And Transphobia doesn’t protect families–but breaks them
And making abortion illegal, never, ever prevents abortions
God,
How can we humans be so confused
as to take the truth and completely
misconstrue it
so that somehow we make Christianity about power
and Church about politics?
Sometimes I think about this and I think,
only us humans are silly enough to mess up
messages as simple and easy as:
Love and serve one another
or the last shall be first.
Yet here we are God,
Tangling Truths around our Tongues,
Tricking ourselves, with comforting lies.
Ignoring the whisper of the Holy Spirit that says:
Fear Not.
Nothing can separate you from the Love of God
You can never be replaced.*
I hope you have some truth for us today, God.
Some clear, cool and collected truth,
gathered into the waters of baptism–
spilling into our hearts and souls.
Because we need your truth.
Help us to tell ourselves the truth
I pray.
We pray.
Amen. Feel Free to share/adapt/use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
*replacement theory is a dangerous white supremacist theory that white Americans are being replaced usually by Jewish and Black People and it promotes violence and terrorism against said “replacement” races and religions. It is dehumanizing, bigoted, wrong and as stated a terrorist training ground. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/us/replacement-theory-shooting-tucker-carlson.html
All the violence and the ongoing bombing across the nations
that is so commonplace, we don’t even report it anymore.
I reject all Violence,
What I’m saying is…
Peace of Prince; you need to deal with this.
And as for the ongoing fires, floods, tornados and hurricanes of the earth
Whew…Lord. I don’t know, because we have just done so little,
(so I’m sneaking in a prayer about that too)
I also deny the evil that prevents
Trans girls from playing soccer
Trans Families from taking care of their children
Trans Individuals from accessing healthcare
I call God’s judgement on you–because Lord Knows its above my pay grade.
I call God down upon those govern and who want to
force pregnancy and birth on all people, risking their lives, livelihood, liberty and happiness
but cannot keep enough baby formula on the shelves, free school lunches or childcares open
May God have mercy upon you, in the sweet and loving way that God because I do not even know what to do with this information.
God I am calling you–who gave your very body and blood as the sacrifice for peace–you who always set the table overflowing so every single person could eat,
You who never ask someone their immigration, sexuality or gender status before you heap their plates with food, and extras and leftovers to take home with the communion feast–
I ask you to come down here and talk to these people.
Because I am done with your Children today.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt/Share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Today I think that the most prescient thing God ever did was to hang their rainbow in the sky.
God knew what God was doing when they hung up the bow after the storms
Knowing that we needed the reminder that every storm runs out of rain–as Maya Angelou put it.
Knowing that it would be claimed and expanded by all of God’s queer children, proclaiming that love is love is love is love and that God created a multiplicities of genders and sexualities–just like God created a rainbow with thousands upon thousands of hues and in-betweens.
We need rainbows, because God knew
Before sociological studies and microscopic and macroscopic science; before we did our Genesis job of naming all of the people, places and things of the world, you knew that very naming would make us create divisions.
Before we made elaborate charts to discover and explicate the mystery of the Trinity, God, you knew
You knew how much we need rainbows
You knew racism would be a stumbling block of sin,
that normalcy is a illusion of bigotry
that being neurotypical or not is a spectrum….which is another word for rainbow
and that gray can beautiful color, and sometimes we sit in the gray–
God I always imagine that the Trinity is gray, in between and a part of the rainbow world you created.
And God, you knew that you, the Almighty and Many Breasted God needed to symbolically and in all practicalities disarm Godself.
Promising never to send natural disasters as punishment.
Never.
And putting the most powerful weapon of the time, the equivalent of a gun, up. Forever.
Because if God can disarm Godself, then it is clear what we should do.
In the midst of horrific gun violence in the US, the state imbued violence in the United States and Colombia, and in the midst of border wars in Armenia-Azerbaijan, climate asylum and violence in Syria, and the oppression and apartheid conditions in Gaza.
God you know we need to figure out how to live in concert and beauty in rainbows–and how to first and foremost disarm ourselves as you did thousands of years ago.
Thousands of years ago.
God, thank you for your prescience.
And for all the rainbows
And for giving us the time.
And the promises within the rainbow, that it won’t always be like this.
@Black Liturgies [Image of Daunte Write in a Red Baseball Cap with the words: “They dress the wounds of my people, as though it were no serious. saying ‘Peace, peace.’ when there is no peace. Jeremiah 6. Watermarked from @BlackLiturgies]
God, I am so mad.
I’m heartbroken by so many things, but I’m mad about the state sanctioned murder of yet another black and brown person.
“Thou shalt not kill” you say. But they say “He had a gun, he looked older, she was suspicious.”
And the streets run with blood, too often the blood of children.
I’m so angry that white terrorists shoot up towns and schools and workplaces and grocery stores and are arrested alive again, and again.
But Black skin is seen as more dangerous than a gun.
I’m so scared of those people who thinking they are keeping us safe: white men and women, cops, and especially white cops.
Lady Jane Illustration [Digital Illustration of a person with flowing green hair, a dark grey jacket, gold hoop earrings and nose ring, trans flag pin, and green shirt. They are clutching their face with their hands. Behind them are pink flowers blooming. The text reads, ‘policing doesn’t keep us safe’]
It makes me think of my friends in college–all 4 of whom were beaten by their father, it makes me think the 3 sisters all who were raped by him throughout their lives, and how they all kept it a secret from each other because of the shame of it. They were hurt by their own father, a cop.
God why is it that we cannot take weapons from abusive individuals? Why is their right to remain armed deemed more important?
Why does their need for violent safety trump my need for peaceful safety?
Why do the police always win?
God I’m angry, and I’m going to stay angry. Because the lack of justice burns my soul. It makes me hunger for a different land, a different way, a different power structure.
God I must confess over and over again Racism is killing us, all of us.
And it’s tricky and can make White People feel safe, when we too are dying. We commit suicide and deal with depression and toxicity all because we are blind and refuse to be healed.
Curse You White Fragility, Male Fragility and American so called Patriotism.
Our communities, economies and peace is dying each and every time one of our Black Siblings die.
Black Lives Matter.
Our families, our relationships, our very understanding of time iteslf suffers whenever a Brown sibling is abused and killed.
Stop Asian Hate, No Human Being is Illegal, Bad Theology Kills.
How can we stop the killing?
Is this how it felt, Lord when your children suffered slavery in Egypt?
Did Jesus weep in Jerusalem because he saw the Jews and the Gentiles and the Samaritans and the Essenes killing each other to win the prize of peace, never understanding that peace can’t be forced or taken or violently enforced.
Is this why you disarmed Your very own Godself? Hanging your Bow in the sky? And did you foresee the rainbow as a sign of acceptance, celebration, inclusion and peace for our queer siblings even as our Trans siblings of color die violently every week in the United States?
Are you angry God? You must be, because I am so angry.
God these are your children, and I am going to stay angry, until things change.
I’ll be here.
Praying
and Working, Protesting, Voting, Calling Representatives, Giving out Food and Water, and Living Out the Anti-Racist Journey and Work.
And I Know I’ll Still
Even After All That
Be Angry.
And it comforts me to know, that you, God, are angry too.
Thank you for this anger Lord.
Amen.
Please feel free to use/share/adapt the prayer with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta. Please credit Lady Jane Illustrations and Black Liturgies for the the apropos and inspirational images.
God teach me how to take the target off of my Asian neighbor’s back.
I am torn by grief that the stereotypes and the racial violence continues.
God help me to fight against the idea of a model minority.
Help me to interrupt, to disrupt, to work against any and all micro-aggressions. Strengthen my resolve and spark my curiosity so I never stop learning about how they creep into my perception of the world.
Do not let any of us call a horrific pandemic the China or Kung Fu virus. For it is racist and wrong. It is evil, let us denounce it as so.
Help me to confront, and not dwell in shame or embarrassment, so I can address when I participate–in the Asians are smart-compliant-good-at-math-“Asian”-stereotypes.
And be with those communities that have received injuries or death in the United States. Help those who are Asian–whichever of the more than a dozen countries that means–find community and connection. Help those who are citizens and those who are not to get the help they need I pray.
Give them sanctuary.
Help us to be more of a sanctuary. Help us not to proclaim ourselves as “safe” but instead teach us how to actually be and enact safety and hospitality.
God I know there’s a target on my Asian neighbor’s back and it makes me want to weep and rage. Teach me how to stop this targeting, I pray.
Show me how each individual is uniquely and beautifully made in your image.
And help me to do the White work I need to do.
In the name of Jesus Christ I pray.
Amen.
Please feel free to use/share credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Jesus, how did it feel when you predicted your death, and the disciples said this can never happen?
How about at the table, when you were eating and drinking with your beloved, and warned that betrayal and denial would follow and each disciples said, “Not I Lord.” It can’t be me.
God, how are we so willfully blind? To the racism that is etched into our very DNA, to the violence that happens against school children who can’t pay for lunch.
How is it that we can’t believe that violence is coming… until it does. Storming the capital with Nazi flags of hate and signs that somehow proclaim “Jesus Saves.”
And we disarm people of color, and hide our children under their desks, but refuse to see violence as systematic and problematic.
How is such denial possible?
Did Jesus have a part of him that was in denial, that his people would turn on him…until the disciples fell asleep at the wheel, and then fell asleep again, and again.
Was he holding out hope that Judas would change his mind?
We feel betrayed, but the evil was there all along, like Herod.
Lead us not into temptation to say “this is not America”
America was always this way: violent and racist and ignorant, but pray for us God, because we keep hoping and proclaiming, like the disciples “Not I Lord.”
Open our mouths to say “this is not God, this is not foreordained” help us to take the responsibility that is needed to make the change.
It’s an Epiphany: A Realization
It’s an Apocalypse: An Unveiling that changes all of life.
Please let this be Apocryphal, please let this be an Epiphany.
Help me to shut my mouth when I’m tempted to say “Not I, Lord” or “Not All of Us” or “Everything Will Turn Out Okay.”
Chafe my hands into the work that needs to be done, enfold my mind with the empathy to Listen, Prod my feet to to do the walking.
Set me to work God, set me to do the work:
To protect the vulnerable, to tell the truth, to face the hatred, to love and serve
and to serve and to love.
Change my words to say “Here I am, Lord” I pray.
Amen
Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
I love the word Selah, the untranslatable cry to God. We have guesses, but we don’t know exactly what it means
For me it translates into the prayer that we don’t know how to pray
Selah
Its the cry out on Maundy Thursday when Jesus is worried about something that we cannot yet conceive, Selah
The cry when the first Muslim judge- Sheila Abdus-Salaam-is found dead, the domestic murder of a teacher-Karen Smith-and her student-Jonathan Martinez-registers as almost normal and when an Asian man-Dr. David Dao–is assaulted to give up his airline seat. Selah.
The cry when it is revealed that one of your friends will betray your teacher, Christ. When the fellowship is still intact, but Friday is coming. Selah
The cry when your leader bombs not one but two countries in the same Fortnight. Selah
The cry when Friday is coming, and you wish this cup can be taken from your lips, but you know it can’t be, so you pray at Gethsemane, and Friday still comes. Selah.
Drought in Africa, Dirty water in Flint, Trans Man outed by a Gay Competitor, Black Lives Still Matter, Missing Teens of Color some of these prayers never seem to end. Selah.
“There’s usually a point in Holy Week when I inform God that I’m really not sure humanity was worth all that.
We’ve reached it.”-@revlucymeg. Selah.
The violence that makes up the Cross is present, its real, its stark and needs to be mourned. Selah.
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