Body Prayer Stand with your feet rooted into the earth. Bring your hands together in a prayer position at your heart. Bow bending at your waist. A bow of reverence, of gratitude, of praise, of seeing. From the bow take your arms wide open, hands open like to receive another in a hug. […]
Prayers for Japan
Natural disaster shapes much of what has been prayed for Japan: earthquakes and tsunami, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, blizzards, and heatwaves, with the long aftermath of Fukushima returning more than once. Prayers also mark violence against disabled people, rescues at sea, and steps toward equal marriage.
Shine Your Light: A Diwali Prayer Against Child Marriage and for COP26 in Glasgow (November 4, 2021)
May these prayers and meditations be received by You, O Lord. Take them and bind them to your will. This is the time of Diwali or Deepawali, a Hindu festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists in the northern hemisphere in the fall. We meditate on the spiritual nature of the victory of […]
Bread of Life: Prayers for Simone Biles, Climate Disasters, and Conflict in Tigray (July 29, 2021)
O Christ, you once said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35) Today we yearn for your abundant life. We hunger for the bread of heaven to sustain us on our journey to find you. Reveal yourself […]
We Are God’s Poem: Prayers for Cuba’s Protests, Haiti, and an Iraq Hospital Fire (July 16, 2021)
“For we are God’s handiwork [trans. poiema, poem], created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” – New International Version “We are God’s works of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he meant us to live.” – […]
Peace Like an Unpredictable Flower: Prayers for Gaza, India’s COVID Crisis, and Kabul (May 20, 2021)
A note to our email subscribers: If you are getting this prayer for a second time, it means the problem preventing our email service from “grabbing” the current prayer from our website is, in fact, finally fixed! (We’ve been fighting a massive malware invasion, which caused last week’s edition to email twice, and had been […]
Father Earth and Mother Sky: Prayers for Indianapolis, Tigray, and India’s Oxygen Crisis (April 29, 2021)
Oh God, Our Father Earth and Mother Earth, Help us to center our hearts, our thoughts, our yearnings, to let go of past wrongs and uncertain futures, to let the air out and take a simple breath in – here in the present of your eternal time. We acknowledge the lands of our ancestors. We […]
You Keep Track of Our Sorrows: Prayers for Daunte Wright, Afghanistan, and a Warming Earth (April 15, 2021)
O God, you come to us wherever and however we might be. No matter how much we may not believe it, we are worthy of your love and grace. Therefore, we uplift to you all of our raggedy and incomplete prayers to you—the ones that fall from our lips, the ones that remain hidden within […]
Lord, Rend the Heavens and Answer: Prayers for Gaza, Indonesia’s Disasters, and Syria’s Camps (January 21, 2021)
This opening Litany of Praise is from the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity 2021 taken from the ecumenical service published by CTBI prepared by the The Monastic Community of Grandchamp. Switzerland. Congregation: You who call us to be praise in the midst of the earth: glory to you! Reader 1: We sing your praise in the midst […]
I Am For You: A Year’s End Prayer After a Maelstrom of a Year (December 31, 2020)
As I come to write this I am frazzled, angry and baffled at the illogical, selfish behavior of some close to me who with their medical expertise and knowledge should know better and take precautions in the face of the surging pandemic. They are not alone – sadly. Lockdowns, illness, suffering, death, separation, and lack […]
Like Grasses Showing Tender Faces: A Prayer as the Pandemic Circles the Globe (March 12, 2020)
Every little thing is sent for something, and in that thing there should be happiness and the power to make happy. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus we should do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. Black Elk, (1863-1950) Oh God, we read these words […]