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.

Praying for Summer

Praise you God, because from you all blessings flow

And some kind of summer beckons.

Different from the endless summer of last year, where we were all so lonely we could spit.

Different from the fall where promises of vaccines were hazy and masks were packed into book bags with lunches

and we held our breath.

Now after giving up all of my free time to digitally school my eldest, and truck my other two back and forth to school.

Now after a year of basically nothing but school (and thank God eventually church), no clubs, no friends, no activities.

After a winter of depression

And a spring of exhaustion

And a Post-Pandemic, which, maybe, sort a, might be starting,

but sure as anything hasn’t really become a reality yet….

–For India and Brazil, Lord hear our prayers–

A year of mostly rewardless schooling has ended, and we are finally able to send our students and teachers back with our thanks.

And Now…

Summer beckons, and God I hope you guide us through.

I hope you help us to wind our way through this time of huge transition

Because we have not yet begun to feel the aftershocks of all that is different in our lives.

And I keep hearing hints

Of mourning those we have lost and adjusting to what life is now

Of mass retirements, and considered quittings,

Of reprioritizations and reorganization.

And so, I’m praying that I can string together some pieces of summer

with ice cream

and sunshine

and water fights.

Just enough pieces of summer, to feed my soul.

Until I figure how the hell we are going to do the next good thing.

Give us summer we pray.

Amen.

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

Writing God on Our Hearts

God, 


Today we got to talk about how 

We write God’s on our hearts

with the liturgy of the prayers we read

Mumuring, muttering, mumbling

Practicing, practicing, practicing

Faith….

Turning the story over and over in our brains

until it is written on our hearts.

We talked about the mystical change, 

the one that takes place when we start off 

talking about who we are

and how we are

angry

and sad

and joyful

and lamentful

and despondent

and we practice

our identity 

and our identity with one another

and our identity in you.

God, I’m practicing, 

With angsty prayers, and half finished stories, 

and moments of belatedness

Help me practice

so that I, too, my move towards you,

As you write your love upon my heart. 

Practice with me? Amen

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

Being Human

An experiment in poetry

Thanks to my Doctorate in Ministry in Creative Writing at Pittsburgh Seminary

By Katy Stenta 

The story gets more fantastic

The more we tell it

It gets bigger

Even when we make it more concise

The better adjective, the simple adverb

The timing

All of which can be 

drilled down

to this thing called perfect


But the human being

Exists outside of perfection

There is no perfect time to be human

There is no perfect relationship 

No perfect creation

made by human hands

Humankind works so hard to tell its story

Because maybe if we describe our faith

more perfectly, more people will follow it

Why do we chase perfection? 

Why do we want the feeling of 

having the exact words

to shape how our experiences exist—

Do we not then pretend that our experiences are 

unembodied? 

Do we not want to be lost in a fantastic story

precisely because we have struggled too?

Do we not experience our lives as Science Fiction?

Too technical to explain, too human to let go 

of our essence.

I think I prefer Science Fiction to Perfection. 

Neverending

God, this is the week that never ends, in the year that never ends.

Always, towards the end of the school year there is an impossible week.

Where spring and summer activities collide in their not quite done, and just getting started-ness.

Always there is a week where the schedule doesn’t work, every day has triple obligations, and on top of that everyone is cranky.

And then, someone doesn’t sleep, and someone else doesn’t feel well or the car has trouble or the pet has to go to the vet or the computer quits working or a something else impossible happens.

God, timing is everything.

And this year, when I have spent more time with parts of my family than ever, and seen other parts and my friends almost not all…

This year when vacations and retreats are just gasps of breath in the midst of survival mode…

This year when all the “fun things” I thought I was doing to have fun turned out to be coping mechanisms essential to surviving, as they have fallen by the wayside and the to do list somehow continues while these other things don’t..

God Almighty, You know, how this year has been never-ending.

Like a song that is stuck in your head, nagging at you day in and day out, that’s how the pandemic works–always in the background, giving your headaches and heartaches. Always on the calendar as you figure out what to do and how to do it.

The stress presses down, on my head, on my heart, on my soul.

God, I have been praying without ceasing this year. I have cried and sighed and laughed and zoomed and emailed and turned on cameras and turned off camera, have put on masks and then then washed the masks, every single day of this never ending year.

I have examined every ache and sniffed and listened to every lonely heartache of my friends and family…..and taken-just-a-moment-to-center-myself all in prayer.

I am living into the rhythm of prayer Lord–one that is both structured and spontaneous, one that has been out loud and quiet, one where I’ve known exactly what to say and one where I’ve murmured nonsense to the Holy Spirit.

It’s the longest week, in the longest year I’ve ever lived.

So I will continue to pray, and live.

Thank God you are eternal, thank God that prayers do not cease, and are picked up by friends and families and churches and strangers when mine falter.

Thank God you are the song that never ends God.

Amen.

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

The Neverending Story, a Piece of Philosophy | by Alonso Monroy Conesa | Medium

Pandemic Resurrection

God. I’m doing the work of resurrection.

The stress has shifted from how do I mark time and God do I miss people to

I’m back at the races of triple scheduling and childcare & transportation needs exploding.

Is this what resurrection feels like?

Everything is returning back to normal; everything except for my priorities.

Everything is being re-examined, and I feel the ridiculousity of life as articles try to grab onto relationship evaluations with pallid and downright stupid questions.

It’s not about reciprocity or weight gain or worrying about having the right friendships and family.

It’s about who I missed, and what people can manage and how to be a better friend or family member.

What was it like for you Jesus when you came back. Did you need time to readjust?

Did you sit in the garden for a few minutes pulling weeds…

Thinking about what had radically changed in you life within the parameters of “getting back to normal.”

Is this why you waited to greet the women? Did you have to wait till your tongue could unstick from the roof of your mouth to speak.

Did you feel as socially awkward, unused to interaction and uncertain how to start, did you feel it as sharply as we do?

Were you far more burnt out out than you realized?

God as I sit in the abandoned Lord & Taylor

where in March 2020 my friends and I sat far apart in the lot trying to hear each other’ words, desperate to see other people—

as I sit here now

Now waiting…

waiting for my son’s vaccination, I know, I really know that this is actually what resurrection looks like.

Strange

And repurposed

And transformed into something you never imagined

And I know resurrection is worth it

Build us into the resurrection I pray.

Amen.

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

More Pandemic Resources here