Lord, you are the God of Ashes. So that when food tastes like dust upon the tongue, When we feel grubby and soiled, when we feel defeated—you’ve already been there. taking the long walk to death, walking grubby, dry-mouthed and alone. And you invite us, each and every year, to take the journey with you, so that neither of us are alone. You invite us to walk in our own stumbling way, with our own deaths. And you remind us—that we are but dust and to dust we will return. And it’s good to remember and process that fact. Because though we are dust, we are also the beloved siblings of Christ. And so, we will walk the path to Jerusalem together, because it is a journey worth taking. Be with us and we journey we pray, O God. Amen.
For the Complete List of Narrative Lectionary Lent Resources can be found here including a way to receive a doc copy
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head
God, may we each find a sanctuary space today.
Let us begin the journey to Jerusalem with Jesus Christ today.
The time for Lent and death stretches us before us.
Come let us walk with God today.
Invitation: God will give heed to our sighing, come let us bring our sighs to the Lord.
Prayer of Confession: God our sighs are loud and our cries sound out. We feel trauma of these times. But we know, you long with us for our suffering to end. You do not delight in any wickedness. We confess that we do not know how to journey to Jerusalem with you. We are lost before the journey even begins. Help us to find the way we pray. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon: God it is through the abundance of your steadfast love, I will enter your house. It is by the grace of God, that we can be assured of the truth: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
Prayer of the Day/Dedication: Lord, let us experience the ashes with all that they entail. Let the be the beginning of our relenting: of power, of materialism, of individual achievement over the good of the community. Let us relent to Lent we pray. Amen.
Communion Prayer: Holy Spirit, come and inspire us for this journey. When it feels like forty days in the desert: fortify us with your bread and your cup. Imbue this meal with your Holy Spirit so we can be nourished for the journey. Remind us that when we celebrate Christ’s death, we are also celebrating his life and his resurrection. Give us what we need for this journey through Lent we pray. Amen.
Hymns: In the Garden, Come Thou Fount of Ever Blessing, What Wondrous Love Is This,
Taize: Jesus, Remember Me
For the Complete List of Narrative Lectionary Lent Resources can be found here including a way to receive a doc copy
God, I’m praying here because I sense this is not the year for resolutions.
Self-improvement does not feel adequate for all that is going on…and it certainly isn’t appropriate when survival has been the first and primary goal.
God, I am trying to practice being thankful for my body. Because thought the ups and the downs my body has gotten me through the year. And am working to process and absorb the trauma that has hammered down. I’m trying to practice gentleness, with the flesh that envelopes me. Did Christ look at his body and struggle with gentleness and thanksgiving?
God, you know I have other things to absorb too. The lessons of economies and ongoing structures of neglect and violence. The rawness of the human condition has been made plain, which is why an individual resolution won’t do this year.
A prayer is more fitting God, because resolutions are about certainty, and prayer is about all the places I’m floundering and trying to figure out.
After all God, it’s been the year of flexibility and pivotry and other bendy things.
So here I am God, praying for the New Year, for the new things. On the things that are unresolved, the things we are working on, the things that are not just about me and now but are more communal and complex in nature.
So, God, help me as I’m irresolute this year. Help me to be okay with it. Or, maybe not. Not everything is ok.
So here’s to an irresolute year–of community and mutual aid and epiphanies and a way to be present.
Let me be as present as I safely can. And let it not be not a resolution or a goal, but rather a way to strive for I pray.
Amen.
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God you know between the last minute shopping for rosin (yes for a violin) and milk and eggs.
Between the accounting for presents, preparing for communion and making sure every single thing is in the car that we need for Christmas Eve (please God please) that all of this is my very human yearning for Christ.
We mix and clean and shop and sometimes forget to rest (oops) because this is some of the things we know to do to prepare for people coming.
And as we pray tonight, and then try to sing safely the carols in the car, I think of how worship is never beautiful or perfect, but it is always yearning for Christ.
And as I try to remember all of the things and take care of all of the people, let that stand as a yearning for Christ too. The scratchy zooms, the struggling uploads, the handwritten promissory notes for gifts, the wrapping, the decorating, the house that will never be free of crumbs this year.
Lord I’m praying: Let all that I have done and all that I have left undone. Let every word and thought and deed, yearn for Christ. Let it show every time I love my neighbor as myself, Let all of the imperfections in my heart bespeak my need and love and yearning for Jesus Christ.
Stretch my heart towards Jesus, I pray, because it’s the Christmas thing to do!
God, on this the longest night of the year..and the shortest day, and the dance between Jupiter and Saturn dance so close together, they appear to be as one. I’m thinking deep thoughts.
I am praying, as I nestle in the dark, to embrace the long night. To have the stamina and wait for morning.
I am thinking how sometimes my head is pounding with stress and that it is then I retreat into the darkness. Quieting and darkening my thoughts.
It is different to meditate in the dark.
It is different to nestle in the dim light of the moon.
God I thank you for the comfort of the dark, for it is comforting to let the bits of sadness and anxiety and anger come–and to let them dissipate safely into the dark.
I am thankful when the darkness creeps towards bedtime, when the kids are (finally) able to be put to bed. For the minutes or hours I have to stay up afterwards, and for the permission for myself to call it a day a go to bed!
I thank you for the moments without the glow of lights or electronics. The moments I wake up in the middle of the night and take a deep breath and am comforted that it is not yet time to get up, that the children are still asleep, that it is dark outside.
I am thankful for the night and the winter and the changes in sunlight and moonlight. I am thankful for their changing consistency (how many times does the Bible compare you, God to the sun and the moon).
Thank you for the solace of this solstice. And I pray that when the sun rises, I remain grateful.
Please, let the dark continue to be a blessing I pray, in you–the shade in the sun, the shelter in the heat and the night after an endless long day.
Lord God, this is the first year I’ve been able to write Christmas cards to the Congregation.
You know that I just don’t have the mental acuity to do it usually, too many details.
And God, you know that sometimes I lose the details. Especially in Advent and Christmas.
Usually my mind is boggled with Pageants and Parites and Decorations and Huge Lists of traditions, so I lose track.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph felt that way. If in planning their trip to Bethlehem, they weren’t able to think everything through.
Or if they ended up staying longer than they thought they would, and she reached the “fullness of her time.” then.
Or God, I wonder if baby Jesus came early! Anxious to be a part of the world he came at 8 months!
I remember being pregnant, God. I would not be surprised if Jesus coming was a surprise or not, because even with a scheduled C-section, birth continues to be a surprise.
I often think that Mary and Joseph might not have been the type to write Chrsitmas cards most years too.
Each and every card was a prayer, like this one, I put my whole heart into the card
I listed
Safety and Protection, calling upon the angels to come down
I encouraged comfort: and tried to say both comfort in cozy PJ’s with tea, and comfort like the warm hug one needs when the stress or hurt or anxiety overwhelms
and I prayed for some measure of joy.
And God, I resisted the temptation to just write “tidings of comfort and joy” and assume everyone knew what that meant.
I confess, I don’t know what that means. When we say have a merry, little Christmas, what do we mean by this?
Can any Christmas be Little? Is Christmas really about being merry? Or is joy more serious than that!
Did the shepherds dance and the magi sing? Did Joseph cry in wonder? How fierce did Mary feel when she was giving birth?
God I’m still praying for some measure of joy.
Whatever that means
I’m praying for safety and protection, and all the kinds of comfort, and some measure of joy.
I’m praying it over and over again. Holy Spirit grant this to us all, I pray.
Amen.
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As my child is screaming Lord, I say a quick prayer.
Because really, I want to scream too.
On this day when we found a way to safely see our friends, we got lost.
And we are almost there, but the child is screaming, it’s pitch black out, and the roads are unfamiliar. And the other one is whimpering too.
And I’m trying to drive.
The third time we make a U-Turn and finally get through to our friends…
we can not longer hear the directions she is trying to tell, because the screaming is too loud, or the road is too dark, or the pandemic is too much.
God, this is my prayer to you, because in my heart I’m screaming. I’m screaming, lost in the dark.
And so we turn around, and go home–all of us crying, some of us out loud.
And truthfully, like a child I just want to scream,
until you pick me up,
put me to bed,
And Let me start again in the morning.
I am grateful that you are a God I can tantrum to, You are a place where I can admit that I am lost, you are the parent whom I can admit that I’m not hearing or seeing or processing well anymore.
God, I confess that sometimes I don’t have it in me to pour myself out in front of you.
It’s hard to find the time, or the place or the emotiona energy.
And I confess, God, that I don’t want this to be intergral to the advent season. Why must I empty myself before you?
How can I empty myself for your?
But I know, that before I breathed my first tremolous breath, before I screamed out my first cry, before I even was formed in the womb–you made room for me.
You emptied yourself enough to make room for every single person in the world.
Mary made room for God, she cleared a space to become a magnification of God’s work in the world. A beautifully, justice screaming, baby carrying, patriarchy challenging woman who fully embraced it all and poured herself out to make room for the magnificat dreams.
So as I try to pour out, and I can’t, or I won’t or I only half-ass it….If I find myself stuttering over justice, or acquiencing to hetereo-normative white colonial Cis-Patriacrchies as I tumble through advent to do lists and forget what it was I was supposed to do next…
I pray that in those moments you will hold space for me. I pray that you will send dark and beautiful time and space and room upon the wings of the Holy Spirit.
I pray that it will sing to my soul, and sound through my body, and tremor in the stillness before me.
I’m praying for holding space, and pouring out, and stillness all to find pockets within the mess (after all we women love pockets).
I am praying for all of this, because I am convicted and convinced that this is how Christmas will come.
Alleluia to the stillness and the space-i-ness and the dark.
Alleluia for the mess to, for you were born in the mess of things, so alleluia anyway.
I’m wound really taught, and at this point even waiting for the good things feels impossible.
The social media reminders to unclench your jaw and roll your shoulders are so so necessary right now Jesus.
Jesus, how did you do this? How did you live in the tension–stepping into the gap between healthy and sick. Balancing the reality of being human and divine. Calling out hypocrisy and yet not shaming those in need.
How did you do that?
Holy Spirit, I could use some wisdom, if you are ready to supply.
Because the waiting for life to change, for the pandemic to change for the world to change as a result of ::gestures wildly:: all of this, is truly putting me on tenterhooks.
I looks at tenterhook today, God, I felt called to google the etymology and realized it was the hook that holds the tight tent, tight. So simple, so important.
But it also is what is holding things tight, while they dry out so that they are more flexible and able to take their proper shape.
If this means I’m a wet blanket. I’d believe it God. The days are short, the winter is long and the sort-of/kind-of quarantining we are trying to do is never ending.
How do I live into this tension? How to I do enough to survive, but not cut off the essential?
Jesus, the reality is that we all live in-between, it’s just our little human brains can’t handle it.
It’s like waiting for a baby to be born–perfect for advent–full of hope and trepidation. A time that is messy and where your whole body is stretched and changed, and your baby is between healthy and not because they haven’t even been born yet!
So help me, as I wait, as I’m no longer soaked but not quite dry either. Help me as this time of trial stretches me to my limit and pins me to the earth with an uncomfortable but necessary hooks.
And help all of my siblings on earth, because we all seem to be in the same place God.
Help us all, I pray.
Amen.
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because I don’t even know what my ducks are anymore.
How do I prioritize when everything is important? How do I do self care when my hours are chunked in weird ways and the schedule remains nebulous and to the wind.
Even when I breathe sighs of relief, or take moments of joy…I know that the ducks are waiting.
Sometimes they quack at me in the middle of the night, awakening me with all the things I’ve forgotten, or all the problems I’m not sure how to solve.
Lord knows, (that’s you God) that I don’t have my ducks in a row.
My work is never perfect no matter how much I try, my kids need more attention than ever (not to mention socialization) and I can’t seem to find a minute for myself.
Plus everything is different, still! Again! Always!
And ignoring the fact we can’t keep the house clean anymore isn’t really working either.
Are these even the duckies I should be worried about? What ducks am I missing? I’m sure I’m missing some, somewhere.
And I wonder if this is how Jesus felt, as he was chasing down that Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit.
Did he look around at the ducks and said, one of these is the goose, but I just can’t find the one I’m supposed to chase down and catch first.
But maybe, hopefully, the chase is enough. Hopefully between the chasing and the quacking, I have a moment to reflect on what I have completed, or what has gone right.
Or perhaps I will give myself one of those adulting prizes: for sleeping or eating or drinking water or moving around or taking medication. Those all count as important things done.
God, maybe my ducks have never been in a row–after all they are all your ducks and geese anyway. But help me to organize myself in such a way that I can let go of the ducks I can let go of and chase the right things to pursue the Holy Spirit of inspiration, comfort, energy and hope.
Maybe it isn’t about ducks at all, maybe it’s really about the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit. Remind me to chase down the Wild Goose, and that this Wild Goose Chase is surely worth it.
God will help us to flourish, even at such a time that we don’t know where our ducks are.
Remind us of this we pray. Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy
Read about my journey towards a doctorate in ministry in creative writing and give a small donation towards my tuition! About Me: My Story & My Writing
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