the complexity, mystery and variety of gender and attraction, we will rejoice.
We will say–we have a God whose image is reflected in the beauty of both Laverne and Elliot. Mighty and Bounteous God, you are the right God for us.
For you created them…
….and they are wonderfully and fiercely made.
God who calls each and every one of us by our living name,
We give thanks for all the beauty* of the earth,
especially that beauty* that is encapsulated in the uniqueness an plurality that is the queer+ community.
We praise you God for this creative work of your hands, today and everyday.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Support me and my Phd in Divinity in Creative Writing
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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Nice work!