UniversalistPrayers

Prayer For Dreaming World Whole - Community

A Prayer For Dreaming the World Made Whole: Community

Shelter, Refuge, and Home of the Displaced and Dispossessed, the Exiled and the Ones Who Shall Not and Have Not Been Relocated, invite us to dream a world and then work each to create it, to converse together and try stuff out, and draw on traditions that root us in eons of wisdom and innovations that help us adapt to eons ahead. Strengthen us in doing this as diverse communities of wonderment, pleasure, belonging, and generosity, communities where we don’t have to fight each other to survive, where we have dismantled the traditions, policies, and laws of oppression. May we build resilient spaces and places together, where no one is left behind or forgotten or intentionally set aside as unworthy and unable to belong. May we dream of a world of thick, bouncy, tangled networks of trust and humility, of joy in sharing skills and facing problems together, in collaboratives and cooperatives, in not making ourselves or others into problems to be solved, but finding in each other vulnerable people who already belong, with gifts and skills and wisdom from living. Shelter, Refuge, and Home of the Displaced and Dispossessed, the Exiled and the Ones Who Shall Not and Have Not Been Relocated, may we shift our world toward diverse communities of resilient care, connected to the lands and traditions wherever we are, and grateful every day. Amen.

Dreaming of a World Made Whole - Enoughness

A Prayer for Dreaming of a World Made Whole: Enoughness

Lover of Each and of All, may we pay attention to who is not accessing enough to thrive: enough love, enough acceptance, enough food, enough peace, enough care, enough clean air or water, enough connection to other beings, enough connection with this earth. May we focus our energies in addressing these problems, on cherishing the children before us, whether we got their gender right at birth or not, whether they love like we do or think like we do or move like we do or perceive the world the ways we do or not. Enoughness is not equivalent to being alike. So why are so many of us acting like we are fundamentally flawed, deeply wanting, will never and can never be enough just because we are different from what is normed, cherished, and defined as better, best, or, enough? Lover of Each and of All, give us courage to meet each day, noticing that we are whole, just as we are, that we have much to learn and much to offer this world, that we belong, just by being here. May we dream of a world in which dignity for each and for all changes our policies and practices, instead of policing schoolroom bookshelves for having texts of affirmation and inclusion, lauding those schoolrooms and bookshelves with their texts of affirmation and inclusion, of their celebration of the many ways to be and still be enough. May we choose to recognize our kinship to one another, and, as kin, learn to be compassionate, learn to accept we live differently and that all that differently can be wonderful and joyful and more than enough for each and for all. Lover of Each and of All, may we dream of a world and then work to create it, where we bring our enoughness into every day and care deeply for each other and this world. Amen.

Dreaming of A World Made Whole with Housing Justice

Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole with Housing Justice

 

Lover of the Birds who have their nests, Lover of the Foxes who have their dens, Lover of the Octopus who has its crevices in the sea, help us dream of a world where we have housing justice, where all belong, and where there are many kinds of home and space for home depending on our differing needs and cultures and ecospheres and communities. May we dream of and wake in the morning to work on housing policies that make room for different housing needs by affordability and accessibility, by our differing disabilities and our differing communities of connection, nourishment, and support. May we dream of, imagine, and make real vibrant housing stock along public transit and with greenbelts and green spaces and community gardens, places so many of us would dream of thriving in and then can create our thriving in a specific place. May we dream of housing that welcomes people fleeing violence and housing that helps us establish new lives of peace and housing that connects us to the wisdom of the ancestors of the land, the ancestors of our communities, the ancestors of how to adapt and thrive in our changing world. May we dream of and enact policies and taxes addressing excess places to live, to support enough places for each and for all. And may we pay attention to whoever is falling through the spaces of communities we create and build and nurture, to make sure no one is left behind or forgotten. Lover of the Birds who have their nests, Lover of the Foxes who have their dens, Lover of the Octopus who has its crevices in the sea, may we become people who are lovers of everyone having a place to call home, to make home, to be home, belonging and thriving together. Amen.

Dreaming A World Made Whole By Food Justice

A Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole By Food Justice - Week of March 12, 2023

Lover of Dreaming, dream with us a world made whole with food justice, where no one hungers and no one thirsts from lack of access to quality food and clean water, where we can practice food sovereignty rather than be indebted to multinational corporations controlling seeds. Dream with us a world full of succulent, delicious, local foodways and enough abundance to share globally to make up for famine, natural disaster, war, and our changing climate. Dream with us a world where we are adapting year by year with the climate, continuing to grow enough to make sure everyone is well nourished. Dream with us a world where the policies that create food scarcity, food insufficiency, food insecurity, are addressed and transformed into policies that nurture enoughness, and that no one, of any age, from our youngest to our smallest, knows hunger. Dream with us, Lover of Dreaming, a world where those who grow, raise, harvest, prepare, transport, sell, and create our food are paid living wages and enjoy safe workplaces that adapt with them over the long haul. Dream with us, a world where enoughness is powered by sustainable and renewable food production processes, and where waste is small and reclaimed and returned to the system to nourish the soils again. Dream with us, Lover of Dreaming, a world made whole and humming with the pleasure of each mouth full and bellyful with food justice, and keep us steady in the innovations, daily efforts, and community creation to make this world real. Amen.

Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole With Gender Justice

A Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole With Gender Justice for week of March 6, 2023

Lover of Dreaming, dream with us a world made whole with gender justice, a world in which a multitude of experiences, understandings and expressions of gender can be honored, and experienced as non-competing and non-erasing of others’ experiences and expressions. Dream with us a world where we can be our fullest selves without shame and condemnation, without risking employment or schooling or family or friendships or incarceration. Dream with us a world where we lift up each other in our gendering differences, rather than dismiss, grind down, regulate, and interfere with each other being who we are. Dream with us a world where school athletics do not demand menstrual cycle records to participate, a world where we worry more about everyone having equitable and clean restroom access than policing restroom use, a world we make safer by making it more celebratory and inclusive of these many ways of being whole, where gender surgery or medications is between an individual and their chosen medical team. Dream with us a world in which we can dress and speak and dance and live without partitioning some major part of ourselves, denying our truth and our being, fighting to be who we are. Dream with us a world in which my experience and yours do not cancel each other, but together with everyone else’s experiences are part of the mysterious, magnificent, wondrous whole. Dream with us a world in which people are paid equally for the same work, regardless of their gender, where people have the same rights and laws regardless of their gender, where gender does not define life opportunities or having a life at all. Dream with us, Lover of Dreaming, a world made whole and joyful with gender justice, and keep us steady in the work of laboring to birth that world into being. Amen.

Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole with Climate Justice

A Prayer for Dreaming A World Made Whole with Climate Justice

Hello, Beloved, help us make today a better day by choosing climate justice over expedience, by choosing creating room for those in need of refuge, displaced by drought, floods, fires, climate-fueled storms, rising seas, by choosing to bear witness and aid to this world, our home. Hello, Beloved, help us have frank conversations about our choices with each other, wherever we go and are, in the halls of power and in the byways of those disenfranchised and trying to survive. Hello, Beloved, may we have the follow through to plant trees and reforest the earth, to plant mangroves and oyster beds and reestablish coastlines, to stop polluting projects and clean up the waterways and the air, and to shift our economies to those adapting to mitigating and answering and stopping climate change. Hello, Beloved, may we notice how any crisis tends to expose inequities and biases and hatred and raise fears and feed demagoguery, and noticing and knowing that, may we recommit to nurturing equity and dismantling oppressions, and making sure that each and all have enough to thrive. Hello, Beloved, may we dream a world made whole with climate justice, where we live to nurture justice and joy for each, for all, in our amazing ecosystems, in our abundantly diverse cultures and ways of being, in our wholeness as part of this earth. Amen.

Prayer of Self-Acceptance

Prayer for the Week of January 1, 2023 - A Prayer of Self-Acceptance

Grace and Compassion, may we love and accept ourselves as we are and as we may change. May we love and accept ourselves as we are, with the seeds of growth for responsibility, care, peacemaking, joy, justice building, nurturing wonderment, and dancing with delight. May we love and accept ourselves in the bodies we have, whatever shape and size they are, however we might be categorized or ranked by powers and authorities, however we move, however we laugh, however we love, however we think or process or imagine and live to make our dreams real. May we love and accept ourselves as we are, and as we are becoming, and put down the self-colonizing tools of shame, the self-hatred and self-mistrust. May we love and accept ourselves as we are, and as we are becoming, releasing improbable, impossible, and harmful ideals, and embracing our gifts, our particular strengths. May we love and accept ourselves as we are, and as we are becoming, redirecting our power and energy from self-condemnation to nourishing communities of dignity, from self-loathing to nourishing diverse friendships and neighborhoods, from self-hatred to loving this world and this life so boldly we show up with generosity, gladness, and gratitude for every day. Amen.

2022 American Thanksgiving Prayer

2022 American Thanksgiving Prayer

Beloved, may we give thanks in every day, and be reasons for others to give thanks. May we know collective secular holidays for what they are, and embrace needed rest, needed connections, needed generous joy, and needed space from demanding expectations. May we learn how to give each other these gifts of graciousness and spaciousness every day. Beloved, may we give thanks in every day, and be reasons for others to give thanks. May we know collective secular holidays for what they have been, and who’s missing from the stories told about them, who’s participating and who isn’t participating in the storytelling, who’s harmed and who’s helped by these stories and why. May we learn to attend to what is true and real with humility and with acceptance that the actors of history are no less imperfect and no less capable of harm than people of the now. Beloved, may we still give thanks in every day, and be reasons for others to give thanks. May we learn to grant each other spaciousness for rest and for release from harsh expectations. And may we not need to erase others’ experiences or what really happened in history to set aside time to love boldly, to live generously, to be thankful. Amen.

Prayer for the Very Sure

Prayer for the Very Sure - Week of November 21, 2022

Lover of the Fallible, the Imperfect, and the Fearful-of-Being-Found-Not-Enough,  invite us again to put down the posturing and lean into the reality of our enoughness without perfection, our lovableness without needing to know everything, our belonging without needing to never make mistakes, for behind all these expectations of self and by others lies our need to be VERY SURE. Lover of Life, you offer us every day lessons in mystery and limitations, in not knowing and not yet, and still we often don’t want to or feel we cannot learn how to be in this zone of unsureness, instability, and changing awareness. Also, we might be exhausted from all that we’re already enduring and maybe could use fewer lessons? Might that be possible? May we have friends to be shoulder to shoulder with, comforting rituals that center and connect us to life’s goodness, and the tools and courage to stay present to what is, as it is unfolding and here we are, actually not being sure and not reaching to claim that. Amen.

Prayer for Elections

Prayer for the Week of November 7, 2022 - A Prayer for Elections

Lover of Justice and Equity, Compassion and Care invite us to conduct free and fair, equitable and just elections. May we put aside bullying and threats of violence, pause and cease plans to allow people to vote, to tabulate the vote, to report on the vote, to support voting, and to support those waiting in lines to vote. May we show up to bring peace and justice, not insurrection and treason, and may we practice respect for one another. And when the voting is over, may we return to work figuring out how to make this world a better place, with quality of life for each and for all, with thriving, diverse communities, adapting to our changing world with care, trust in one another, and attentive to the work of amends, reconciliation, and nurturing relationships. Amen.

Prayer for Pride Month 2022

Beloved, Fiercely Fabulous, persistent, creative, may we flower, fly, and flutter in these sacred images. May we dare to be our whole, beautiful selves, loving boldly, knowing that will appear in many hues and guises, many differing mutual expressions, many splendid ways we haven’t imagined or created yet. May we sing each other into being, born and reborn cherishing our loving, vulnerable, imperfect, still-becoming, exuberant and dreamt of selves. May we dance ourselves and one another into community that nourishes diversity of cultures, expressions, ways of being, uplifting and holding tenderly queer people everywhere, nonbinary, transgender, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, lesbian, and gay people in every place around this world. Beloved, Fiercely Fabulous, water our parched and thirsty spirits with the love we need, the love we dream of and the lives we need, the lives we dream of, wherever we are, wherever we are going. Amen.