Aunty God

God

Nothing makes me want to scorch earth faster

Or with more fury

thank suffering children.

My heart clencheswithin my chest, when children suffer.

Especially when it is due to the incompetences of adults.

It’s is our job to protect children—not from inconveniences or hard things—

But from bullying, bigotry, mistreatment and evil.

Lord you know that my niphling, your niphling has COVID

And that each and every child sick with COVID right now (at least in the United States)—

Is a failure.

Because we know how to keep each other safe.

We just need to do the hard work, and we keep tripping up

On our ignorance

Selfishness

And greed.

Tonight I will probably pray some people shaped prayers;

But right now I need to rage and and spit and cry out:

Lord in your mercy

Hear our prayer

Break our Hearts of Stone

So that we might do better—God help us to do better,

I know we can do better!

And keep your baby niphlings* safe,

All the baby niphlings For you are the Mighty Aunty God

Ready to hug us and rage on our behalf

And love us back to health

Come on Aunty God and help all your sick niphlings

Till each of us is better I pray

—and thanks again for the vaccines and masks—

In Aunty God’s name I pray

Amen

*niphling is one of several gender neutral terms for nieces and nephews. It’s my favorite because it sounds like something out of a fantasy novel.

Please feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Pandemic Prayers & Resources

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Author: katyandtheword

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.

3 thoughts on “Aunty God”

  1. Thank you for these words that hadn’t been focused into words within me until you tied them to the rage inside of me, too. Just one question, tho….what’s a niphling?

    Reply
  2. Pingback: Pandemic Prayers & Resources – katyandtheword

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