Night Blessing

(Night time is beautiful; a bedtime prayer for children)


The moon and stars dance overhead
To let us know it’s time for bed.
Night holds us in a safe embrace,
So we may rest in this soft place.

Thank you, dear God, for this past day
With time to learn and time to play.
Thank you for friends, and family too,
God bless them all, and bless us too!

God, guide our dreams, for your love’s sake,
Bless all with peace until we wake.
Jesus, stay near, with angels bright,
And guard us through this blessed Night.



-- Leslie Scoopmire, written August 4, 2023. This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on August 10, 2023.

This was written when I searched for hours and could not find prayers that did not need adaptation because they mentioned death, and/or only imagined children living in a two-parent household, and/or used exclusive masculine terms for God. It is also meant to reassure kids that the night is not frightening.

Easter Eggs

As I hold one steady for my three-year-old while he

slaps it with garish red, yellow, black, changing my hand
and his to bright apparitions around that perfectly
ordinary whiteness, I wonder what strange need
began this, drove us to add these brittle
ornaments to spring's own: the pastel flowers
of bulbs already open, the sky's deepening blue,
the enfolding green incipient everywhere. But he
sees differently, chooses these fall colors
to wonder at--then, suddenly, wonders most of all
at my hand and how he's transformed it, laughing
as he paints it again and again, until the egg
takes color from my mere touch, and I understand
these eggs are not for spring, not newness: they belong
to that oldest world we've carried always within us, ablaze
with magnificent birds that could only hatch from such brilliance,
ourselves savagely radiant in our own colors.

--Mark Anderson

Prayer for Children

Salish woman and grandchildren

One of my favorite pictures is that of a Native American Grandmother holding a small child tenderly in her lap. Her strong arms are around the child. Grandmother is a comforting presence; the child looks very content and secure.

Take a moment to recall the Jesus’ own words: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them!” [Mark 10: 14]

Jesus, as the mothers brought the children to you,
teach us how to lead the children to your lap.
Hold them tenderly.
Let them pour out their hearts and souls to you.
Bring them love, joy, laughter.
Free them from any kind of hurts.
Embrace them warmly.
Let them be in a holy communion with you.
Amen.

– Sister Dolores Shortal, OP (Dominican Sisters of Sparkill)

Celtic Prayer for a Newborn

Lucky stars above you,

Sunshine on your way;

Many friends to love you,

Joy in work and play;

Laughter to outweigh each care,

In your heart a song;

And gladness waiting everywhere

All your whole life long.

-- Unknown

My Second Birth

That first birth
when I pushed myself
free of her
and burst out
into invisible air
is as lost to me
as the months I floated
in that ocean of unbroken thought.

But passing on
the birth she gave me
has made me see Mama
face to face.

I understand now
what she means when she says
she loves me:
It's the place you get to
when you've pushed
to the other side of pain.

A light grew in my belly
until my husband
could warm his hands by it.
I gave our son my broken sleep,
the fists, hands, fists, hands, fists
I made when he woke me
from my dream about his name.

I gave birth to him awed
by his apple-round head
in the bright glass above my knees.
I was given new strength
when he crowned
and my blood burst
like a chain of jewels
around his neck.

Mama 
was my first image of God.
I remember how she leaned over my crib,
her eyes full of sky.

--Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet, translator, and children's. book author, from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, 1997.



Photo: My mom and my siblings, ca 1970. I am on the left, sucking my thumb and having been forced to relinquish my spot on her lap to the interlopers.

On Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
He also loves the bow that is stable.

--Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American artist, painter, writer, and poet, from The Prophet, 1923