May 6, 2021
Poem: God Our Mother by Allison Woodard (written for the Liturgists Podcast episode "God our Mother," October 2017) read by Rebecca Francik
To be a Mother is to suffer; To travail in the dark, stretched and torn, exposed in half-naked humiliation, subjected to indignities for the sake of new life.
To be a Mother is to say, “This is my body, broken for you,” And, in the next instant, in response to the created’s primal hunger, “This is my body, take and eat.”
To be a Mother is to self-empty, To neither slumber nor sleep, so attuned You are to cries in the night— Offering the comfort of Yourself, and assurances of “I’m here.”
To be a Mother is to weep over the fighting and exclusions and wounds your children inflict on one another; To long for reconciliation and brotherly love and—when all is said and done— To gather all parties, the offender and the offended, into the folds of your embrace and to whisper in their ears that they are Beloved.
To be a mother is to be vulnerable— To be misunderstood, Railed against, Blamed For the heartaches of the bewildered children who don’t know where else to cast the angst they feel over their own existence in this perplexing universe
To be a mother is to hoist onto your hips those on whom your image is imprinted, bearing the burden of their weight, rejoicing in their returned affection, delighting in their wonder, bleeding in the presence of their pain.
To be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality one moment, And injustice the next. To be the Receiver of endless demands, Absorber of perpetual complaints, Reckoner of bottomless needs.
To be a mother is to be an artist; A keeper of memories past, Weaver of stories untold, Visionary of lives looming ahead.
To be a mother is to be the first voice listened to, And the first disregarded; To be a Mender of broken creations, And Comforter of the distraught children whose hands wrought them.
To be a mother is to be a Touchstone and the Source, Bestower of names, Influencer of identities; Life giver, Life shaper, Empath, Healer, and Original Love.
Music: Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth Text: Jean Janzen Music: Carolyn Jennings
Prayer adapted from First Presbyterian Church of Argentina
April 29, 2021
Poem: "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee
To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he’d removed the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.
I can’t remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head.
Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy’s palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife’s right hand.
Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he’s given something to keep. I kissed my father.
Music: "In The Garden" words and music by C. Austin Miles, arranged and performed by Riley Gray and Margaret Francik
Prayer
Holy and loving God, we come to you today with the prayers of the heartbroken, the hopeful, and everyone in between. We thank you that you know us, you love us, and you meet each of us where we are at.
We ask that you bring comfort, hope, and healing to the heartbroken. God hold our fragile hearts as many hurt from medical conditions, loss of loved ones, traumatic news, loss of employment, loneliness, hurt words, and many other things that bring pain. Repair and restore our hearts. Return to us the joy of your salvation so that our mourning can turn into dancing once again.
We thank you that we see signs of hope and an end to this pandemic that has burdened, harmed, and taken away many of our siblings. We continue to grieve loss, and as spring is blooming, so are signs of hope. God grant us patience and wise discernment as we continue to navigate existing in the pandemic so that our social and economic needs can be met, but we also do our best to keep people safe.
As we walk with you, remind us that you walk with us. We are not alone. We hope because you are with us. May we feel your embrace and comfort as we navigate the troubling waters of this world. We ask for reminders that spark joy in our lives—from the things we eat to the things we hear; give us reminders that you are not done working in this world, and that redemption and resurrection are at work. We trust in this, the unfailing love of your son. Amen.
April 22, 2021
Poem: Try to Praise theMutilated World by Adam Zagajewski translated by Clare Cavanagh
Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
Music: What Wondrous Love Is This arranged & performed by Riley Gray
Prayer
Loving God, loving God, all creation calls you blessed, and so do we, and so do we.
Loving God, all your creation calls you blessed. Your spirit imprints the whole universe with life and mystery. Yes, all creation proclaims your love. We now join this chorus of praise.
Loving God, all of nature calls you blessed, and so do we.
For you have woven an intimate tapestry and call it life and called it good.
In love you have formed a universe so diverse yet so related, and into its web you call us forth to walk the land and swim the sea with all our natural brothers and sisters.
To the stars we seem no more than blades of grass. Yet to you, each of us, as each blade of grass and each star, is an irreplaceable treasure, an essential companion on this journey of love.
Loving God, as you lure the whole world into salvation, guide us with your Spirit that we might not be only pilgrims on the earth, but pilgrims with the earth, journeying home to you.
Open our hearts to understand the intimate relationship that you have with all creation. Only with this faith can we hope for tomorrow’s children. Amen. Alleluia!
April 15, 2021
Poem: Patient Trust by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Music: Suite for a Fall Afternoon: Dusk Margaret Francik
Prayer
April 8, 2021
Poem: This Morning by Jay Wright
This morning I threw the windows of my room open, the light burst in like crystal gauze and I hung it on my wall to frame. And here I am watching it take possession of my room, watching the obscure love match of light and shadow--of cold and warmth. It is a matter of acceptance, I guess. It is a matter of finding some room with shadows to embrace, open. Now the light has settled in, I don't think I shall ever close my windows again.
Music: Now The Green Blade Rises words by John M. C. Crum music: French Carol, performed & edited by Riley Gray & Margaret Francik
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been; Love is come again like wheat arising green.
In the grave they laid the love by hatred slain, thinking that Jesus would not wake again, laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen; Love is come again like wheat arising green.
Christ came forth at Easter, like the risen grain, who that for three days in the grave had lain; raised from the dead, the risen Christ is seen; Love is come again like wheat arising green.
When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, your touch can call us back to life again, fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been; Love is come again like wheat arising green.
Prayer by B. D. Prewer
Most Holy Christ, Come through our locked doors, you persistent lover, come where we’re hiding and blow away our cover.
Come through disbelief, enter and greet us, with disruptive peace come in and meet us.
Come in the doubting when old fears molest, come with your own breath that we may know rest.
Come with your Spirit, to lives sour and stale, breathe forth your Spirit that we may be hale.
Come with forgiveness like no man has dared, breathe in us your grace that it may be shared.
Come in the evening with your breath of peace breathe on your people that nightmares may cease.
Amen.
Lent As a Lenten devotional discipline this year, you are invited to pray with Scripture as a way of discerning what God is calling you to be and to do during this season.
February 11, 2021
Poem: "The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
Music: "Nocturne in E Minor, Op. 72 No.1" by Frederic Chopin Performed by Luke Faulkner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Prayer based on Psalm 22:24
February 4, 2021
Poem: "Hymn To The Beloved" by Ana Ramana
Stars hover like kisses over our house. A cow lows in the distance, his bell tinkling the night air. A praying mantis flew into my face this evening before prayer, his green and tender body my skin’s blessing. Oh Lord, I could build a shrine to you every day in my heart, I could fill it with moon and sun, with the lemon butterflies that milk our path to the sea, with spume of wave on rock, tall cactus mad with bloom, I could fill it with pebbles and sand from my shoe, with a dart of lizard and peak of jack rabbits’s ears.
I could add the languorous sway of ferns in our courtyard, the breeze-ruffled curtains in my room. I could take the luminous, rain-freshened desert, and set that there too, add the fan of vulture and hawk wings, the glorious palmful of spider as he traces a love pact on the wall.
Oh God, I could fill each left space with kisses and a horse’s call, with the slow swank of donkey in a clearing. I could conjure a brimming altar of dawn sky, each mountain’s sinuous fall and rise, a dozen setting moons, and still it would not begin to praise.
Let me at least spend my days trying. Let me fail you a thousand ways. Let me breathe one more, Lord, of your ravishing days and I will tell lovers and children and the bird at twilight of your deepest secrets.
Music: Sonatine, Movement I "Modéré" by Maurice Ravel. Performed by Stefano Ligoratti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Prayer
January 28, 2021
Poem: "Today Means Amen" by Sierra Demulder
Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be.
This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier.
Come home, baby, it’s over. You don’t need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment
Is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door.
This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love
letter you’ve been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little
when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized
they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding?
When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen
in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I’m going to love you. Today, I’m going
to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget
how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you,
nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone’s
favorite voice, someone’s favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same
if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter’s gun, the lantern in the night
who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover,
who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not
let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help.
You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known
the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it.
You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump
of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever
is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights
that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel,
the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it.
You made it here.
Music: "Qui Cofidunt" plainchant Performers: Scola cantorum, Gregoriana Assen, Arnold den Teuling, conductor. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Prayer: "Prayer for Inner Healing"
January 21, 2021
Poem: "A Thousand Mornings" by Mary Oliver
All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing”
Music: "Praeludium" from First Modern Suite, Op. 10 by Edward MacDowell. Performed by Richard Fountain. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Prayer
January 15, 2021
Poem: "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
Music: "Echo" words and music by Margaret Francik. Piano: Kyle Ross Voice: Margaret Francik
Prayer based on a prayer by Greg Christopher
January 7, 2021
Poem: "Love after Love" by Derek Walcott
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Music: "God's Love Made Visible!" Words by Iola Brubeck, Music by Dabe Brubeck. Performed by Riley Gray and Margaret Francik
Prayer: "A New Year Prayer" by Sister Mary Ann Barret, O.P.
Advent
As we enter into an Advent season unlike any other in our lives, I hope we can walk in our corporate devotion together while being physically distanced and masked apart. Each day we will send a short devotional to you that can easily be played on your phone, on a computer or tablet, or simply read. Hopefully, being connected together through these devotional readings and prayers will allow the Spirit to continue to build our church family strong in the ways of Christ, while at the same time fueling each of us to be the Church outside the walls of our beloved church building.
May all blessings be yours this Advent!
November 26, 2020
Poem: From Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours, The Book of a Monastic Life
I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough to be simply in your presence, like a thing-- just as it is.
I want to know my own will and to move with it. And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones-- or alone.
I want to mirror your immensity. I want never to be too weak or too old to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.
I want to unfold Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight.
Music:Jesus Christ Who Makes Us Glad by Marcel Dupre, performed by Helen Byrne
Prayer
November 19, 2020
Poem: "AS IF BREATHING FOR THE FIRST TIME" by David Whyte
Breathe then, as if breathing for the first time, as if remembering with what difficulty you came into the world, what strength it took to turn that first impossible in-breath, into a cry to be heard by the world.
Your essence has always been that first vulnerability of being found, of being heard and of being seen. and from the very beginning, the one who has always needed, and being given, so much invisible help.
This is how you were when you first came into the world, this is how you are now, all unawares, in your new body and your new life, this is the raw vulnerability of your every day, and this is how you will want to be, and be remembered, when you leave the world.
Music: 10 Preludes, Op. 23 "Andante (Eb major)" by Sergei Rachmaninoff Performed by Peter Bradley-Fulgoni Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Prayer
November 12, 2020
Poem: "Under Stars" by Tess Gallagher
The sleep of this night deepens because I have walked coatless from the house carrying the white envelope. All night it will say one name in its little tin house by the roadside.
I have raised the metal flag so its shadow under the roadlamp leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes. Now I will walk back thinking of the few lights still on in the town a mile away.
In the yellowed light of a kitchen the millworker has finished his coffee, his wife has laid out the white slices of bread on the counter. Now while the bed they have left is still warm, I will think of you, you who are so far away you have caused me to look up at the stars.
Tonight they have not moved from childhood, those games played after dark. Again I walk into the wet grass toward the starry voices. Again, I am the found one, intimate, returned by all I touch on the way.
Music: "De pas sur la neige" by Claude Debussy Performed by Chiara Bertoglio, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Prayer
November 5, 2020
Poem: "Screech Owl" by Ted Kooser
All night each reedy whinny from a bird no bigger than a heart flies out of a tall black pine and, in a breath, is taken away by the stars. Yet, with small hope from the center of darkness it calls out again and again.
Music: "Nocturne, Op. 19 No. 4" by Peter Tchaikovsky Performed by Narek Hakhnazaryan (cello), Noreen Polera (piano) Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
Prayer: From "Peanut Butter and Jelly Prayers" by Julie B. Sevig
October 29, 2020
Poem I, 62 from Rilke's Book of Hours
Only as a child am I awake and able to trust that after every fear and every night I will behold you again.
However often I get lost, however far my thinking strays, I know you will be here, right here, time trembling around you.
To me it is as if I were at once infant, boy, man and more. I feel that only as it circles is abundance found.
I thank you, deep power that works in me ever more lightly in ways I can't make out. The day's labor grows simple now, and like a holy face held in my dark hands
Music: Andante from Johannes Brahms' Piano Sonata No 1 Op. 1 performed by Peter Bradley-Fulgoni
Prayer by Miriam Rubin
October 22, 2020
Poem: "Narrative Theology #2" by Padraig O'Tuama
I used to need to know the end of every story but these days I only need the start to get me going.
God is the crack where the story begins. We are the crack where the story gets interesting.
We are the choice of where to begin – the person going out? the stranger coming in?
God is the fracture, and the ache in your voice, God is the story flavoured with choice.
God is the pillar of salt full of pity accusing God for the sulfurous city.
God is the woman who bleeds and who touches. We are the story of courage and blushes.
God is the story of whatever works. God is the twist at the end and the quirks.
We are the start, And we are the center, we’re the characters, narrators, inventors.
God is the bit that we can’t explain – maybe the healing maybe the pain.
We are the bit that God can’t explain maybe the harmony maybe the strain.
God is the plot, and we are the writers, the story of winners and the story of fighters.
the story of love, and the story of rupture, the story of stories, the story without structure.
Music: "Pavane pour une infante défunte" composed by Maurice Ravel, performed by Thérése Dussaut.
Prayer by Hilary Hirtle.
October 14, 2020
Poem: Pilgrimage II, 1 From Rilke's Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy Read by Grace Barnes
You are not surprised at the force of the storm-- you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Their flight sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one you move toward. All your senses sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer. The trees' blood rose. Now you feel it wants to sink back into the source of everything. You thought you could trust that power when you plucked the fruit; now it becomes a riddle again, and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you knew where each thing stood. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves. Through the empty branches, the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now, and evensong. Be the ground, lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you.
Music: Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1 by Frederick Chopin Performed by Luke Faulkner
Prayer
October 7, 2020
Poem: "Fully Alive" by Dawna Markova
I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.
Music: "Dido's Lament" Henry Purcell, composer Arranger and performer, Evgeniy E. Moshkin
Prayer
September 30, 2020
Poem: "Vigil" by Maya Angelou
Music: "We Shall Overcome" arranged and performed by Scott, Pamela and Olivia Brownlee
Prayer from Sarah Signorino, Canisius College
September 23, 2020
Poem: by Albert Camus
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For is says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger -- something better, pushing right back.
Music: "Rescindment" by Margaret Francik Performed by Alexandra Rannow on voice and Margaret Francik on piano
Prayer by St. Francis
September 16, 2020
Poem: "Silence" by Ana Ramana
Music: "Silence" by Margaret Francik (a choir piece that uses the same text as the poem)
Prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
September 9, 2020
Poem by Rainier Maria Rilke from the Book of Hours
They see not the faintest glimmer of morning and listen in vain for the cock's crow. The night is a huge house where doors torn open by terrified hands lead into endless corridors, and there's no way out.
God, every night is like that. Always there are some awake, who turn, turn, and do not find you. Don't you hear them crying out as they go farther and farther down? Surely you hear them weep; for they are weeping.
I seek you, because you are passing right by my door. Whom should I turn to, if not the one whose darkness is darker than night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid-- the deep one, whose being I trust, for it breaks through the earth into trees, and rises, when I bow my head, faint as a fragrance from the soil.
Prayer Excerpted from a longer prayer by Lois Siemens posted on the website of the Superb Mennonite Church
by Paul Francik
September 1, 2020
"Everything is Going to be Alright" by Derek Mahon
How should I not be glad to contemplate the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and a high tide reflected on the ceiling? There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. The poems flow from the hand unbidden and the hidden source is the watchful heart. The sun rises in spite of everything and the far cities are beautiful and bright. I lie here in a riot of sunlight watching the day break and the clouds flying. Everything is going to be all right.
Prayer
written and performed by Olivia Brownlee (used with permission) If you'd like to support Olivia Brownlee in her music making, click this link to visit her patreon.
August 26, 2020
Poem: "A Litany For Survival" by Audre Lord
Music:"Why Has God Forsaken Me?" Text by Bill Wallace Music by Taihei Sato Recorded and arranged by Riley Gray and Margaret Francik
Prayer:"A Psalm of Lament and Praise in a Time of Coronavirus" by the Revd Kenneth Howcroft
August 19, 2020
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
A Voice Is Heard in Ramah Responsive Prayers from Sojourners
Spiritual, arranged by H.T. Burleigh
August 12, 2020
Poem: "Moments of Life" by Anthony Mirarcki
Music: "We Are an Offering" music and words by Dwight Liles, performed & arranged by Riley Gray
Prayer: "A Prayer for These Days and Times" by Rev. Cynthia Belt
August 5, 2020
"Once Upon A Children's Game," by Barbara Reynolds
"The Prayer Perfect" by James Whitcomb Riley
Tim and Shelly Barber
July 29, 2020
Poem:"Crossing The Delaware" by Rob Hardy
Music: "We Come To You For Healing, Lord" Text by Herman G Stuempfle Jr. Music is an American Folk Melody arr. by Annabel Morris Buchanan Riley Gray and Margaret Francik as performers
Prayer
July 22, 2020
"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee
Prayer
by Tim Barber
July 10, 2020
Prayer: Canticle of Creation II
Poem: Tomatillos by Shelly Barber
Tomatillos are otherworldly. Astonishing wonders. Noticing inside my heart and outside my window. The issue often is not the issue of why I feel pain. But tomatillos. It's okay even when it doesn't feel okay. Tomatillos. The same Creator who made me, Made tomatillos. Unexpected truths, to lighten the work. Keep going, Beloved.
Music: Lord, Let My Heart Be Good Soil Music and Text by Handt Hanson, arranged by Margaret Francik
July 3, 2020
"Corona Pantoum" by Monica Raymond
Prayer by James Parker
by Margaret Francik and Riley Gray
CHORUS Wear your mask! It's important for society, who has a better pedigree, Facebook or the CDC? Wear your mask! Or else we'll have to do this forever, so come on now, just be clever, and wear your mask.
When you go to the grocery store, When you go to the bank, When you go to get a new car, oh The rona doesn't care, so wear your mask!
If you don't know anyone who's sick, It doesn't mean they're not there, But if you ignore this fact, oh You're part of the problem, so wear your mask!
When you go out with your friends, Or hang out in the park, You think that you'll be just fine, but news flash: It's not about you, so wear your mask!
June 26, 2020
Poem: A Prayer for the Sequestered by Carol Flake Chapman
Music: Edvard Grieg — In the Homeland, Op. 43, No. 3 played by Helen Byrne
Prayer by Rev. Larry Doornbos
June 19, 2020
The Confession of 1967
"God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family. In his reconciling love, God overcomes the barriers between sisters and brothers and breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all people to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights. Therefore, the church labors for the abolition of all racial discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize others, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess."
MY FRIEND JESUS Y FRIEND JESUS by Damon Syphers
Master, Rabbi, and Friend, as I look upon your crucified face, I am reminded of your total Love for humanity. You took on all the ills, social injustices, and social inequities of your time. I daresay these same problems have become so much of our life in the 21st century. To you there are no color differences, everybody is made the same according to God’s plan. There are no rich or poor in the sight of God nor are there the social injustices that man has made in the name of religion. As I ponder and meditate your crucified face, I am reminded of the ills of imperialism, colonialism, and domination. So I pray for strength in my lifetime to loosen some burdens of society. Because I know that if I do your work it will help heal your scarred, tormented, crucified face. Please give me the strength, intelligence, and LOVE to be able to take over where you left o# many years ago. For I know if I carry this yoke, I am doing the work of the Father and above all things living the golden rule of “love your neighbors as you love yourself. For you are the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” Give me strength to help others to do Your work to make the world a better place. Amen
Text: Francis of Assisi, adapt. Marty Haugen Music: Marty Haugen Recording and vocals by Riley Gray
June 12, 2020
Poem: Listening by Amy Lowell
’T is you that are the music, not your song. The song is but a door which, opening wide, Lets forth the pent-up melody inside, Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong Sing but of you. Throughout your whole life long Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide This perfect beauty; waves within a tide, Or single notes amid a glorious throng. The song of earth has many different chords; Ocean has many moods and many tones Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones Autumn alone can ripen. So is this One music with a thousand cadences.
Music: Breathe on Me, Breath of God/Trusting Jesus Pamela Brownlee & Margaret Francik
Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do. Simply trusting every day, trusting through a stormy way, even when my faith is small, trusting Jesus that is all. Breathe on me, breath of God, until my heart is pure, until my will is one with thine, to do and to endure. Brightly doth his Spirit shine into this poor heart of mine; while he leads I cannot fall, trusting Jesus that is all. Breathe on me, Breath of God, till I am wholly thine, until this earthly part of me glows with thy fire divine. Singing if my way is clear, praying if the path be drear, if in danger, for him call, trusting Jesus that is all. Trusting as the moments fly, trusting as the days go by, trusting him what-e'er be-fall, trusting Jesus that is all.
Prayer
June 5, 2020
Batter my heart, three person'd God (Holy Sonnet 14) by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy: Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Bach Menuet from Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor Played by Helen Byrne
The Confession of Belhar
May 29, 2020
Music: "In, Out" written and sung by Margaret Francik
Poem "Intubation" by Sara Cupp Smith
I wake in purgatory, where I hear The rhythmic ventilator’s pulse and see My hands and feet restrained. There seems to be No way to flee paralysis and fear. Intensive care, a cell with pale green walls, Imprisons me, a soul without a voice, Immobile, intubated, lacking choice. The ventilator’s soft which lifts and falls. Outside this hospital the city fears Contagion, deprivation, even death, And many conversations end in tears. But I am now reduced to breath, then breath. No other act is possible. I weep In silent isolation. Then I sleep.
Prayer
For all who have contracted coronavirus, We pray for care and healing.
For those who are particularly vulnerable, We pray for safety and protection.
For all who experience fear or anxiety, We pray for peace of mind and spirit.
For affected families who are facing difficult decisions between food on the table or public safety, We pray for policies that recognize their plight.
For those who do not have adequate health insurance, We pray that no family will face financial burdens alone.
For those who are afraid to access care due to immigration status, We pray for recognition of the God-given dignity of all.
For our brothers and sisters around the world, We pray for shared solidarity.
For public officials and decisionmakers, We pray for wisdom and guidance.
Father, during this time may your Church be a sign of hope, comfort and love to all. Grant peace. Grant comfort. Grant healing. Be with us, Lord.
Amen.
May 22, 2020 Click on the linked titles to listen.
May 15, 2020
by Brother Richard
Handel played by Helen and Leonard Byrne
from Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church
May 8, 2020
by Allison Woodard (written for the Liturgists Podcast episode "God our Mother," October 2017) read by Rebecca Francik
To be a Mother is to suffer; To travail in the dark, stretched and torn, exposed in half-naked humiliation, subjected to indignities for the sake of new life.
To be a Mother is to say, “This is my body, broken for you,” And, in the next instant, in response to the created’s primal hunger, “This is my body, take and eat.”
To be a Mother is to self-empty, To neither slumber nor sleep, so attuned You are to cries in the night— Offering the comfort of Yourself, and assurances of “I’m here.”
To be a Mother is to weep over the fighting and exclusions and wounds your children inflict on one another; To long for reconciliation and brotherly love and—when all is said and done— To gather all parties, the offender and the offended, into the folds of your embrace and to whisper in their ears that they are Beloved.
To be a mother is to be vulnerable— To be misunderstood, Railed against, Blamed For the heartaches of the bewildered children who don’t know where else to cast the angst they feel over their own existence in this perplexing universe
To be a mother is to hoist onto your hips those on whom your image is imprinted, bearing the burden of their weight, rejoicing in their returned affection, delighting in their wonder, bleeding in the presence of their pain.
To be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality one moment, And injustice the next. To be the Receiver of endless demands, Absorber of perpetual complaints, Reckoner of bottomless needs.
To be a mother is to be an artist; A keeper of memories past, Weaver of stories untold, Visionary of lives looming ahead.
To be a mother is to be the first voice listened to, And the first disregarded; To be a Mender of broken creations, And Comforter of the distraught children whose hands wrought them.
To be a mother is to be a Touchstone and the Source, Bestower of names, Influencer of identities; Life giver, Life shaper, Empath, Healer, and Original Love.
Text: Jean Janzen Music: Carolyn Jennings
adapted from First Presbyterian Church of Argentina
May 1, 2020
"A Prayer for reconciliation" by Padraig O'Tuama Prayer by Rev. Michael Scott of the Dublin Community Church
"Cup of Water" written by Tim Barber and sung by Tim and Shelly Barber and friends
April 24, 2020
by Pablo Neruda Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
Music by Margaret Francik
by Roy E. Dickerson in Daily Prayer Companion I pause, Father, to commune with you. Help me to be still and know that you are God. Ease awhile any tense muscles or strained nerves or wrought-up emotions. Let me be relaxed in body and calm in spirit so that I may be more responsive to your presence. I pause, Father, to commune with you. Amen.
April 17, 2020
by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Composed and played by Margaret Francik (The recording is a little soft. Please turn up your speakers.)
"Jesus, during Your ministry on Earth You showed Your power and caring by healing people of all ages and stations of life from physical, mental, and spiritual ailments. Be present now to people who need Your loving touch because of COVID-19. May they feel Your power of healing through the care of doctors and nurses.
Take away the fear, anxiety, and feelings of isolation from people receiving treatment or under quarantine. Give them a sense of purpose in pursuing health and protecting others from exposure to the disease. Protect their families and friends and bring peace to all who love them."
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
—Philippians 4:6 (NIV) |