Category Archives: Holidays

“Leave the Office Early Day” Prayer

02 Friday Jun 2017

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God of all times and spaces, as this day wears on, give us the opportunity to leave the office early.

Divine one, this isn’t our chance to slack off or ditch work. We work hard in our off hours and through lunch breaks.

But give us a few extra minutes to trade in time at the office for laughs with our friends or hugs with our loved ones.

This hour is one for us to remember the sabbath, rest, chill out, take extra breaths, and practice a well-balanced life.

(And God, since it’s also National Donut Day, we’re going to enjoy some jelly-filled donut goodness today too.)

Amen.

*****

I’m experimenting with praying through the National Day Calendar. While some of the prayers will be fun, others will be much more serious. Is there a specific prayer you would like to see? Note below. Thanks!

A Communion Liturgy for Pentecost

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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Service of Communion

Invitation

One: Come to this table
Where bread and cup are transformed by the Spirit of God
Into a meal of love and grace
A supper of visions and dreams
A table where all souls are welcome.

Prayer of Communion

Loving God
Whose Divine Lungs exhaled the Spirit into our World
Your breath continues to transform our world
From the still to the stirring.

Before the earth was formed
The Spirit of God swirled through voids and shadows.

As humans were created
The air of God filled the lungs of Adam
And the soul of Eve.

This Divine Air
Continues to fill us up
When our bones are dry and spirits are sluggish.

On this day of Pentecost
When we celebrate the breath of the Spirit coming upon the disciples
We invite the Spirit to come upon these elements.

God of winds, pour out your Spirit to make the elements come alive for us.
Make this meal awaken our sleepy hearts and stagnant souls.

May this time of eating and drinking be one
where we stir from our sadness and rise from our hopelessness.

May we begin to celebrate visions
And animate the dreams that have only been alive in our minds.

As we share this meal,
Let us remember our siblings in faith who came to this table

In decades and centuries past
And our children who will surround this table in the future.
Each generation uniquely celebrates your presence, Spirit of Life.

The night before Jesus died was a solemn time around the table.
Breaking bread.  Drinking from the cup.
Jesus asking to remember him in our eating and drinking.

There was a time to mourn followed by a time to dance.

After the day of resurrection
The disciples ate on the beach with the risen Christ
Celebrating new life, new hope, new vitality.

On this Pentecost, as we come to the table,
let us celebrate the Spirit of Resurrection
And the promise of a needed second-wind in our own lives.

Let us partake of this celebratory meal together.

Distribution of Elements

Unison Prayer of Thanksgiving

Spirit of God, who fed the multitudes, provided the manna in the wilderness, and blessed the elements, we give great thanks for the meal eaten and the company surrounding us.

Inspire us as we move forward this day and encourage us to transform our dreams into reality.  Amen.

When Cheesecake Is More Than Cheesecake

15 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Church Life, Holidays, Life, Pop, Single in the Sanctuary

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cheesecake picToday, Mother’s Day 2017, I went to lunch with some people from church.  I was the only non-mom female adult in the group.

It was wonderful catching up and spending time with this group of people.  When the end of the meal came, the other women at the table received a free piece of cheesecake.

I did not.

Now, I was planning on spending my dessert calories elsewhere in the day (as I had a free coupon for a sundae that I was looking forward to).  While the cheesecake looked delicious, I wasn’t as disappointed that I wasn’t eating cheesecake as much as what that cheesecake represented.

That dessert represented the haves and the have nots when it comes to family structures.

I continue to claim the status of somewhere between childhood and childfree.  Most days, I am content with not having children, I suppose.  While 360 days of the year I’m fine (or have, at least, convinced myself I am fine) not having children, certain holidays roll around each year, reminding me of what I don’t have.

For instance, there’s Christmas morning in which I don’t have children waking me up, excited about getting presents.  Then there’s Easter Day, when families all sit together with children beaming from the Easter Bunny excitement.

And it feels like a knife cuts into my soul.

I was already having a rough day due to what Mother’s Day means to me: a day representing dreams that didn’t happen.  Each year, I never expect it to impact me as it does until the day rolls around and I’m dealing with aches in my heart every time I see photos of friends with their children, knowing that isn’t the same path my life took.

There’s the primary source of sadness and grief: not having children.  But when a piece of cake comes out for all of the other women at your table, you realize that your path is so very different from the path of your sisters, and grieve a secondary loss of being looked over by society.

And that’s why I encourage churches to take an inclusive approach to this holiday by praying for all women on Mother’s Day – the ones with children and the ones who face childlessness.  We pray for the ones beaming with joy and the ones who would rather not come to church on this Sunday.

Many women refused to go to churches on Mother’s Day because of the glorification mothers receive.  At the church I serve, we recognize that Mother’s Day is about being a mother and being part of the process of mothering.  All women (and all people) fit into the latter category as it really does take a village to raise children.

I’m pleased to be one of many pastors who is bringing a new inclusive way of recognizing Mother’s Day to churches.

I just wish restaurants would catch up…

Not OUR Day

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Current Events, Holidays, Pop, Social Justice

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dr-kingAs a white person, I feel it’s necessary to reflect upon my relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, his legacy, and who I am in my racial privilege.

When it comes down to it, fellow white sisters and brothers, this isn’t our story to reframe, not our struggle to claim, and this isn’t our day.  And it is seriously easy to allow ourselves to slide the slippery-slope and make this day all about us.

There are places for us to be and work for us to do today that relate to the legacy of Dr. King.  It is a day for us to learn.  This is a day for us to listen to the stories of friends of color, to read about the life of Dr. King, to hear his sermons and speeches once again, to pick up books that focus on white privilege and the struggles that black Americans endure.  This is a day for us to walk next to our friends of color and listen to what they are saying.

This is the time for us to recall how we fell short in the past year in our stands for racial justice.

This is the time for us to find courage that we need for the upcoming months and years to stand for justice and the well-being of our neighbors.  This is a day for us to set aside to recommit ourselves to justice issues.

Yes, Dr. King stood up for a myriad of justice issues – including peace during the Vietnam War and economic justice for all.  And as Dr. King said “Justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” all injustices are interconnected and hurt so many more people than who we first notice.

But this day is not for us to whitewash Dr. King – to forget what he stood for and how he was willing to put everything out there for racial justice.  Today is not the day to do to Dr. King what we have done to Jesus: to make both men hyper-meek in their approach to justice.  Yes, they loved peace and non-violence, but they were willing to go to the grave for their fight for justice.  They were edgy, and both men would not be revered by the majority of our society if they lived in our country today.

May we continue to grow in our privilege awareness.  May we stop falling asleep to our privilege like the disciples in the garden with Jesus.  May we find ways to speak of the authentic Dr. King.  May we listen… and listen more.  May we find ways to become aware of all of our privileges – whether they relate to race, sexual orientation, religion, or other privileges.  May we continue to love radically like Dr. King and Jesus… and may we embrace their courage when the time comes for us to need it.

 

Cranky Christmas: The Return of the “Bah Humbugs”

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by in Current Events, Holidays, Life, Pop

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pexels-photo-249209Much like living with a high pitch noise that won’t go away, I feel as if I am experiencing this Advent/Christmas season with a humming irritation swirling inside of me more than I’ve experienced in other years.

Maybe it’s due to the amount of work I wish I could do but haven’t gotten done.  Maybe it’s due to the things I haven’t gotten accomplished – like Christmas cards (for the billionth year in a row) and how many more extracurricular tasks have to complete before December 25.  Maybe it’s due to all of the failures of this past year or what isn’t going right in my life – according to the world’s expectations.  Maybe it’s due to my endometriosis flaring up a bit (not enough to stop me from getting things accomplished but enough to make me slightly grouchier than the norm).  Maybe it’s due to disastrous political and heartbreaking world events of the past few months.

Now, I won’t describe this as melancholy, because I wouldn’t categorize this as sadness or depression.  Sure, there are moments of sorrow due to the shortened days and lack of peace in our world.  But my Blue Christmas is not a traditional lament.  Rather, I’m irritated.  And this lingering frustration will not subside no matter how many episodes of Modern Family and Parks and Recreation I watch, how many times I view Love Actually or how many peanut butter and chocolate candies I eat.

And all I want to say… or scream…is BAH HUMBUG!

My annoyance at the circumstances of 2016 has placed a filter for the joy of the season.  It’s drowned hope.  It’s robbed my soul of peace, and loving one’s neighbor tends to suffer as a result of my irritations.

And while the presence of the Christ is in my midst, there is a veil between my eyes and Christ’s presence.

So I’m praying that when the Christ candle is lit on Saturday evening, it will be the light I need to see hope, peace, joy, and love that’s been a bit absent in recent weeks.  I pray that it will soothe my soul throughout these shallow-filled days.  I pray that I will not allow this light that is coming into our world to diminish and that it continues to remain strong as time gives birth to 2017.

 

 

The Privilege of Falling Asleep

25 Friday Mar 2016

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imageThree years of seminary was the grand beeping alarm clock to my own racial privilege. Conversation after conversation with friends who eventually became pastors and prophets in Ferguson stirred me from the deep sleep of privilege in which I had mostly abided for three decades of my life.

I’m awake… I’m awake… Of course, I think I’ll never going to fall asleep ever again…

As the days and months continued post-seminary, my eyelids became droopy. Fatigue overcame my mind and my heart. Eventually, my eyes close, and I found myself mostly unsuccessful resisting an idealized dreamland while my sisters and brothers of color are calling out to God for their lives and their well-being.

Like Peter, James and John keeping watch as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I continue to nod off to sleep. There are days in which I feel like I am spiritually dozing and need the nudging of the Christ to become alert to the reality of so many in our communities.

This nudging comes in the form of news articles posted, first person accounts of injustices posted on Twitter as they are happening, being called out for a sentence or two of “whitesplaining” or hearing a cherished friend’s story of fear and discrimination. #Staywoke in social media is the alarm clock that’s intended to stir me from my sleep, whether I am in a deep slumber or nodding off for a short nap, slipping out of privilege-consciousness for a moment or two.

As a person of racial privilege, I have the freedom to be able to close my eyes for a time-out while my friends of color can’t rest for a moment. They are crying out for their well-being as they are treated unfairly in the workplace, in systems of education and by the powers-that-be. They are wailing as their children are found slain in daylight due to unjust systems.

As people who are white, we have the obligation to stay awake as Jesus has urged us to do – watching and waiting alongside of Jesus and neighbor, knowing that the time is coming for another round of oppression.

In the spirit of reconciliation during this upcoming Holy Week – especially as we reflect on the Mark 14 narrative of Peter, James and John trying to keep awake – I ask God and neighbor for forgiveness as I close my eyes to the injustices in our world. I pray that God will give me the energy, focus, passion, understanding and courage to #staywoke alongside my friends who aren’t gifted the option to rest. And I yearn for a time when those of us who know privilege will keep alert even after the daylight of justice comes.

Single in the Sanctuary: Blue Easter

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

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easter lily2In 2008, I attended Easter morning worship with my mom and dad at a progressive United Church of Christ congregation in the greater St. Louis area.  The sermon was engaging.  The music was magnificent.  Everything about this Easter morning worship was spiritually meaningful.

But I was distracted… and distraught.

Family three rows up.  Family six rows up.  Family in the second from the front row on the other side of the sanctuary and two rows behind me too.  People of approximately my age sitting throughout the church with their spouse and their two or three small children.

And here I was… nearly 35 years old and sitting with my parents on Easter morning sans husband or children.  Even though I was with my lovely parents, I had never felt more alone.  At no point that morning did I feel anyone made me feel bad about being single or childless.  While some people at some congregations may stereotype people in my situation, I absolutely didn’t feel as if people were looking down upon me.

But I was looking down upon myself.  What’s wrong with me?  I would wonder over and over again to myself. Of course, when we are emotionally raw for any reason, it’s easy to place blame upon ourselves.  Life and love hadn’t happened in the way I wanted it to by the age of 35.  It was as simple as that.

Nonetheless, my feelings were very real that morning.  And they threw me for a loop.

Between 2008 and the time I met my boyfriend, I began to make some peace with this singleness in the sanctuary.  But it never became 100% easy, and Easter morning just happens to be one of those times I wonder if I missed out a little by not having children.  Bubbling youth bring about a certain energy into families and congregations, and even those of us who are 85% sure we are fine with not having children get a little emotional when surrounded by what we once wanted.

Which makes me wonder: How can we truly experience the resurrection if we are so distracted by what we don’t have, what we haven’t accomplished and in what ways we don’t fit with our congregations?

Easter morning may be a time when we hope that God will lead us to new life, new possibilities and fresh beginnings.  But there could be people in our congregations that feel like an odd person because they believe their marital status or family structure stands out from the crowd.  They may feel alone even though people surround them in the sanctuary.

Bless them with a greeting, with the peace of Christ, if you see them sitting alone.  Bless them with an request to sit with you as they may feel just a little less alone.  Bless them with an invitation to lunch or coffee hour.

The sealed tomb in which they find themselves in may start to crack open as beams of light begin to find their way beyond the shadows.

Single in the Sanctuary – A Prayer for the Lone Ones on Valentine’s Day

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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God of the broken hearts And the lonely souls, On this day reserved for those “loved” Those who seem so “whole” Give us the peace of knowing we are complete.

Source: A Prayer for the Lone Ones on Valentine’s Day

Join the conversation for progressive unmarried Christians and friends at https://www.facebook.com/groups/singleinthesanctuary/

Single in the Sanctuary – When the Ashes Remain

11 Thursday Feb 2016

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imageAsh Wednesday.  Dust donning our foreheads as we remember our frailty, our mortality, our mistakes.

But for those who have been through tough relationships in our younger days, the ashes upon our foreheads represents the residue left behind from past loves.

It’s not that we usually dwell on many memories or wish that life worked out differently with the one who is no longer in our lives.  But the matted dusty remains symbolize the tiny bits of grime left on our hearts from broken relationships.

The dust collects after someone has cheated.  Specks of dirt linger after hurtful words are hurled at us. The glowing embers of hope that once warmed us now shine no more.

Maybe we began with clean slates and pristine hearts.  Slowly over time, the fragments of dirt settled, leaving our souls just a bit more smudged.

So on Ash Wednesday, we not only remember our morality, we also remember how our spirits have been tarnished along the way.  And we remember how God can take our ashed pasts and transforms them into something that glows no matter what has happened and who hurt us.

Single in the Sanctuary – Valentine’s Day in the Church

09 Tuesday Feb 2016

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love lightOnce again this year, Valentine’s Day happens to fall on a Sunday.  Now, this shouldn’t matter because it’s the first Sunday of Lent, and it isn’t an actual church holiday.

Yet, I have a feeling that some churches will be embracing societal’s yearnings by filling each little crevice of worship with mentions of this Hallmark holiday.  From my experience, I’ve seen how churches hold couples’ dances, talk about how wonderful marriage (especially heterosexual marriage) is and fill sermons and prayers for those who have already found their lifelong love.

But I’ve sat in the pews and attended churches where marriage (heterosexual ones, at that) were considered the ideal.  There didn’t feel like there was a place for this single gal… let alone our single savior, Jesus.  I felt crushed at times and even needed to leave the sanctuary on the random Sunday when the pastor gave a message marginalizing people like me.

Part of the reason I’ve started writing the Single in the Sanctuary feature and, down the road, book is to reinforced the need to validate people of all different marital statuses in the church.  One of the most-needed days of the year for us to be sensitive to the emotions of the unmarried (especially the ones who are not content as unmarried) is Valentine’s Day.

So church leaders – as you finalize your bulletins for this Sunday, remember the following:

  • A large percentage of those in our pews are not married.  They are single, divorced, widowed and cohabitating.  And each of them need our love and validation too.  We need to acknowledge where they are in their lives today – whether they have chosen their relationship status or life just happened to them.
  • 1 Corinthians 13 is not just about romantic love; it’s about something so much greater than marriages and couples.  The love chapter is about God’s steadfast, unconditional love.  It’s a love that we are called to have for each of our neighbors – not just our significant others.  Plus, this chapter reminds us that we need to love our neighbors, friends, enemies, significant others and everyone else as if we are looking through the eyes of God.  That’s more than any romcom could ever portray… although Mark Darcy telling Bridget Jones that he loves her “just as she is” comes close.
  • Shame is a piece in relationship statuses.  Still single?  What’s wrong with you?  Cohabitating?  Why can’t you just get married?  Divorced?  Why couldn’t you make your marriage work.  Part of a gay or lesbian couple?  Doesn’t God think that’s an abomination?  Having sex outside of marriage?  You are a sinner!  These are the messages that keep circling around faith communities.  Our job as the Church is to make sure that these messages are eradicated and that shame outside of the straight nuclear message doesn’t exist.
  • Pray for all marital statuses in this church – from the newly married couple, to the couple who are having challenges, to the single person with a newly fresh broken heart, to the widower experiencing his first Valentine’s Day alone.

Finally, Jesus was single.  What we believe we know is that he was never married.  We don’t know much else about this. We may wonder if he got his heart broken or if he just never had the time to get married.  But he brought together people of all marital statuses.  And that’s what we’re called today each and every day in the church.  The church isn’t just for couples or families.  It’s for all of God’s children.

Are you a progressive non-married Christian or a friend?  Please join in this new Facebook group “Single in the Sanctuary” for conversation and support.