UniversalistPrayers

Prayer for Courage and Persistence Week of May 15, 2022

One who is delighted by blossoming fragrances and the music of bees, bend your heart in the direction of all in need of comfort, of care, of sweetness and refuge. May our courageous songs be carried on the breeze through the treetops and along the clouds, to reach everyone who needs a little more bravery today, to feel a little less alone. Like the bees finding their ways through tumult and through trials, through thickets and evading the challenges to bees, may we also find our way together, for resistance to injustice, for nurturing the world worthy of our beautiful dreams and our fierce lives, for enoughness in the middle of scarcity. One who is delighted by unfurling flowers and the myriad fed in a multitude of ways by those unfurling flowers, help us live with dreams deferred and denied until we can make those dreams true, until there is a vine, a fig tree, for each and for all, until no one need be afraid. Amen.

 

Prayer for Possibility, Change, and Transformation

Prayer for Possibility, Change, and Transformation

May 8, 2022

 

Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation blow through our lives more gently, please. Or at least give us a reminder to have a go bag and a charged phone and the contacts of this four-times-removed-friend’s-seventeenth-cousin. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation may we meditate more on the differing streams that hold their own even as they seem like one river headed to the sea, and how some species can sense and stay within those streams from where they join to the estuaries. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation bear with us when we whimper for one more or one less change, one more that whelms, and one less than we need. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation may we give ourselves into becoming ok with the complexity and unfinishedness and irregularity of who we are. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation may we give ourselves, growing glad and grateful for our neighbors in their magnificent diversity of being whose music swings our shoulders in the night breezes and whose flowers draw all the pollinators night and day. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation may we spend more time creating, plotting, unfolding, growing, nourishing needful changes with our neighbors beyond our neighborhoods, beyond zip codes and separations, our neighbors around the world, our neighbors without roofs or livelihoods, with so much and with so little and so inbetween. Lover of Possibilities, Change, and Transformation may we dream and sing and dance in possibilities, for transformations that bring equity and justice and abundant love, for changes that nourish healing each other and this world. Amen.

 

Prayer For Enoughness

Prayer for the Week of May 1, 2022

Lover of Being thank you for waiting while I catch my breath, resting with me amid the hustle, the restlessness, the fearfulness that keeps us from slowing down, pausing to savor the day, pausing to greet and find out more about one another. Lover of Being thank you for reminding me I am more than my best and also that my best is going to vary from moment to moment and day to day and that is not only ok, but the very definition of embodying grace and the same time embodying enoughness. Lover of Life, when shame is taking up all the bench space and leaning in encouraging me to be less than, to measure up, to compare and isn’t it interesting how often my comparisons are to find myself not quite there. Lover of Life, thank you for waiting while I catch my breath, and perhaps a nap, pausing long enough to rest and find the wingbeats of wonder and joy once again before heading into this week, this day, this amazing life. Amen.

 

Mother's Day 2022 Prayer

Mother’s Day 2022 Prayer

 

Nourisher of Being, may we pause to consider those who mother, regardless of their gender,

Mothers of communities and in community,

Mothers of courage who are also mothers who fear,

Mothers who glitter and skinned-knee mud-splattered mothers,

Mothers who know what they’re doing some of the time, and

Mothers who are winging it and trying to catch their breath,

Mothers who are at war and mothers nourishing peace,

Mothers who parent everywhere because everyone needs nourishing, affirmation, and care.

 

Nourisher of Being, may we pause to remember those mothers, of every gender:

who weep, having lost children and spouses and friends and parents

            May they have communities to hold them, rock with them, and love them as they grieve

who wander, trying to find that scattered part of themselves,

May they have refuge and rest and the nourishment they need to be whole.

who struggle in the seasons of want, trying to make enough

May they hold onto the truth that having enough and being enough are not the same thing at all.

who are doing their best, day after day,

            May they remember that their best will vary and we are neither our best nor our worst

 

Nourisher of Being, may we pause to cherish those mothers, of every gender, worthy of thankfulness,

The adopted mothers, the soup line mothers, the inventive mothers, the mothers who are fabulous, darling

The mothers on the bus at all hours to make all kinds of appointments, to work all kinds of jobs

The mothers who teach and who continue to learn their whole lives

The mothers who advocate not only for their own interests but find the interests of others theirs

And the mothers who make time to play games and take naps and be silly and embarrassing and sneak up on and surprise joy.

 

Nourisher of Being, may we learn to nourish one another, our mixed and diverse communities,

To love and delight in the reality that there are so many ways to parent, to mother, to nourish

Wonderment, dignity, justice, and grace in this world

With dusty corners and stained clothes and nights of broken sleep

With observing daily miracles, gratitude, and laughter when joy sneaks up and surprises us.

 

Amen.

 

Evening Prayer April 14, 2014

At the end of our days, let us be thankful. Sit down beside us, Beloved, in the garden, and let us rest against your knees, that we may recount why we are thankful and how, knowing we can number only a tiny portion of the reasons we have for such gratitude. At the end of our days, let us be thankful, before we take flight to what comes next, to release and relief, to rest and restoration, to the next set of tasks and the next chapter in the story. Sit down beside us, Beloved, in this garden of being, and let us lean against your knees, and take comfort in your abiding love. At the end of our days, may we be thankful for all the chances to choose love and to choose hope and to choose justice and to choose generosity and to choose wonderment and to choose joy. At the end of our days, may we be thankful for all the unlooked for blessings and also for the ones that needed much of our labor to create. At the end of our days, may we be thankful for this life and our chance and calling to be more love in this world. Sit down beside us, Beloved, in this graciousness of being, and let us lean against your knees, and breathe in the yes that is and breathe out with all the love we have to give. Amen.

Morning Prayer April 14, 2014

Oh, Beloved, fly beside us as we let go of unworthy goals, dropping what is holding us back from what really matters and tending to what we can do right now, with who we are right now, with the heart and hope and gifts we have right now. Turn us away from worshipping the false idols of success that bind us to harsh and unimaginative expectations, the kind of expectations that should us down in must-filled fogs and keep us from truly flying. Beloved, stay beside us as we let go of worthy goals and practices we can no longer fulfill, because we no longer have the strength to carry them on. Let us tend well to what we can do right now, with who we are right now, with the heart and hope and gifts we have right now. There is, indeed, a time to pick up and a time to let go. Beloved, help us discern if we are at one of those times of letting go, and then to do what is needful and good in freeing that work for another. Oh, Beloved, it is so easy to become captive to what we believe we should do, and to struggle with letting go. Help us know and gather the courage and the love to let go and let our hears soar again in wonderment and hopeful joy. Amen.

Evening Prayer April 13, 2014

Wisdom teach us in reflection and in doubt, in failure and in success, in all the ages and stages of our lives. Teach us to pause and examine where we are, who we are, where we are going, who we are becoming. Teach us to pause before we choose, that we may make better choices, and, when we have made bad ones, do what we can to repair what is wrong and learn from what we did badly. Wisdom teach us to consider another way of doing, other ways of being, and even if we do not choose to follow those ways, to appreciate what they may offer, to grow our understanding and respect for the diversity of being. Help us learn not to drag each other down, but to help each other create a greater goodness than we knew how to do by ourselves or could have achieved alone. Wisdom teach us, now and always, in our imperfections are perfection, in our power is a blessing if we wish to make it so, in our being is more love than hate, and, in our choices we live. May we choose with courage. May we choose generously. May we choose with love steadfast and true. Amen.

Morning Prayer April 13, 2014

Each day may we wake to the possibilities therein, to the choices before us, moment by moment, asking over and over again, "is this choice the one of becoming someone I would respect?" Wisdom help us shed the association of respect with fear, for while we can admire the power to cause fear and when we are very afraid want that for ourselves thinking we might fear less, that is because we do not understand fear. Wisdom, help us understand that fear wants more fear with which to dwell, just as love wants to encourage more love and joy wants to create more gladness and generosity ripples out in lapping waves of kindness and compassion. Wisdom, help us know the people we would become, the people we truly respect, the ones who are kind in unkind circumstances, the ones who are steadfastly loving in steadily hateful places, the ones who are humble and always learning and yet, amazingly, always teaching. Help us know the people we would become and as we meet each choice in this day, choose well for love and generosity and just and compassion and kindness and humble steadfastness in all that really matters. Choice by choice may we choose a world of greater blessing, one in which we are choosing to become and do our very best. Amen.

Evening Prayer April 12, 2014

Courageous Love bear us when we are too weary to bear ourselves, when we falter and when we fall. Hold us steadfastly and bring us to the place of peace, when we cannot go there ourselves, when our steadiness is gone and our strength has washed away. Courageous Love bring us together that we may bear each other up and on and through the difficulties that are, the troubles that tire, the challenges that shape us but in the shaping wear us down. Life takes courage and love each and every day, and some nights and some days so many of us are struggling to muster the courage and muster the love needed. Courageous Love bring us together to be present with each other, to shoulder the burdens and to share the joys, to create together from grit and generosity reasons for gladness, to sing together gratefully for the day and for the night and for the wonderment of being. And as we sing, may we find new resolve and greater love and greater courage to be present with what is, to keep changing what can be and is in need of changing, and to cherish one another, this world, and this life. Courageous Love bear us up and on and through until we can bear ourselves and whirl again in wonderment and generous joy. Amen.

Morning Prayer April 12, 2014

Beloved, when you come knocking, may we be ready. Let us not call out for five more minutes, but wholly, heartfully whirl into the dance. Beloved, when you come knocking, may we be ready. May we be ready to be surprised by joy and to be challenged to change what is wrong and harmful in this world and especially in ourselves. May we be ready to give what we did not know we had to offer, but will be needful and good at some moment today. May we be ready to learn many somethings new and to teach what little we do know, to share in the pleasure of learning together and trying together and, from our failures, imagining what to try next. May we be ready to be courageous for yet another day, to love more than we think we have the patience, to be more generous than we know we can be, to be fully present to and in another day. Beloved, when you come knocking, may we be ready. No matter how we feel, no matter who we are, no matter where we are, may we be ready, for you, Beloved, are always knocking, always inviting, to this present moment. Amen.