Honest God, It is taxing having to prove our own stories. We know. We know what happened, what was said or done or not done. But our memories have endured so much critique and accusation that we are beginning to question ourselves. Affirm our memory as sacred. Teach us to recognize when we are not misremembering, only being manipulated into self-doubt. Train us to perceive these moments when someone would rather have us insecure in our own mind than take responsibility for the truth of an encounter. Expose this, that they would never again be believed by the vulnerable. Ground us in self-belief, not that our own recollection would never be questioned, but that it would be honored with compassion and honesty, never as an attempt to achieve a particular outcome or protect those who have done harm. We know; help us honor our knowing. We remember and tell it. Amen.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

We give God thanks for the blessing of school and education! We give thanks for students who have committed to their own growth and education. We give thanks for teachers and professors who dedicate their life to forming future and current leaders in love and liberation. We give thanks to administrators and staff who support the critical work of education by keeping our students safe and secure. We give thanks to God for everyone who is involved in the care and education of our community. 

We give God thanks for all of you! We give God thanks in advance for what blessings will come your way this school year.

As you head back into classrooms, cafeterias, playgrounds, laboratories, and libraries: May you all go forth fully convinced of God’s love, our love, and your own belovedness. 

God loves you. We love you. And we are proud of you.

When the fog of stress and storms of anxiety form around you, may your roots go down deep into God’s soil so that you may remember: Remember who you are and whose you are. Remember your people, where you come from and where you belong. Remember that you are beloved from the start and a beloved work in progress, becoming more fully who you were always meant to be.

May God root you in God’s love.

We pray for God’s protection this year from anything that seeks to steal, harm, or destroy. When you feel afraid, may God give you courage. When you feel knocked down, may God lift you up. 

May God bless you and keep you. 

We ask God that this new school year be filled with joy, growth in love, and deepened community. May this year overflow with God’s grace.

We pray God’s blessings for this school year in the name of God the Parent, God the Child, and God the Holy Spirit. 

Amen.

It's a struggle

Developing Solidarity.

It's a struggle

Being Positive

It's a struggle

Making Common Unity.

It's a struggle

LIVING.

It's a struggle

Because it's slow

But if we Struggle

At developing Solidarity,

Being Positive

Shaping Reality,

Making Common Unity,

We will all Grow

Because to struggle

Is to work for Change,

and Change is the focus of Education,

and Education is the Basis of Knowledge,

and Knowledge is the Basis for Growth

and Growth is the Basis for

Being Positive and Being Positive

is the Basis for Building Solidarity

Building solidarity is a way to shape

Reality and Shaping Reality is Living

and Living is Loving,

So Struggle.

God Our Mother,

We thank you for grounding your character in the tenderness, protection, and even sorrow of a mother. To know that no human experience—mother or child—is far from you gives us permission to uncover the particularities of how we were made to love and be loved.

On this day, we’re reminded that we do not begin with ourselves. Our beauty, our pain, do not exist in a vacuum but are tethered to those who’ve come before us. We pray for the mothers who have protected us, who are weary, who have stayed, who have left, who are grieving, who are proud — understanding that the story of what it means to be a mother is not singular.

And as children, would you remind us that it is okay to lament the ways we have not been loved well, while also celebrating the miracle and mystery of those who loved us fiercely. We are made of more than us. Help us to behold it. Amen.

She planted ambitious gardens—and still does—with over fifty different varieties of plants that bloom profusely from early March until late November. Before she left home for the fields, she watered her flowers, chopped up the grass, and laid out new beds. When she returned from the fields she might divide clumps of bulbs, dig a cold pit, uproot and replant roses, or prune branches from her taller bushes or trees—until night came and it was too dark to see.

Whatever she planted grew as if by magic, and her fame as a grower of flowers spread over three counties. Because of her creativity with her flowers, even my memories of poverty are seen through a screen of blooms—sunflowers, petunias, roses, dahlias, forsythia, spirea, delphiniums, verbena … and on and on. And I remember people coming to my mother’s yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity, that to this day people drive by our house in Georgia—perfect strangers and imperfect strangers—and ask to stand or walk among my mother’s art.

I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible—except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty.

Her face, as she prepares the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life. She has handed down respect for the possibilities—and the will to grasp them.

For her, so hindered and intruded upon in so many ways, being an artist has still been a daily part of her life. This ability to hold on, even in very simple ways, is work black women have done for a very long time.

God who reclaims, One moment we are free, jaws unclenched and at home with ourselves. Then, without warning, a wind passes through us, sending a thousand tiny uncertainties ricocheting through our inner worlds. We question our beauty, our power and memory. We grow suspicious of love and feel foolish for our hope. Remind us that it’s not our fault.

Let us remember that a society constructed by the oppressor never wanted us free. We’ve been conditioned toward a very particular form of seeing; we have been indoctrinated into the illusion that says white is pure and black is sinful. That says our worth is correlated with how willing we are to be eaten and spit out by capitalist appetite.

That says power is measured by the force with which we take someone else’s agency. Travel with us into our interior worlds, reclaiming every site that has been colonized, every location of internalized hatred and dishonor.

Take us home to ourselves. And let us remember what it feels like to say our own names with the reverence they demand.

Take us home. Amen.

One: Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants.

Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him.

Christ has many services to be done.

Some are more easy and honorable,

others are more difficult and disgraceful.

Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests,

others are contrary to both.

In some we may please Christ and please ourselves.

But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ

except by denying ourselves.

It is necessary, therefore,

that we consider what it means to be a servant of Christ.

Let us, therefore, go to Christ, and pray:

Many: Let me be your servant, under your command.

I will no longer be my own.

I will give up myself to your will in all things.

One: Be satisfied that Christ shall give you your place and work.

Many: Lord, make me what you will.

I put myself fully into your hands:

put me to doing, put me to suffering,

let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,

let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and with a willing heart

give it all to your pleasure and disposal.

One: Christ will be the Savior of none but his servants.

He is the source of all salvation to those who obey.

Christ will have no servants except by consent;

Christ will not accept anything except full consent

to all that he requires.

Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing.

Confirm this by a holy covenant.

To make this covenant a reality in your life, listen to these admonitions:

First, set apart some time, more than once,

to be spent alone before the Lord;

in seeking earnestly God’s special assistance

and gracious acceptance of you;

in carefully thinking through all the conditions of the covenant;

in searching your hearts

whether you have already freely given your life to Christ.

Consider what your sins are.

Consider the laws of Christ, how holy, strict, and spiritual they are,

and whether you, after having carefully considered them,

are willing to choose them all.

Be sure you are clear in these matters, see that you do not lie to God.

Second, be serious and in a spirit of holy awe and reverence.

Third, claim God’s covenant,

rely upon God’s promise of giving grace and strength,

so you can keep your promise.

Trust not your own strength and power.

Fourth, resolve to be faithful.

You have given to the Lord your hearts,

you have opened your mouths to the Lord,

and you have dedicated yourself to God.

With God’s power, never go back.

And last, be then prepared to renew your covenant with the Lord.

Fall down on your knees, lift your hands toward heaven,

open your hearts to the Lord, and pray.

One: God of the womb, It is not lost on us that you submitted to the body of a woman, trusting in it to protect and grow you.

Many: As we remember the nine months you dwelt in the womb, the body of God being nurtured and carried, remind us that our own bodies are worthy of such care and tenderness.

One: May this be a season of sacred pause, as we allow time to be near to our own bodies, to protect and strengthen them. In a world that demands so much of us, remind us that Christ did not come to us in physical independence, allowing the world to take and use him without limitation.

Many: Show us the face of the Christ who was gravely dependent, who needed to be held, fed, washed.

One: Who needed to be soothed and rocked to sleep.

Many: If we are to honor the divine in us, may it be this divinity—fully embodied, fully dignified in the body. Amen.

INHALE: The divine dwelled in a body.

EXHALE: This flesh is sacred.

Glory to the one who comes in flesh for all flesh. Amen.

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean... I... can fly
like a bird in the sky...

“As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.” —Luke 1:44

You can prepare,

but still

it will come to you

by surprise,

crossing through your doorway,

calling your name in greeting,

turning like a child

who quickens suddenly

within you.

It will astonish you

how wide your heart

will open

in welcome

for the joy

that finds you

so ready

and still so

unprepared.

One: Silent God, There are seasons when your silence feels like a cruel act of abandonment. We mistakenly equate nearness with noise.

Many: Show us a different kind of divine intimacy. A silence born not of neglect, but of safety and rest. In a world that weaponizes silence against the vulnerable, it is difficult to believe in its virtue.

One: This Advent, allow us to ask the question of whose voice is being centered and whose is missing. Let those whose voices historically have taken up far too much space fall quiet in this season, in a silence of solidarity.

Many: And let us wait in mystery, believing that those who think they are in control of this world are not, and that oppression will not prevail.

One: Grant the marginalized the agency to choose their silences—not a forced silencing but a sacred rest and defiance in a world whose noise does not relent.  

Many: If we’re silent, let it be the quiet of Mary who kept her story close, allowing a small but sacred number to bear witness to her cosmic unfolding. If we’re silent, let it be the silence of the womb, a warmth we can finally rest in. Amen.  

INHALE: The world grows loud. 

EXHALE: I can rest in this silence.  

INHALE: I can pause and listen. 

EXHALE: Silence is a portal.  

Glory to the one who comes in flesh for all flesh. Amen.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?

Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters? 

Did you know that your precious Child has come to make all new? 

This Child that you've delivered will soon deliver you. 

Mary, did you know that your ancient words would still leap off our pages? 

Mary, did you know that your spirit song would echo through the ages?

Did you know that your holy cry would be subversive word, that the tyrants would be trembling when they know your truth is heard?  

The truth will teach, the drum will sound, healing for the pain.

The poor will rise, the rich will fall. 

Hope will live again. 

Mary, did you know that your lullaby would stir your own Child’s passion? 

Mary, did you know that your spirit song would stir our liberation?  

Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect Lamb? 

This sleeping Child you're holding is the great I Am. 

One: God of the long wait, We take hope, knowing you are a God whose movement is not dependent on our ability to perceive it.

Many: Remind us that your wait in the womb of Mary was not time wasted but an intimate beginning in mystery, growth, and dependency. Let our own waiting be the same, that we would find ourselves able to trust our communities to sustain us, entering a safe and sacred interdependence for all parts.

One: As we wait for healing and liberation—in ourselves, in the world—help us to practice justice, repair, and mercy, never relying on the divine to absolve us of our collective and individual responsibility.

Many: And let us wait in mystery, believing that those who think they are in control of this world are not, and that oppression will not prevail.

One: Help us to be at rest with the unknowing, that we would trust the secret of Mary’s womb, realizing we aren’t entitled to knowledge or clarity, but are still held in love.

Many: Let us feel that even here you are moving, you are growing our way to life and healing. Protect us from despair as we wait for liberation. Amen.

INHALE: I grow weary of waiting.

EXHALE: God, keep me from despair.

Glory to the one who comes in flesh for all flesh. Amen.

We wait for new heavens and a new earth. —2 Peter 3:13

Who wait

for the night

to end

bless them.

Who wait

for the night

to begin

bless them.

Who wait in the hospital room

who wait

in the cell

who wait

in prayer

bless them.

Who wait

for news

who wait

for the phone call

who wait

for a word

who wait

for a job

a house

a child

bless them.

Who wait

for one who

will come home

who wait

for one

who will not come home

bless them.

Who wait with fear

who wait with joy

who wait with peace

who wait with rage

who wait for the end

who wait for the beginning

who wait alone

who wait together

bless them.

Who wait

without knowing

what they wait for

or why

bless them.

Who wait

when they

should not wait

who wait

when they should be

in motion

who wait

when they need

to rise

who wait

when they need

to set out

bless them.

Who wait

for the end

of waiting

who wait

for the fullness

of time

who wait

emptied and

open and

ready

who wait

for you,

O bless.