The Wonderment

A Prayer for Living Faith

Some of my regular readers and folks who want to pray alongside have been asking for a single monthly prayer. In 2012, I will be posting these to The Wonderment, at the end of the preceding month.

 January 2012

Breath of Life how wonderful it is to meet a new year! Night by night and day by day let us grow in the ways of living faithfully. Surprised by wonder help us laugh generously at our small imperfections and resolutely address our greater failings, accepting imperfection as a gift and as a way of learning. Transformed by generous love may we risk faithfully with greater and greater generosity in spirit, thought, word, and deed. Lover of Life guide us in growing thicker relationships, turning from strangers to neighbors and from neighbors to kin. Already part of the whole, may we rediscover each day the blessing of responsibility to that whole, and do what we can, as we can, whole-heartedly offering ourselves to add to this life’s blessings. Each day may we find the story worthy of living and stretch into it, open it and offer it to others, and adding to the tale of hope. When we are sincerely asked to forgive, let us find it in our spirits to grow again in love and to forgive and, whenever possible, to begin the work of reconciliation. When we have done wrong, let us swiftly and earnestly seek to make amends, to ask forgiveness, and, whenever possible, to begin the work of reconciliation. Breath of Life, each breath bears new possibilities and carries away what is old and in need of renewal. In this new year may we remember our promises for goodness well, live into our aspirations and dreams of peace, merciful justice, and compassion, and sing our songs of hope and thanksgiving in every hour of every day. Amen.

Habari Gani? Ujamaa!

I’m celebrating the power of cooperative economics thinking about the wonderful fresh greens grown by African-American farmers in North Florida, greens that feed schools where I live in South Florida. Their story is posted on the Food to Schools website, a great example of what cooperative economics can do! http://www.farmtoschool.org/state-programs.php?action=detail&id=23&pid=32

 

The story of the New North Florida Cooperative Association is also a story of historically African-American colleges making a difference. FAMU’s Cooperative Extension Program was involved in New North Florida Coop accessing the Farm to School Program: http://www.famu.edu/cesta/main/index.cfm/news-headlines/famu-rooted-in-the-history-of-the-first-annual-florida-grown-school-lunch-week/#my-menu

 

The story of New North Florida Cooperative Association just gets better. They also won a USDA Conservation Innovation Grant., focused on helping historically marginalized and disadvantaged farmers employ conservation methods that make for a healthier environment and a better bottom line. http://www.growingproduce.com/floridagrower/?storyid=5962&style=1

 

New North Florida Cooperative Association is just one example of how cooperative economics can make a real and positive difference, a winning situation for the whole earth, African-American farmers, school children, and the communities we live in. Habari Gani? What’s the news? Ujamaa! Cooperative Economics!

 

Heri Za Kwanzaa!

 

Celebrating Neighbors, Celebrating Peace

I have loved Christmas my whole life. I adore the wonderment of the season, the vulnerability and power of God’s transforming love, the music, and the softening of eyes and hearts as people try harder to be kinder and more generous.

 

As an adult, I’ve grown to love Advent with nearly an equal passion. The more I’ve found myself challenged and waiting, the more I appreciate a season that is set in exile. I appreciate the ways we claim hope, peace, joy, and faithfulness in  Advent, lighting candles and offering prayers to mark the days and giving thanks for inbreaking moments of love and wonderment.

 

Observing Advent and celebrating Christmas has also lead me into a greater appreciation of and care for three other holidays, as a matter of fulfilling peace on earth, practicing love and neighborliness, and tending justice. Those holidays are Hanukkah, Yule, and Kwanzaa.

 

Sadly, the Christmas season has not always been a bearer of peace and goodwill upon the earth. Often, the readings and teaching that have filled the season have cultivated hatred and dismissal of people of other faiths and none. I work to contextualize, but I also drop the imperialist readings as working against the true spirit of Christmas, as denying the real exile so many of us suffer, even from one another. Love celebrates in the joys that others experience and express. Christmas invites us into celebrating our neighbors’  joys.

 

Chanukah matters to me because it matters to my neighbors and because it teaches me about justice, empowerment, resilience, and hope. The story of the Maccabees is a reminder to me of the violence that will ensue when we crush and deny one another’s faith. The miracle of the cruse of oil gives me hope too for astounding possibilities that open up when we are faithful and may worship freely. Chanukah is also a story of ending oppression, of coming back from internal exile, and the fierce determination and fiery spirit that we need to survive.

 

Yule and the Winter Solstice matters to me because it matters to my neighbors and because it teaches me about endurance, resilience, and care for the earth’s seasons. My earth-centered tradition neighbors call the Solstice by different names and have differing traditions, for Yule is the Winter Solstice tradition of the Celts. But with my neighbors celebrating Yule I turn in thanksgiving to the fruitfulness of the earth, to the wildness of peace and renewing hope before the long haul of winter really sets in. The Winter Solstice has taught me much about claiming the blessings of darkness as well as light, about honoring the earth, and that hope and peace are both wild and in our hands for growing wonderful and rich around the world.

 

Kwanzaa matters to me because it matters to my neighbors and because it teaches me about justice, empowerment, resilience, and self-determination. Not a religious holiday, but a faith-filled one nonetheless, Kwanzaa’s values, rooted in pan-Africanism and the Black Power Movement, are liberating values for everyone. One of us chained, none of us free – oppression marks the oppressor and the oppressed. As one of the few holidays in the United States with specifically pan-African values and imagery at its center, Kwanzaa is a vitally empowering week for families and community, and a revitalizer of the spirit like Chanukah, Yule, and Christmas. Umoja (Unity), Ujima (Collective Work & Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity, and Imani (Faith) weave together a life of hope, justice, love, and resilience. The Nguzo Saba keep teaching me, year after year, bearing gifts in living in this multicultural world, in being a better neighbor, and in my faith.

 

I am glad for the gifts my neighbors have and their celebrations. I am glad to be able to join in with them in love and wonder, in service and gratitude, in hope together as we live faithfully to make a more peaceful world.