Place Prayer

Loving God
may we be found
and may we find
a place called home
a place where faith holds us
and grace renews us
where forgiveness longs for us
to be who you will us to be

may we find a place called home
where we are accepted as we are
where we are taken in
and loved unconditionally

a place called home
where we belong
and our souls fit
and our questions are allowed
and our anger is heard
and our needs are recognised
and our pain is held
and our names are known

and may this
be that place, O God,
this community
this group of travellers and doubters
and companions on the way

this home
where your place
is our place
and place isn’t a building
but a way of being together
in relationship
held together
by love

Loving God
Homecoming God
may we make this a home
to all who still yet seek
a place of grace-filled sanctuary
and gracious welcome

So be it.
Amen.


~ written by Roddy Hamilton, and posted on Mucky Paws
based in the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.

The Creation

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.




--James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), poet, journalist, NAACP activist, who wrote the words to the "Black National Anthem" "Life Every Voice and Sing" set to music by his brother.

Scripture reference: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Trinity Sunday Year A

Veni Creator

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth
not me—after all I have some decency—
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

-Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), Nobel Prize winning Polish poet, exiled to the US

Better to Marry Than To Burn

Home, then, where the past was.
Then, where cold pastorals repeated
their entreaties, where a portrait of Christ
hung in every bedroom. Then was a different
country in a different climate in a time when
souls were won and lost in prairie tents. It was.
It was. Then it was a dream. I had no will there.
Then the new continent and the new wife
and the new language for no, for unsaved,
for communion on credit. Then the daughter
who should’ve been mine, and the hour a shadow
outgrew its body. She was all of my failures,
my sermon on the tender comforts of hatred
in the shape of a girl. Then the knowledge
of God like an apple in the mouth. I faced
my temptation. I touched its breasts with
as much restraint as my need allowed,
and I woke with its left hand traced again
and again on my chest like a cave wall
disfigured by right-handed gods who tried
to escape the stone. It was holy. It was fading.
My ring, then, on my finger like an ambush,
as alive as fire. Then the trees offered me a city
in the shape of a word followed by a word
followed by a blue madonna swinging from
the branches. A choir filed out of the jungle
singing hallelujah like a victory march and it was.

-- Traci Brimhall (1982- ), American poet, professor, Poet Laureate of Kansas 2023-2026, from Poetry Magazine, July/August 2014

Trinity Sunday: Gathering Prayer

God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity,
We ask for your presence to enter this space.
We know that in self-giving love,
Your very nature teaches us how to love one another.

Father and Creator,
Son and Redeemer,
Spirit and Advocate,

We call upon you to teach us this hour.
Teach us to pray.
Teach us to love.
Teach us to be one, as you are one.

With all of our divisions we create with our own biases,
From social class to race,
From gender to age,
From ability to different abilities,
We know we still have much to learn.

Teach us this hour, we pray,
in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us all to pray, saying: 

Our Father…


-- by the Rev. Dr. Libby Grammer (Baptist)

The Slip

The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, and begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for bird flight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect-- but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet there's nothing
is the seed of all—heaven’s clear
eye, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.


-- Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, teacher, farmer, essayist, and agrarian

From "Glanmore Sonnets"

for Ann Saddlemyer
‘our heartiest welcomer’

Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground.
The mildest February for 20 years
Is mist bands over furrows, a deep no sound
Vulnerable to distant gargling tractors.
Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe.
Now the good life could be to cross a field
And art a paradigm of earth knew from the lathe
Of plows. My lea is deeply tilled.
Old plough-socks gorge the subsoil of each sense
And I am quickened with a redolence
Of farmland as a dark unblown rose.
Wait then… Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons,
My ghosts come striding into their spring stations.
The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), from the “Glanmore Sonnets,” in Field Work, 1979

Trinitarian Call to Worship

Call to Worship and Opening Prayer:

God, the Life-Giving Trinity

The words God speaks
are the life and sustenance
of all that exists.

The life Jesus gives
is the re-creation and renewed birth
of all that is broken and worn.

The Spirit’s stirring in our souls
is the inspiration
for creativity, compassion, joy, and community.

Life-giving, life-restoring, life-fulfilling God;
may our whole lives be worship.
In all things, may we seek to connect with
and to reflect your love and your hope.

-- The Minor Keys, from the re:worship blog

Call to Worship: In the Darkest Valley

(inspired by Psalm 23)

In the darkest valley,
at the banquet table;
in the hard work of life,
at the moments of ease;
in our day-to-day reality,
at times set aside–
like this time, now–
for worship, for listening, for paying attention;
with every step we take:
goodness and mercy follow us;
our cups overflow.


-- written by Joanna Harader and posted on Spacious Faith. https://spaciousfaith.com/

Scripture Reference: Psalm 23,  Easter 4 A, B, C, Lent 4A, Proper 23 

Offering Prayer: On My Own

based on Matthew 14:15-21

On my own
what I have to give
doesn't amount to much
in the light of all you have given to me
and in the face of so much need.
Put together as a congregation,
what we offer you here in love
becomes more,
not simply added together,
but somehow multiplied in its usefulness.
We ask you to bless our gifts
and with the addition of your blessing,
just as it was with the loaves and fishes,
there is enough for all.
Amen.

-- from the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand website. http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/

Musical Notation: 1

The physicality of the religious poets should not
be taken idly. He or she, who loves God, will
look most deeply into His works. Clouds are not
only vapor, but shape, mobility, silky sacks of
nourishing rain. The pear orchard is not
only profit, but a paradise of light. The luna moth,
who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few
hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a
musical notation. Have you noticed? 

We had a dog once that adored flowers; no mat-
ter how briskly she went through the fields, she
must stop and consider the lilies, tiger lilies, and
other blossoming things along her way. Another
dog of our household loved sunsets and would
run off in the evenings to the most western part
of the shore and sit down on his haunches for
the whole show, that pink and peach colored
swollenness. Then home he would come trot-
ting in the alpenglow, that happy dog.

--Mary Oliver (1935- 2019), prolific and popular American poet and lover of nature, from Thirst.

Praise to God for Hearing Prayer

Now shall my solemn vows be paid
To that Almighty Power,
That heard the long requests I made
In my distressful hour.

My lips and cheerful heart prepare
To make his mercies known;
Come, ye that fear my God, and hear
The wonders he has done.

When on my head huge sorrows fell,
I sought his heav’nly aid;
He saved my sinking soul from hell,
And death’s eternal shade.

If sin lay covered in my heart,
While prayer employed my tongue,
The Lord had shown me no regard,
Nor I his praises sung.

But God (his name be ever blest)
Has set my spirit free;
Nor turned from him my poor request,
Nor turned his heart from me.

-- Isaac Watts (1674-1748) English theologian, philosopher, teacher, hymn writer and nonconformist, Independent church minister, one of the greatest hymn writers in English history.

Scripture reference Psalm 66:8-20, Easter 6A

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
   equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; There the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
   keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.


--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, writer and treasure, from Thirst: Poems, 2006

Image: Anemones in the Augustinian nunnery ruins, Iona, 2018.

The Airy Christ

After reading Dr Rieu’s translation of St Mark’s Gospel.

Who is this that comes in splendour, coming from the blazing East?
This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ.

Airy, in an airy manner in an airy parkland walking,
Others take him by the hand, lead him, do the talking.

But the Form, the airy One, frowns an airy frown,
What they say he knows must be, but he looks aloofly down,

Looks aloofly at his feet, looks aloofly at his hands,
Knows they must, as prophets say, nailèd be to wooden bands.

As he knows the words he sings, that he sings so happily
Must be changed to working laws, yet sings he ceaselessly.

Those who truly hear the voice, the words, the happy song,
Never shall need working laws to keep from doing wrong.

Deaf men will pretend sometimes they hear the song, the words,
And make excuse to sin extremely; this will be absurd.

Heed it not. Whatever foolish men may do the song is cried
For those who hear, and the sweet singer does not care that he was crucified.

For he does not wish that men should love him more than anything
Because he died; he only wishes they would hear him sing.

--Stevie (nee Florence Margaret) Smith (1902-1971), Anglican British poet and novelist who called herself a "lapsed atheist"

"You Don't Know What Love Is"

For Rebecca Feldman and Brian Roessler

That's what the first line says
of the song I've been playing all summer
at the keyboard—trying to get my hands
around its dark, melancholy chords,
its story line of a melody that twists
up like snakes from melodic minor scales
that I've also been trying to learn, though
I'm no great shakes as a practicer of scales.

Come to think of it, neither am I much
when it comes to love—no great shakes, I mean.
Not that I haven't had my chances.
Twenty years married, I made a lousy husband,
half asleep, selfish, more like a big baby
than a grown man, the poet laureate
of the self-induced coma when it came to
doing anything for anybody but me.
"Now and then he took his thumb
out of his mouth to write an ode to
or a haiku about the thumb he sucked all day."

That's what I imagined my ex-wife said
to our therapist near the end. She did say:
"It's all about Bill." She was right.
And suddenly it frightens me, remembering
how, at our wedding, our poet friends
read poems of (mostly) utter depression
to salute us. I wondered if their griefs in love
had double-crossed our union, if strange
snakes in the grass of our blissful Eden
had hissed at us, and now I worry,
on your wedding day, if I'm not
doing the same damned thing . . . .

I haven't come to spring up and put my curse
on your bliss. Here's what I want to say:
You're young. You don’t know what love is.
And as the next line of the song goes, you won't
—"Until you know the meaning of the blues."
Darlings, the blues will come (though not
often, I hope) to raise their fiery swords
against your paradise. A little of that
you unwittingly got today, when it rained
and you couldn't be married outside under
the beautiful tree in Nan and Alan's yard.
But paradise doesn't have to be structured
so that we can never reenter it. After
you've kicked each other out of it
once or twice (I'm speaking metaphorically,
of course), teach yourself how to say
a few kind words to each other.
Don't stand there angry, stony.
Each of you let the other know
what you are feeling and thinking

and then it may be possible
to return to each other smiling,
hand in hand. For arm in arm,
you are your best Eden. Remember
the advice the old poet sang to you
on the afternoon of August 4, 2001,
the day you got married.
May you enjoy a good laugh
thinking of him and his silver thumb
now that you've turned the key
into your new life in the beautiful
Massachusetts rain and—hey, now—sun!

-- Bill Zavatsky (1943- ) poet, translator, musician, teacher, and editor, from Where X Marks the Spot

To The Unknown God

Once more, before my vision turns

To strange horizons, untried lands,
To thee I lift my lonely hands
For whom my spirit yearns,
To whom, within its ultimate shrine,
Are solemn altars dedicate
While yet I wait
The summoning voice to claim me thine.
Thereon is writ in characters ablaze
The deep-cut legend, “To the Unknown God”;
For his am I, although my feet have trod,
Even to this hour, in foul and miry ways,
Yea, I will know thee, great Unknown,
Who shakest the foundations of my soul,
Urgent and clamorous as the thunder’s roll.
Eternally apart, eternally my own,
Yea, I will know thee — I will serve thee.

--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, philologist, critic, founder of nihilism, influencer of Nazism, vehement atheist and hater of Christianity, and yeah, I am just as surprised as anyone by this poem, but it was written when a young man before he denounced Christianity.

Scripture reference: Acts 17:22-31, Easter 6A

truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), prolific and influential poet, author, teacher, and first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

Scripture reference: John 14:1-14, Easter 5A

To Ellen, at the South

The green grass is growing,

The morning wind is in it, 

'Tis a tune worth the knowing, 

Though it change every minute. '

Tis a tune of the spring, 

Every year plays it over, 

To the robin on the wing, 

To the pausing lover. 

O'er ten thousand thousand acres 

Goes light the nimble zephyr, 

The flowers, tiny feet of shakers, 

Worship him ever. 

Hark to the winning sound! 

They summon thee, dearest, 

Saying; "We have drest for thee the ground, 

Nor yet thou appearest. 

"O hasten, 'tis our time, 

Ere yet the red summer 

Scorch our delicate prime, 

Loved of bee, the tawny hummer. 

"O pride of thy race! 

Sad in sooth it were to ours, 

If our brief tribe miss thy face,— 

We pour New England flowers. 

 "Fairest! choose the fairest members 

Of our lithe society; 

June's glories and September's 

Show our love and piety. 

 "Thou shalt command us all, 

April's cowslip, summer's clover 

To the gentian in the fall, 

Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. 

 "O come, then, quickly come, 

We are budding, we are blowing, 

And the wind which we perfume 

Sings a tune that's worth thy knowing."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, preacher, and member of the Transcendentalists

Eucharistic Prayer from Salal + Cedar

God be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to God.
Let us give thanks to God our Creator.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We give thanks to you for Jesus, whose first bed was a feed trough. He was baptized in the Jordan, tested in the wilderness, he traveled in fishing boats and told parables of farmers and seeds, labor and wages, yeast and bread.

We praise you here in the Bow and Elbow River watersheds, where both city and farm, wilderness and industry are side by side. We praise you at a time when the body of earth is broken again and again.

We give thanks for our place in the story of salvation. Our ancestors journeyed with you in creation and migration. They depended on the land, were displaced from the land and displaced others from their lands. They knew you in tents and cities, on mountains and by wells, in families and in dreams, and through wilderness prophets who spoke of lodgepole pines and listened to crows.

Together with angels and ancestors, chickadee and magpie, bear, moose and trout, aspen and larch, we join our voices with all creation in this ancient honour song (said):

Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread, food of the poor, the work of field and hearth, he gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his friends saying: Take and eat, this is my body, given for you, do this to remember me.

Again after supper he took the cup of wine, fruit of the land, gave thanks and gave it to his friends saying: This is my blood, which is shed for you. When you do this, do it in memory of me.

Remembering Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and awaiting his coming kingdom, we offer you this bread and this cup.

Creator, send your Spirit on these gifts so that we know Jesus in them and are gathered together with everyone who shares this sacred meal of justice and community. Fill us with the courage and love of Jesus that we may strive for justice and peace, respect the dignity of every human being, and safeguard the integrity of creation. All honor and glory are yours, Creator, Christ and Spirit, now and forever. Amen.


--Eucharistic Prayer adapted from Salal + Cedar, Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. Salal + Cedar's website is here.