pastor prayers

This is my favorite so far of the search engine terms that have brought people to this blog. It makes me smile every time I look at it. That may seem cruel, since I’m sure that one wouldn’t put that statement into a search engine without some serious angst. So forgive me if you’re reading this because you put exactly that combination of words in a blank box and hoped for an internet miracle.

Because that, I don’t have.

What I do have is this simple truth about prayer: the words don’t matter.

I say this as a lover of words, and a lover of putting them together and then spending hours deciding if they’re too trite or too convoluted or too long-winded or just too too. I spend much of my days doing it and then marveling at how little I am paid for my long hours of toil. But it’s true: the words don’t matter. I say this in many more words than it should take, and none of them matter, either.

What matters is that there’s this thing deep in you that needs to come out and it needs to connect, or to make itself known. It needs a quiet place to really find itself. And then it needs to come out however it will, and as much as it can, just to say the thing that only can be said at that moment, by you, to the God who had some part in making you, and making you someone who would pray just like that.

And whatever comes should be good enough for any pastor, and any public made up of God’s people.

So I hope your pastor makes you pray in public. And I hope you bring it on by singing, dancing, speaking, clapping, shouting, crying whatever that place in you is yearning to let out. God will be listening in the form of every other one of us who needs to do the same.

A few weeks ago, I was picking my son up from camp and uncharacteristically arrived a few minutes early. It was the last day of camp for the week, and as part of their closing ritual they were giving out awards to each kid based on the most positive spin on their character. The formula was to describe all the characteristics, then pause dramatically before saying the name of the child.

The first child to get an award was lauded as “the most calm, collected, and thoughtful helper of all, who was always there with a considerate word for fellow campers and for the counselors.” When they said the name, up popped this skinny little five year-old girl, whose shoes looked like they could swallow her toothpick legs, and whose glasses were teetering heavily on her delicate face. She was adorable in the way that made me want to be able to follow her around through her childhood just to make sure no one is mean to her.

As soon as she heard her name, she exclaimed “Me? Really?” in the most sincere and genuine way, and turned bright red with what looked like a mixture of pride, embarrassment and shock. She marched up to get her construction-paper award, and on the way back, shaking her head, exclaimed with complete sincerity: “I had no idea I was that special!”

And then my eyes began to leak.

Eternal spirit, creator of all,

help us to nurture in each person the deep and unshakable understanding of the blessing of their being. Let none ever doubt that they are that special, that loved, that magnificent. Let the truth of it be known at our core, far past our culture’s thin veneer of meaningless affirmations. Help us to know the real thing by its failure to be drawn in to pettiness or self-aggrandizement, by its constant reminder that the God that makes one of us beloved makes us all beloved. May the power of that be-loved-ness be a source of great strength, so that we might meet its demand that we work for justice. May it fuel our courage to live and work for and with others. May we find the path to peace by making our home in the landscape of compassion.

Amen.

Delivered at the opening of the UU Musicians’ Network Conference in Boston, August 5, 2008.

Spirit of life, visit us with your power.

Come to those who are still reeling from the trauma of violence in Knoxville, come to those who are feeling desperate and fearful, come to those of us who are newly aware of the fragility of life and the vulnerability of our beings.

We lift up in our midst the names of our brother and sister whose lives were lost to violence born of anger and alienation:  Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger.  May their memories be a blessing to all who knew them, and may their nearest and dearest family and friends be held in the wide open embrace of love as they encounter the depths of their loss.

We send prayers of comfort and healing to those recovering physically from injuries sustained in the attack: Jack Barnhart, Linda Chavez, Tammy Sommers, Joe Barnhart, John Worth, Linda Barnhart and Allison Lee.  May their loved ones and caregivers be held in care and sustained by the power of hope.

Spirit of life, spirit of creative possibility, spirit of unending love,
come to those who are living in fear and uncertainty, who have been directly shaken by the desperate acts of a man possessed by anger and despair.  Let them feel the power of our love surrounding them, the strength of their own community upholding them, and the power of the living god moving in and among them.  Lift them up, embrace them, infuse them with the breath of life that heals and endures.

Let our hands, connected in this room, our arms aching to hold and comfort our family of faith in Knoxville, feel the source of life moving through them.

As we feel our own vulnerability, let us feel strengthened in community.  May these roots indeed hold us close to the source of all, so that we might feel nourished by the compassion and the passion for life and for justice that are the source of our growth.

Let our wings set us free to soar and see the ways this tragedy among our own family of faith connects us with those around the world experiencing the violence born of desperation, a world where too many are forgotten.  As we pray for our beloved kin in Knoxville, and let us also send our prayers to all those who feel lost or abandoned, whose lives have turned them toward violence as the only solution.   Let Jim Adkisson be held in the midst of his pain, and on the path toward justice let there be healing.   May love free us from the bonds of fear and help us honor the sacred spirit in each and all.

Let that great love that lifts us up, moves us forward, and gives us courage help us to find strength and solace in one another.

Amen.