Under every floor is soil, within all soil are roots—taking in nourishment in the unseen dark. Frozen though it may be, each seed holds possibility of transformation. God of transformation, we cry with the Psalmist “how long” when we look upon the suffering of your beloved people and the ways we pit ourselves against one […]
Prayers for Somalia
Drought across the Horn of Africa, food insecurity, and famine return again and again in the prayers for Somalia, together with conflict, evictions, and families displaced within the country and beyond it. Teachers working in hard conditions and Somalis met with travel bans abroad are remembered too.
The Thinnest Silence: A Prayer About Listening for the Voice of God (September 28, 2023)
Holy One, Divine Creator, whom some name God, we pray every week for so many things: for those suffering from effects of climate change and the earthquakes, the hurricanes, the super droughts, super fires, and the super floods; for children and women abused and sold and trafficked even in our modern era of development; for […]
Give Us Our Daily Bread: A Prayer for Landslides in India, Famine, and Chile’s Disappeared (August 31, 2023)
Great Mystery, We offer these prayers. We are amazed to hear of a meteorite coming from interstellar space, found in the Pacific Ocean, and discovered to be formed of an unknown alloy of metals. Forger of rock and mountain, waterfall and volcano we are in awe of this world and beyond. And we extract its […]
Creator of the Stars of Night: An Epiphany Prayer for Iran’s Protesters, Migrants, and Mogadishu (January 5, 2023)
Creator of the Stars of Night, On the eve of Epiphany, on the eve of the first full moon of the year, on the eve of the funeral of Pope Benedict, hear my prayer for the tomorrows of our world. The USA needs to elect a speaker of the house so that congress can be […]
This Blessing Calls You Home: A Christmas Blessing and Prayer for Every Nation on Earth (December 22, 2022)
A CHRISTMAS BLESSING by Christine Valters Paintner online Abbess at AbbeyoftheArts.com Reproduced with permission This blessing dances at the doorway of light and dark, knows both as sacred: fertile womb space, miracle of blooming. This blessing breathes through those moments of labor when you too birth the holy into this fragile, luminous, hurting world as Mary […]
Somewhere, Right Now: Prayers for Kyiv, Refugees in Poland, and Famine in Somalia (December 8, 2022)
Ancient of Days, Somewhere in Kiev, Ukraine, a man plays his guitar with his old, faithful pup howling along, even though they sing in darkness. Somewhere in Krakow, Poland, a grandmother folds shirts, presses trousers, routines to calm her anxious heart, even as the unexpected guests in their small home yearn to return to their […]
The Universe Sings of Your Glory: A COP27 Prayer for Lake Chad and the Amazon (November 17, 2022)
God in heaven, we pray for the successful implementation of the carbon reduction discussions at the COP27 Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. As the conference gained international attention from November 7-18, may we be mindful of the communities that continue to bear daily struggles as a result of environmental challenges forced by climate change: for […]
The Mystery of Your Mercy: Prayers After Hurricane Ian and for Somalia on the Edge of Famine (October 6, 2022)
Elohim, I AM, Jehovah, your names are numerous, our understanding of you, limited. When the horror of humanity confounds us, we place our hope in the mystery of your mercy. We cling to noble acts witnessed in the context of war; healing acts worked in the context of brokenness; justice that breaks through in an […]
Let All Who Thirst Come to the Water: A Prayer in a Time of Drought (September 8, 2022)
Holy One, there is a song haunting me lately. An evocative melody. A single soprano invokes, “Oh let all who thirst, let them come… to the water.” The first time I heard it, I wept. And lately I hear it often. Unsummoned, it echoes within my soul; a lament in layers of drought. Source of […]
Not a Spirit of Fear: A Prayer After the Attack on Salman Rushdie, and for Refugees (August 18, 2022)
Holy One, In these times, with the world news heavily upon us, we reflect upon words from 2 Timothy: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” (New Living Translation) Ten years ago, speaking in New York (U.S.), Indian-born British-American novelist Salman Rushdie said that […]
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