Prayer from the Pews April 7 by Whitney Petersmeyer

A reading from my journal

September 2017

A note to my mom

I decided to tell Riley about you today. I’d been dreading this moment because I was sure it would change her forever. That my deep feeling kid would become fearful.

A worrier. She’d worry about me dying. About her dad dying.  Darkness would eclipse her light. Like a weed that creeps into a garden, this could just take over. Ensnare the flowers. Close in on her big bright world and make it smaller somehow.

But I went for it because I wanted this to be something she feels like she knew forever. So no script, deep breath, I told her you died when I was little, even younger than her. I told her I have two mommies, one who lives in heaven and one who lives in Maryland and that’s the one who you know and love as Jules.

I paused and searched her face while she took that in. I braced for tears and a breathless line of questions. But those never came.

Her face was… Peace. Love. Light.

Then this little girl of mine, barely 5, locked eyes with mine and only asked one question.

“Did God choose both mommies for you?”

That day, in that moment, she didn’t ask about death. Not about loss. She wasn’t sad or scared or panicked. She was focused, curious, peaceful.

“Did God choose both mommies for you?”

There was Hope in her voice. The kind of Hope that lives deep within her. The kind of hope that is not wishful or unknowing, but a hope that is certain. A holy Hope. Her eyes danced with fierce conviction, like she’d just answered a question, not asked one.

“Did God choose both mommies for you?”

Not -did God choose one to take away (and the devastating corridor of questions that door leads one to). Rather -did God choose both.

Not reductive.

Expansive.

For you. Not -in spite of you.  For you. Did God choose for you the gift of two profound relationships, one spiritual that you can only feel, the other earthly that you can see and touch? Two relationships with two beautiful spirits that grow and evolve with you, in you, forever?

At 5, Riley’s framework is not one that’s small, finite, anchored by time on this Earth. Hers is a framework of abundance. Of infinite love. Of life everlasting. Quite a command for the transcendent for a kid who’d never been to church.

And so I offer a prayer for where Hope lives:

God,

Help us understand Hope as simply and beautifully as children do, children for whom heart and head are so much the same, before life has had its chance to make them dueling teams w/in us.

Help us nurture Hope in its purest form, etched on our hearts with you but also in our minds where we seek and consider Truth.

Put souls and moments in our paths when we need a holy reminder that Truth and Hope are inextricably connected, and that life, like love, is everlasting.

Do this so that we may translate Hope into action in our lives, and live more fully in your image.

Amen.

 

Prayer from the Pews – March 31, 2019 By Caryn Coyle

Forgive us

Forgiveness for a child

Black and white and simple

Break a lamp, talk back, eat too much candy

Sit on a chair, go to your room, no TV

Then a kiss and a hug

Parents a stand- in deity

The sticky black tar of sin won’t stick to a child

On the other side of sin is forgiveness

Forgive us

 

Forgiveness for a teen

Rows of black and brown children

Encased in a thick coating

Of race and poverty and denied mortgages and school suspensions and fear and rage

And fear of their rage becoming a locked cell

The judge a stand-in deity

On the other side of judgement is forgiveness

Forgive us

 

Forgiveness for an adult

The hardest person to forgive is herself, ossified in shades of gray

Never understanding that she was forgiven before the sin was committed

God, etched on her heart, cannot be erased by actions

A human a stand in deity

On the other side of self-recrimination is forgiveness

Forgive us

 

Forgiveness for an Ancestor

An earth encased in dark smoke, rivers running red with dye, muddy fields devoid of trees

Able to ignore the possibility of error and permanent loss

Believing that what was given could not be destroyed

Progress a stand -in deity

On the other side of greed is forgiveness

Forgive us

 

Forgiveness for all time

A human, frail and alone, and hung on cross

Tortured, yes, but not unique

Many people die from torture

And he had a temper,

He ravaged a temple, snapped at disciples, was impatient with Pharisees

He wasn’t just a lamb

He wasn’t just a God

His cross beam left dusty drag marks on the way to his hill

And we forget how angry his humiliation made him, how un-resigned he was the night before

How he refused to give them the satisfaction of an answer

How his forgiveness came from a beating human heart

No stand-in was needed for this deity

On the other side of forgetting is forgiveness

On the other side of forgiveness is hope

Give us hope.

Prayers from the Pews Sunday, March 24, 2019 “Burning Bush” by David Montgomery

Oh God of many names – each of which is valid yet none of which is adequate,

who identified yourself and your people from a bush burning in the desert,

crackling and glowing in your magnificence yet unconsumed by flame.

 

You promised to deliver us from our trials by walking with us, among us, in our

suffering, our worrying, our yearning, and our angst.

 

And you sent your own child – our savior – to toil and suffer among us while

teaching us always how to better love you and ourselves.

 

We continue to hurt, to suffer, to feel the pain of dreams unfulfilled, of illness, of

death, of morality injured or forgotten.

 

Help us to recognize our oneness with all of humanity – your people – many with

crushing burdens and broken spirits.

 

May we ever be reminded of your magnificence, eternally burning within our

hearts, neither consuming nor hardening us but always transforming and tempering

our souls, imbuing our hearts with the malleability needed to bend without

breaking in this crazy world.

 

Even as our trials persist and our anxieties continue, may we – as you have taught

us – ever strive to grow into our full selves – ever becoming what we are yet to be.

 

We ask this in the name of community, oneness, connection, resilience and love.

 

AMEN

(March 24, 2019)