Tag Archives: Prayer

Prayer for US (America)

The events that transpired on U.S. American soil on the Feast of the Epiphany 2021 are familiar to many around the world as well as students of history. They have also shaken many of us to our cores. We find ourselves in the midst of calls for love and peace that whirl along side expressions of rage, fear and betrayal. In these hard moments, we may be able to see the path of love, but we may not be able to find our way onto it. So this is a prayer for us, for U.S. America, for people everywhere who are hurt, who are afraid, who are feeling things that words cannot adequately describe, but who refuse to let anything shake their faith in love, in justice, in transformation, and in each other.

Dear God,

bless those who have shattered my sense of safety,

bless those who have turned a feast day into famine of justice,

bless the leaders and the followers,

and bless the spaces where I can rage, so I can find a path towards something else.

Bless the hateful,

bless the violent,

bless those who hate me and those who seek to kill me.

Dear God of a love more abundant than I can understand,

please bless those who I cannot find it in myself to bless.

Amen.

A Prayer to End the Death Penalty

I have been doing a lot of praying as the U.S. Federal government resumes its use of state-sanctioned murder this summer, and as police continue to freely execute black people on the street. As someone who believes in alternative justices and as a person of faith, I work to transform our world and end the death penalty not through the lens of saving those who are different than myself, but because there, but for the grace of God, go I. Those who have been sentenced to die at the hands of our government, or any government, are not lesser people I need to save, but my equals, or in fact, the very people that may save me. I hope that this prayer offers us all renewed strength in our struggle for a more just world.

Dear God,

Let me remember that I am the outcast and the broken, that those who have been accused of harm are no different from myself. Remind us God that we have all committed acts of harm and that we have all felt the pain of being harmed. Let us find strength in this unity, let us find power in this unity, and let us use this unity to end not only the death penalty but all unjust practices that divide us. May we act always as people united by your unending love for us all.

Amen

إن شاء الله InShaAllah

 

God willing, the hungry will be fed.

God willing, the stranger will be welcomed home.

God willing, we will see peace in our lifetime.

God willing, all will be loved.

The thing is, I think God is willing.

I think it is us who aren’t willing.

We are afraid of the world we would create if we stopped waiting for God’s hand to descend and ended wars and fed the hungry with our own hands.

So maybe our prayer should be:

God willing, our fear abates.

God willing, we stop waiting.

God willing, we start acting like God already willed it.

إن شاء الله

إن شاء الله

إن شاء الله

Amen.

 

A Prayer for MLK Day

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For me, as a US American citizen, this Martin Luther King Jr. Day feels especially intense, because this same week this country will inaugurate someone who has denigrated those who struggled along side Dr. King, someone who has amplified voices of hate, and incited increased violence against the oppressed. 

Dear God, 

I pray today for those who make shit happen.

For those who do good, even when it goes unnoticed.

For those who seek justice, even when it is hard.

For those who show up, even when it is dangerous.

I pray today for those who are radicalized by love and who will not stop loving even in the face of hate.

I pray today for those who don’t just speak and share words of peace, but who act with a fierceness of love that bring justice to all.

I pray today for all of us, that we hold ourselves accountable to peace and love and justice, and that we be those people whose work and words bend the moral arc of the whole universe towards justice.

Amen.

 

A Prayer for Overwhelming Times

By: Autumn Elizabeth, Editor in Chief 

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You may have noticed we haven’t written much as of late. The recent results of the US American election have produced increased violence, hatred, and fear in US America and around the world. Many of us have been at a loss for words, and I personally, have been at a loss for prayers in this difficult time. I have felt obligated to pray for justice, for hope, for revolution, for strength, for the oppressed, but these prayers wouldn’t come, at least not yet. So here is the prayer that feels most true for me right now–a prayer that honors the overwhelming weight of the struggles that lie ahead. 

Dear God,

I have searched high and low,
for a prayer to help me
during these overwhelming times.

I have looked to holy words and blessed scripture,
I have searched the prayers of the saints and sages,
I have read the divine words of kings and crones.

I have failed to find the strength I seek;
failed to find words that will help me overcome my shock and fear.

Instead, I have found a wishful prayer.
A prayer that speaks to the overwhelmed voice inside me,
that needs a moment to be honored before being overcome.
So I will take a moment to pray this wishful, and perhaps cowardly prayer,
and I will take comfort in knowing even Jesus,
in all his revolutionary glory, needed this prayer too.

Dear God, oh dear, dear, God,

Let this cup pass from me.
Let this cup pass from me.
Let this cup pass from me.

Amen.

A Prayer for Spacious Places

When hard pressed, I cried to God;  they brought me into a spacious place.–Psalm 118:5

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This is a prayer for those spacious places where we find peace, love, and freedom. These places are both physical and metaphysical. They are urban, suburbia, rural; they are the homes of our friends, the tents of our lovers, the blankets of stars.

Oh universe of all things great and small,

I have seen the wonders of this world, and my heart.

I have been split open by the view from the tallest mountain, by the stars shining from the tallest building, by climbing the tallest tree.

These places have broken the broken parts of me,
where grief and pain have made me small and petty.

I have seen so many places where anger has made everything small,
where tiny pebbles of hate burn without fire.

I wish to live only in places where I can be my biggest self.

Places of risk, possibility, enormity, and freedom.
Places that are so immense they terrify and inspire me.

Yet, out of all the spacious and immense places I have been,
from the tallest tree that I have ever climbed
to the view from a building trying to reach the heights of Babel,
the most spacious place I have ever known is love.

Let me live there always.

Amen.

A Prayer of Remeberance

By: Nermine Mohamed, Writing Intern 2015

We are honored to share a post from our former intern, Nermine, whose prayer about remembering her mother offers grace and wisdom. Her prayer seeks blessings for those living with loss, just as our prayer for the dead sought blessings for those who have died. 

It’s hard to put in words what we feel about a person who is long gone; a person who is no longer a part of our life and who never got to know what we’ve become, who we are now…They say time heals and that’s true. Our own frail human memory makes loss bearable. But do we really want to forget or is it simply inevitable?

From all that I’ve lost, all the memories I can no longer recall, all the photographs that captured a moment I don’t remember living or even how it felt being there, I know that what hurts even more than the loss is the inability to remember what we once had.

Today my mother would have been 54 years old. I sometimes think what my life would
have been like if she was still alive. I get angry sometimes that I can’t remember much.There’s nothing but emptiness; a void of something that has left without leaving me any traces to hold on to. So, I pray for me and everyone who suffered loss that we can be healed by remembrance.

Dear God,

Today I pray for remembrance of the mother.
I wish I had a little bit more time to know her better.

Help me remember her by being even just a tiny bit like her,
for everyone speaks of her strength, her honesty, her generous and loving heart.

Help me remember her by living up to her memory
and being be the best person I can be.

Help me remember her every time I feel lost or alone
and help me remember that I never really was lost or alone,
for I’ve always had support and found people who love me
even when I thought there’s nothing to love in myself.

Help me remember her by cherishing every living moment,
by keeping every memory solid,
by not taking life for granted, by loving,
by staying true to who I am and what I believe in.

Help me and all those who have lost a loved one.

Help us remember those who are gone,
even when our memories fade and there’s nothing to recall.

Help us remember them in little acts of kindness,
and by showing those who are grieving
that pain can be healed and that nothing is ever lost forever.

Help us remember them in You,
in Your boundless generosity and Your mercy
and how You always give way more than you take.

Help us remember them in Your kindness,
for despite our loss and the pain that seemed at the time intolerable,
You helped us heal.

Love and peace made their way into our hearts again
and now we know that You don’t really put us through what we can’t endure.

Help us remember with patience, with gratitude, and with faith that there’ll be another chance to see those we’ve lost, where we’ll hold on to them for all the time we couldn’t have and all the memories we wished they were a part of, and finally there will be no letting go.

Amen.

A Prayer for the Dead

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Dear God,

They say that dead men tell no tales,
but I am not so sure.

I think, perhaps, it is only the dead that can tell us anything at all.

Through their death they show us the mirror of mortality.

They show us the flaws in our own lives.

The deaths of those we cherish tell us each the stories of our own ends,
and give us the power to rewrite them.

I believe it is every person’s last gift, to shed light on living through their dying.

Those who I morn have taught me lessons, have told me their stories, and have given me strength to change my own.

So I ask that the dead be blessed, as they have blessed me by living and dying.

Amen.

A Prayer for Community

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Communities can sustain us, they can support us, and they can help us succeed. Communities can also fall apart, they can break our hearts , and they can fail us. This is a prayer for all our communities, in all their forms.

Dear Spirit of Universal Love,

Let me find communities of wisdom.

Help me seek out communities that love me as a whole person, that challenge me in just the right ways, and that allow me to connect with something greater than myself.

Help me find healing with the communities in my life that have let me down or caused me harm.

Let me connect with new communities and with scattered members of communities I was a part of in the past.

Let the spirit of unconditional holy love stretch from me to every member of the communities I cherish.

Amen