By Rev Dr Barb Hedges-Goettl https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=D331697A8FCF77E0!29205&ithint=file%2cdocx&authkey=!ADXJmFapFUlwXRU
Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. 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.
Blessings for a Gentle Holiday (full text)
Blessings for a Gentle Holiday
May you have a gentle Holiday
Full of kindness, and understanding
and moments of warmth and coziness.
May you have a holiday with enough space and time
to be alone or together
to weep or sigh
to remember…
***
May your holiday give you the kind of rest you need
with reading or physical activity or doing nothing
or to do the crafting or peopling or not peopling
or sleeping or creating or not knowing
or caring…
whatever it is that you need to do,
or not!
***
May you have a gentle holiday
with the permission you need to not have to be “Merry”
but to be your full authentic self,
and to be kind to yourself, your boundaries, and those you love.
This is both my blessing and my prayer for you this season.
Amen.
Gentle Holiday
I write a prayer foe a gentle holiday over at RevGals and I think it turned out rather nice: Prayer
Feed my Sheep. A Prayer
Jesus I wonder,
if when you said Feed my sheep.
Not one or two,
but three times,
if it was because you were hard to hear….
Or if the disciples thought they misheard you?
Or if you heard the murmurs of arguments…
What if they are drunks (alcoholics, addicts)?
Or sinners?
Or demon plagued?
Or diseased?
Or lame?
Did you take a deep breath, Lord?
And close your eyes and gather your patience,
and lower your voice to the teaching whisper–
and say Feed My Sheep again
with a little bit of frustration creeping in.
And then did you finish
with huge compassion and love
overwhelming the words,
so that the disciples could not help but
feel overwhelmed with the call to action?
Feed my Sheep.
God, may we hear the request…
the call…
the mandate today…
this is my prayer.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Please Consider supporting my 2nd Year of Doctoral Work in Creative Writing here: https://gofund.me/70a114f9
Magnificat again
Tapped Out
I’m so tapped out of prayers.
I’ve been writing them for almost two years…
words have been ripped from my soul.
I’ve learned and yearned and earned
and still I find myself turning to God.
Anguished.
I think in my heart of hearts
that if I say the right words
everything will be fixed.
When instead, God….
you know.
You know God,
The right prayers do the opposite.
Cutting open the wounds,
Allowing myself to emotionally
throw up for the entire world to see…
and ironically
that helps
So here I am.
Stubbornly
Being Sick on the Page one more time.
Saying WHY GOD
WHY THE HELL WON’T WE DO THE THINGS WE NEED TO DO
to Bring a PANDEMIC to AN END.
Never in my life will I EVER use the expression
“Avoid it like the Plague”
Never will I take supply chains for granted.
And I look forward to being
a weird old lady
with tales of school from home,
when the church FINALLY got tech
after me a young-in pleaded for years with it,
Shutdowns, BLM, masks, baking
and that time when
we all learned to appreciate
science and vaccinations
(and hopefully redesigned how we
allocated ALL the national budget)
So here we are God,
just you
and me
and the world,
and a prayer
Trying to fix things.
I’m not going to stop.
Let’s go.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Please consider supporting my 2nd year of Doctorate of Ministry in Creative Writing at https://gofund.me/aaeb4910
What is Sacred, Christmas Prayer
God I approach this Christmas season
with some trepidation,
and a lot of fear and trembling.
Because I don’t know if I really
understood before,
what was really sacred,
before now.
All the pomp and circumstance of Christmas
lies by the wayside now, like crumpled wrapping paper.
After all, we are not here to impress anybody.
What is left, is the Christ Candle,
burning the conviction into our hearts,
that life is sacred,
precisely because it is all so
unique and beautiful and brief.
The fact that a young girl, a shepherd and a magi
could each magnify God
in their own,
and yet important way
makes me want to cry
silent tears
at the magnitude of the meaning of Christmas
So here we are…
Fill us up,
with what Christmas
means for each of this year
Reminding us
that God sent a baby
in a manger
for each and every one of us
and God values us–
enough to send
babies and angels
and teachers and doctors and nurses
and vaccines and masks
and phone calls and cards
and candles and stars
and every other symbol that we need to remind us
That we are beloved.
And that we are here to fill the world with love
any way we can,
because that is the Christmas miracle
turning emptiness into something else.
Let us Go, and be comforted by the Love of God.
May God Bless you
and Keep you
in Belovedness–
wrapped in the miracle
that God is here.
Amen.
Always, forever,
God is even now. Here.
Alleluia.
Amen.
Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
More Advent/Christmas Resource
Doctorate in Ministry Update
Good News! In Addition to securing a flight to Florida (God willing the conference will still be in person) I found a roommate for my weeklong intensive course in January–this is the Fantasy one I’m super excited about. This means that my $1,000+ price tag went down to $580. This includes breakfast. I’m a must eat on time or I turn into a grumpy- kind of girl, so this is great news as well. (My college roommate and I were the only ones we knew who faithfully turned up for breakfast every day). Anyway needless to say I’d love to get my fundraising to at least $580 if anyone has some money to give. My actual money in the bank is a little more bc of some other gifting so my current go fund me goal is $400. Can you believe that www.Katyandtheword.com got over 35,000 views this year? Thanks to everyone who has prayed/shared/given. I wouldn’t be here without you.https://gofund.me/70a114f9
Babies
Pandemicking, A Prayer
God,
I’m thinking about how we are all here
pandemicking,
all day everyday.
Even though we long for the day
that we have pandemicked,
we are just not there yet.
Just as you are the God
who is Justicing, Gooding, Blessinginging
(because the gerund* verb tense is the best)
the timeframe of this pandemicking
is equally ongoing, and nebulous,
and I am aware that the echoes of this
Pandemicking, will actually live on in me
forever.
In truth I will never stop Pandemicking.
Like those who were Immigrating,
never will, in some sense stop being immigrants,
and those who have survived something,
never will, in some sense, stop being survivors.
And today
I’m thankful that you, Jesus
–who fled to Egypt, lived under occupation,
grew up an outsider and were almost thrown off a cliff,
You Jesus of all people,
get that.
And some days I’m bitter that
in some ways
I’ll always be pandemicking
and on somedays, I wonder, but do I really want to unlearn
all the things I needed to know?
About the cracks in society?
About those who we have lost!
About who are being forgotten?
About what needs to change?
After all, what is greater discipleship than that?
So, God. I’ll be here. Surviving this pandemic.
Pandemicking.
Every single day.
And thankful that I have the gerund tense to describe it.
But I’m also grateful that I have a God
Who gets it–
and gives us a knapsack of the right kind of more gerunds,
to do this pandemic thing,
and for being a pandemicking God along the way.
Here Goes God, more Pandemicking….
Come with me…
Amen.
Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta and please give to my 2nd year of Doctorate of Ministry in Creative Writing at https://gofund.me/aaeb4910
*Gerund: is a verb that we have turned into a noun with ing like swimming. In ancient Hebrew gerund was a tense that can also mean present participle, it means ongoing without a definite end, when it comes to God I think of it as the inging verbs.
katyandtheword 