UniversalistPrayers

Prayer for Resettlement and Welcome

Beloved, may we prepare and make way for the dispossessed, those fleeing violence and the threats of violence, those leaving behind lands destroyed by storms and our changing climate, those seeking a better, a more just, life with space to breathe and love and thrive. Beloved, when we send out ships may we be watching for migrants sailing on the fumes of prayers and diesel and set adrift by smugglers, may we bring them to shore and help them, treating them with the kindness and dignity and hospitality that, were our places exchanged, we would dream and pray for. Beloved, may we cut down the saw-laden buoys whose only purpose is to mangle and hurt people desperate for a place to survive, for medical care, for work, to be free to love who they love. They did not create the exploitative world, the economics that make sense to risk life and limb to migrate. They bring skills, and dreams, and so much vibrancy. May we let them in, make way and make welcome, put them to work building a nation of care and compassion, and rejoice in these new neighbors, coworkers, friends, and kin. Take off your shoes. Rest your weary feet. Welcome home. Amen.

 

Prayer for Respecting Diverse Beliefs

A Prayer for Respecting Diverse Beliefs

 

Lover of Life, Creator of Diversity, Nurturer of Variability, give us courage to learn to live in cacophonouscontentment and joy together. Fortunately, blessedly, we are not the same, even within a particular culture, even within a particular spiritual tradition. Fortunately, blessedly, we differ, have different experiences and conclusions and beliefs, different ways of learning and processing, different celebrations, different observances, different understandings of what is just and good. Lover of Life, Creator of Diversity, Nurturer of Variability, may we learn just how strong and rooted we can be in our own beliefs and traditions while others are just as strong and rooted in theirs and we need not cancel each other out, nor erase one another, not unless those beliefs and traditions are ones that insist there is only one way. How is it, magically, that when this is so, the only one way happens to be the one expressed by those followers of that particular tradition? Lover of Life, Creator of Diversity, Nurturer of Variability, teach us humility, noticing the tremendous variety in ways to live full, wonderful lives even if we choose a particular path, whether it is one we have been set upon by generations past or are innovating as we go. Teach us humility, and to learn from one another, and to be gracious with each other, to put down the tools of autocracy, inequities, theocracy, hate, fascism and exploitation and pick up the tools of discourse, dignity, respect, democracy, innovation and alternative practices of power.  Teach us each day, to find something the less-known neighbor appreciates, to build relationships from shared produce and different dishes, from caring for working public transit and affordable, safe places to live to knowing there are so many different ways we can live and thrive in those spaces and places that truly work for every person. Lover of Life, Creator of Diversity, Nurturer of Variability, help us develop our moral imaginations so we can dream and build good, complex dreams with people who differ from ourselves, dreams worthy of healing and helping this world and each other. Amen.

Prayer for Space to Choose

A Prayer for Space to Choose

 

Wisdom, when we find ourselves spurred sharply into impulsive reacting by discomfort, confusion, belief, grief, pain, or other sources of unhappiness, may we have and make space to be safe enough to breathe, soften, and attend to the sources of discomfort, belief, confusion, grief, pain, or other sources of unhappiness. May we notice how these sensations change intensity and other qualities, from one breath to another, from ten breaths ago to ten breaths from now. Amid those changes, may I notice the space for choices again, choices that are not this or that, choices that allow me to be skillful in practicing my faithful promises and following the ways of lessening suffering in this world. Wisdom, may we offer ourselves compassion, and learn how to stay present, breath by breath, with sensations until a choice aligned with our values becomes an option. Wisdom, may we offer others compassion, and space to choose amid difficult decisions, nurturing respect and dignity, knowing some choices are not only difficult but bring grief, and the lack of some choices can make even more suffering. Wisdom, may we offer others and ourselves the compassionate space to be with what is clouded and unknown in future choices, and to make choices different from our own, and to make choices on their own that might align with our own preferences. Compassion brings us out into places where the ethical is, and life is, and consideration, choice, and decision making also need to be, for these are our lives as moral beings, as loving beings, as beings with dreams and needs and gifts and blessings and skills that are needed and should be desired in this world. Wisdom, may we have space in compassion to choose rather than react impulsively, knowing there are consequences to both, and leaning into the choices arising from compassion. Amen.

Prayer for Refuge with Ourselves

A Prayer for Refuge with Ourselves

 

Beloved, when we are anxious, frightened, weary, angry, confused, and alienated from our sense of being whole, of belonging, or of being enough, may we pause and breathe, creating spaciousness with you. May we create spaciousness that can be a refuge, a place to turn and return again that is happy at heart, that offers us the reassurance that we are already whole, just as we are, in all our complexities, illnesses, disabilities, differences, and variabilities. Beloved, may we put down the messages of the world that tell us we are not and can never be whole, or enough, or truly belong. May we sit and settle into the comfort and truth that we belong because here we are. We are enough even as we practice becoming more skillful, enough in our complex and varied ways of being. We are whole, even when we feel fragmented, whole even when we are most aware of loss, whole even when we are displaced from the world and life we loved and knew, whole because wholeness encompasses all these experiences and more. Wholeness is not synonymous with an absence of pain or difficulty or grief or failure or variability. Wholeness includes all of those experiences and more. We are more than the sum of our parts and the sum of our hurts, the sum of our pleasures and the sum of our questions. Beloved, may we breathe and return to this sense of wholeness, including all that is, and the assurance that we yet belong, are enough, and yes, are whole, and home in this wholeness. Amen.

Prayer for Work to Be Love Made Manifest

A Prayer for Work to Be Love Made Manifest

Maker, Imaginer, Caretaker, Lover of Life, help us where we have lost our way, losing track of how to create workplaces rooted in love and nurturing joy in our communities. Turn us away from the need to carve off time for “life” because the “work” side of that balance is life-denying and life-draining. Life is life, and for us to fill with love, lovingkindness, truth, compassion, care for each other and this earth. We are more than our job titles, or whether we have paying jobs. We are more than how the marketplace values us. We are not things and maybe if we stop treating ourselves and others as things, if we bring love back into our daily lives, we might change and be changed in the ways we are deeply yearning for. We are endlessly creative and able to nourish hell or heaven right here on earth. Life is not a sentence to serve until retirement. Maker, Imaginer, Caretaker, Lover of Life, help us shift to making love manifest through our own making, imagining, caregiving, working people, nurturing dignity and respect for all in our differing abilities, skills, and joys. Maker, Imaginer, Caretaker, Lover of Life, help us make love manifest in our work, work a blessing for ourselves, others, and this world. Amen.

Prayer for #FatLiberation

A Prayer for #FatLiberation - Week of August 28, 2023

Lover of Abundance, may we dream and create the world of our dreams where everyone is free, where we don’t flinch when a stranger’s gaze turns towards us, afraid of the judgments likely to roll from their hands and lips just because it has happened so many times before. Lover of Diverse Bodies and Ways of Being, may we dream and create the world of our dreams where everyone is free, and we need not prepare ourselves to be in public and try to traverse and endure places and spaces obviously giving no thought or desire for us to be there. Lover of the Lushness of Being, may we dream and create the world of our dreams where pleasure is not only a birthright for simply existing, not doled out in scraps and as awards and some kind of creepy measurement system of whether we are too much or tiny enough to be granted space for joy. Beloved, grant us space with each other to truly know and feel valued and loved, freed from the cruelties, bullying, and hierarchies that insist we, in our size, in our skins, with our melanin, with our sensory or cognitive processes, with our ways of moving through the world, with who we love and how we gender, with our education or accents or countries of origin. May we be free and legally protected, all of us, free and legally protected to be our whole selves, enough as we are. Amen.

Prayer to Embody Generosity

Honey in the Rock, may we embody generosity every day, this giving and receiving that nurtures and thickens connections with good feelings and enoughness and more than enoughness. May our generosity ensure the armor of supremacist notions no longer fit our frames, too binding, too tight, as they have been all along, harmful and insufficient. May our generosity burst the bubbles of shame that we hiccup in our recovery from these learned systems justifying oppressions, accepting a world of haves and have-nots, and jockeying to get into the haves and stay there, no matter how little margin we have to claim as our won. Honey in the Rock, may we embody generosity every day, knowing real safety is in diverse communities of mutual respect and mutual aid and mutual care, even while we live and embody life differently from one another. May our generosity create comfort, genuine curiosity and care with each other and this earth, pleasure and wonderment in being here, now, together. May our generosity change how our communities are expressed, nurturing accessible and regular and safe public transit and housing for everyone who wants and needs it and fills cupboards so that no table need be empty and food insecurity evaporates. Honey in the Rock, may we embody generosity every day, one that knows systems of oppression intimately and gladly untwists those systems, breaks them down, creates alternative systems of liberation, and seeks to overturn and undo the oppression and its legacies of harm. Honey in the Rock, may we embody generosity every day, this practice of loving each other, this earth, and ourselves into vibrant, glad enoughness. Amen.

Prayer for Joy Amid Complexity

A Prayer forJoy Amid Complexity - Week of August 14, 2023

 

Lover of Joy, you steady us when we are crumbling apart, and help us shake with rejuvenating laughter when it would be easier to do anything but. You do not deny that life can be painful, or grief-full, or angering, or challenging, and you keep singing and signing with us that there is still pleasure, still wonderment, still tiny delights, still moments of connection and relationships that give us back our wings and cheer us on when we soar, flutter, find a new roost. Lover of Joy, help us find and remember the liberation in mundane pleasure, such as the feel and sound and shape of the color green in a monstera leaf, so different from the pleasure of the feel and sound and shape of the color green in that hay-scented fern. Whether our eyes perceive that color as someone believes we “should” or perhaps we were taught, how is it just for us on just this day, fragrant in our nostrils or under fingertips or felt brushing our bodies? Can we dwell inside this spell of pleasure for a few more breaths? How might we share the mundane pleasures we encounter, experience, create? Can we imagine our friend wheeling over next to us and inviting us to hold this scarf they are knitting, and feel that love borne in every stitch, the land turned into twists of fibre, the many, many hands that contribute to this moment of pleasure shared, in a scarf, or a cup of iced tea, or the patter of patois tapped into our being? Lover of Joy, things do not need to be fixed to be well, cured to be well, healed to be well, righted to be well enough. We get to the enough and wellness alongside all the challenges, reasons for anger, losses, illnesses, and pain, not separately from them. We do not buy tickets for transcending being persons in and of this world. Our lifetime passes are for the here and now, in all its complexity, including this joy we can share. Amen.

Loving These Curves And Angles

A Prayer for Loving These Curves and Angles

Beloved, here, let my flesh settle, lean back against this tree, against your body, against this couch, my curves and angles meeting and adjusting against the curves and angles of this world as they meet and adjust with me, us, together, connecting in mutual support. Beloved, here, in this being supported by earth and in supporting others, may we have pleasure in being here, now, with the curves and angles we have. Can we let go of the social obsessions that want to move an “l” and an “e” and make angles into angels and somehow curves then are supposed to be the antithesis? Settle here, now, breathing, making space, taking space, being whole and wholly present, loving these curves, these angles, these bodies that belong and feel and dream and do and change and settle again, finding new and old shapes that accept and hold us gently. Beloved, teach us to love the many ways we are embodied and how to love one another in our varieties of embodiment, what love really means with these angles, these curves. Beloved, breathe with us, love with us, teach us to love ourselves as we change, as we stay the same, as we struggle, as we flourish, as we are from day to day with these angles, these curves. Amen.

Prayer for Juiciness

A Prayer for Juiciness - Week of July 31, 2023

 

Restorer and Savorer of Life’s Abundance, lead us in the wide, verdant paths of nurturing a juicier life for each and for all. May we savor the sweetness of life, from the conversations that spark our minds to sharing a simple meal together, from dancing with starlight and finding stillness under the shade of trees on a hot day. May we offer each other sap wakening and heart healing moments of generous laughter and shared adventures, of laying down our heads in a soft place and taking a needful nap. May we share the abundance of small delights, of noticing tiny flowers and funny cat pictures, of welcomed hugs and songs that lift our spirits, of squirrels and blue jays and pick-up games in the park. Restorer and Savorer of Life’s Abundance, may we return to the paths and practices that nourish our juiciness, our vibrancy, our wonderment, and our joy, the ones we can share profligately with others and find that the endless pot is not “just” a folktale, but a folk making joyful justice together. Amen.