God,
I have spent all week
telling people that as a White Woman,
my way is to please everyone
and play nice.
I have gone full on confessional,
that this is our way, and to further admit
that when people do not consider us nice
all too often
we cry white tears,
and call that other person mean.
Because heaven forbid my personal, or even structural
ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or other prejudices are named.
So here I am, practicing saying them out loud, God.
All month, help me God.
Because I don’t need to be startled or ashamed of who I am,
And I think the ownership helps me,
(and maybe other white women too?)
In any case, you know the help I still need Lord.
Because when I do this hard work,
my other mistakes seem bigger,
and my soul wears out faster,
and my heart is a bit sadder,
but its a bit bigger too–and for that I give you thanks
Thank you Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Feel free to adapt/share/use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
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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.
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