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.

Jonah, A Prayer

When people complain

About how hard

it is to help others.

The inconvenience to put cloth across

their face–

or that “they can’t do that to their children”

when we ask them to teach them to mask.

And I shudder when they refuse to put a highly tested medication

into their bloodstream, to bolster our bubble of protection.

I think about what happened to Jonah

When he was sent to help Ninevah.

God followed the boat with a storm

and the ocean, with a big fish.

I wonder how it feels to be

in the belly of the fish,

praying to be thrown up,

so that you can go out,

covered in vomit,

and realize,

that you are still called to help people.

Welp, here we are God,

Covered in Vomit,

help us to take those steps–

in flood and fire, in hurricane and disease,

in senseless war, horrific evictions and systematic racism

even when things are completely overwhelming help us

to pick ourselves up, and remember that even cover in goo

we are still called, to be the helpers

and maybe take a nap under a tree now and then

when we need one,

so that we can look back,

and see the work that we have been doing,

counts.

It all counts, help us to see how it all counts

I pray.

Amen.

People Shaped Prayers

I’m tired of my prayers

Being shaped like sick children

and full emergency rooms

and humans struggling to breathe.

Debates about policies and masks and vaccines make me want to scream and rage,

and do not bring out the Jesus in me.

Lord God, I long for the dandelion seed shaped prayers,

the ones that look like shooting stars, and tiny mustard seeds.

Instead, I am here, cursing fig trees,

Screaming at the stormy waves to “Shut up”

and licking my lips to whisper when I see the rioting crowd

“forgive them Lord–how can they know not what they are doing?”

I’m tired of the shapes of these prayers that tumble from my lips–

But I do not have any other prayers to pray.

Maybe the Holy Spirit can pray some other shaped prayer for me too,

like a bonus; if she has the time.

And meantime, I’ll keep praying human shaped prayers,

at least they are a kind of prayer, I know how to pray,

so I will keep praying them. Until I know what else to do.

Amen.

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Pandemic Prayers & Resources

A sign stating “Full capacity for COVID-19 cases” is posted at the entrance of the San Juan de Dios Educational Foundation in Pasay City on April 4, 2021, following a surge in coronavirus cases. Rappler.com

Afghanistan, A Prayer

Some mistakes,

Cannot be fixed

They lie shattered on the floor–

in pieces so tiny that you can’t even sweep them up

without cutting yourself.

I can’t help but think God, that we broke Afghanistan

and then we left it shattered, for someone else

to clean up,

and sustain the injuries.

And thoughts and prayers

aren’t going to do much

in a situation like this

But I know that I too bear some

responsibility for the glass upon the floor.

And maybe God, next time, we can stay out of the China Shop

where we don’t belong

so we don’t break

countries

into pieces anymore.

Not breaking things seems a good prayer to make God.

Help us not to break things,

I pray.

Amen.

Feel free to share and adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

No Plans, A Prayer

I’m not making any plans God,

I just wanted to let you know.

As great memes about fall plans, and their eminent demise,

are circling the internet, helping us to laugh until we don’t cry.

It doesn’t mean, that I don’t know what comes next.

There’s fall, and there’s school, and Halloween.

There’s stewardship and Thanksgiving and football.

I have a general sense as to what is going on,

and I have a sense of the rhythm.

But between, you and me Jesus, and the universe.

I thought I’d let you know,

that I’ve decided that I can’t really put any plans down

on anything as permanent as paper

no grand projects to pursue,

no pie in the sky goals–

Because I really don’t know what is coming next,

so here I am. The girl who loves the list,

the family organizer,

I am now without a plan.

I’m not giving up.

I’m still doing the next thing I have to do.

I still know what has to get done.

but its all way more ephemeral,

and instead of plans, its more like

that I’m making

sketches and blessings

and dreams

and relationships

(It sounds more perfect and beautiful than it is believe me)

I’m not making any plans God.

I’m just making do.

How about you, God?

Are you making do too?

Feel free to use/adapt/Share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

There Are Just Too Many Hilarious “Fall Plans Vs. Delta Variant" Memes (20+ Memes)

A Prayer for Chaplain-ing an Apocalypse

God, No one told me that apocalyptic events were going to go one for so long.

I had never considered, when I watched the floods and fires in movies,

when havoc of the post apocalypse was depicted in my novels–too often it was skated over about just how long the chaos ensued.

So here we are

After years of warnings and castrophic governances–

a pandemic of, as I used to say as teen, totally epic portions, did not strike me as such a long term event.

I know, I knew that recovery would take forever.

Thank God, that I have it drilled into me, that recovery takes longer than the actual event, and I am aware and girded, appropriately, to start healing.

But I didn’t know

That my kids will be entering their third year of pandemic schooling.

That I would be jostling back and forth between regulations and meeting the needs of so many differing circumstances of ministry from 2019 til the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty one.

That I would still be stuck today in this:

mindset-shifting, world-changing, Revelation-timeframe-of-the-particular-dragon-that-is-the-double-pandemic-of-Covid-and-Racism-not-to-mention-the-ongoing-Climate-Disaster thing

and a multi year timeframe to just have the apocalyptic event itself, was not quite on my schedule Lord.

I thought catastrophes were sudden, and fast.

Where is my cut scene?

I hear we hit the economic depressive climax (lowmax?) in April 2020?

Just goes to show that money is a human made thing, don’t it God?

Lord, as we face this ongoing apocalyptic event,

As we minister in these times.

Give us what it is we need.

(Whatever that might be, because, I’m not sure what that is right now)

Because this story isn’t even in the the rearview mirror yet, and we are not yet ready to know how to tell it yet.

A colleague said it feels like we are Ron Weasley, working with a broken Wand,

doing the best we can–

No magic wand, no program, no methodology to “fix things” just presence and patience and prayer.

and maybe sitting down and reading Revelation again, or John, or Acts,

or Frederick Buechner, or Elie Wiesel or Martin Luther King Jr or J. R. R. Tolkien or Ursula K. Le Guin or Toni Morrison or Langston Hughes or Madeline L’engle or Octavia Butler or N. K. Jemison or….or….

Because God knows,

We’ve had to Chaplain Apocalypses before,

and we will have to do it again.

Be with us as we do, we pray.

Amen.

Feel free to share/adapt/use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Pandemic Prayers & Resources

Hungry, A Prayer

Jesus,

Sometimes I shuffle around the house

hungry for company.

So I turn on the TV

or talk to myself.

Some days, I’m stumbling in the depths of despair

so I take my 2,000 IUs of Vitamin D (I don’t even know what that means)

and turn on all the lights, and sit in the windows

to soak up the pieces of joy we like to call sunshine

And sometimes,

I can’t breathe,

And the world collapses in,

in such a way that my inhaler can’t help

because the enormity of a world coming to the end

is just too much to bear.

And so, when you promised–

When you promise that you will be my bread

and I will never thirst

These are the kinds of hungers

These are the kinds of thirst you are talking about

The deep pangs and aches of being human.

The empty spots.

That there are places, that need to be filled.

And healed.

“This is my body, broken for you”

And that sometimes we skip over those places.

Ignoring them until they scream into every corner of our being.

Ignoring them, until they demand to be healed, hungry to be healthy again.

Because, in the end, you know.

We humans are hungry.

To be noticed, to be fed, to be warm, to be healed, to be loved.

Sometimes I’m hungry God.

Sometimes, I’m so hungry that it hurts.

“This is my body, broken for you”

Feed us.

And help us also, to feed one another.

Isn’t that why you sat with us, your disciples at the table?

“This is my body, broken for you”

Teach us to feed, and be fed.

Restore us to the ministry of communion I pray.

Amen.

Feel Free to Use/Share/Adapt with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Enough, A Prayer of Olympic Boundaries

God, I stand in awe today.

Of those Black women.

The ones who stood up

and once again said…

enough.

Proudly.

With the Strength on their Ancestors,

and with the Radiance of their Daughters.

They pushed the limits of everything,

Body, Brain, Spirit, Heart

Including Fame, and when enough

was enough

They said enough.

I thank you

for the eloquence

of their embodied

passion

the quivering, vibrancy of life

that streamed out of Simone Biles* and Naomi Osaka’s Very Being

The Self-Evaluation that Let Them

Tell Themselves,

And the World

To Have Limits

To Set Boundaries

To Say No

To Own Your Own Body

and to Say

I am Enough

I Have Done Enough

I am Beautifully and Fiercely Made

I am God’s Beloved Image Bearer

Enough

And The Stars will Sing Out

And and Angels will Sing Out

And the Universe will Sing Out

For we Are All Important Parts of It

And It is Enough

Thank You For All You Have Done

Simone Biles*

Naomi Osaka

Never Doubt

You are Enough

I thank God for you

Thank you

For Giving Your All

Physically and Mentally

For All Your Yeses

And All of Your Nos

Thank you

May You Feel God’s Blessings Roll Down

And May You Feel That You Too

Are Enough

Amen.

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

* with apologies with the wrong name before. I have a real issue (perhaps disability) with names which means that even though I double checked the name online my brain typed it wrong.

Please Check out #BlackLiturgies: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/blackliturgies and The Nap Ministry: https://thenapministry.wordpress.com for more resources not by a white person

Birds & Plagues

My breath caught God,

When I heard again,

the report of the plague

that was striking

the little birds

and the recommendations

to keep the birds six feet apart

I suppressed a messy sob when I thought about

How your eye is on the sparrows

just like its been on ours, as we fumble

on the bird feeders, on the masks, on the vaccines.

Bird by Bird,

Piece by piece.

God, your eye is on the sparrow.

And I think for a while, mine will be too.

Even though it’s sad, and hard to watch

A bird plague is much more manageable right now.

And if I can manage a that,

Then I know you can manage ours.

Even if the light seems to be farther away.

Even if Olympics and uneven vaccine distributions and delta variations

and one step forward and two steps back seem to be the norm

even then, maybe I’ll remember that you know how

…to take down the bird feeders

so….

In your Eye. I think I’ll rest a while God.

and leave this half unfinishished prayer in your lap

while I fidget with the birdseed, and watch the birds….

Amen.