Litanies & Prayers

The world is God’s and it will not fall apart.

The new age which the Lord has begun cannot be driven out or held back.

The church need not live out of fear as though the gospel were not true.

Listen, God. Pay attention. Bend your ear to the sigh of my soul.

The world can be too much.

Floods devastate the lives of friends in the Midwest. Drought continues here in the Southeast. Health care costs and foreclosures and the price of tortillas have us scrambling for spare change.

Listen to the voice of Wisdom, O people of folly. Hear the voice of understanding as She makes Her stand at the city gate and presides in the town square.

“All of you, hear my cry. Your lives are marked by trivial pursuits. Deceitful ways and crooked days are unbecoming, no matter how much gold acquired or jewel-attired.”

Guided by Wisdom’s voice every ruler’s choice leans toward just and worthy decrees.

Each of you, a bordered country,  / Delicate and strangely made proud, / Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit / Have left collars of waste upon / My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet today I call you to my riverside, / If you will study war no more. Come, / Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs / The Creator gave to me when I and the / Tree and the rock were one.

Doubtless one day you will have cause
to chant the Prophet’s lament:

            Truly
           thou art a God
           who hidest thyself.

Even so, I still prefer this One to the other,
more snuggly brand, who feigns intimacy
but has the aroma of cheap perfume,
cheaper wine and layered sweat,
having been passed around by too many
lusty barkers for whom ecstasy's aftermath
           is nauseous stupor.

The payback of Heaven neither tortures nor torments.

The vengeance of God is Christ’s victory of mercy,
o’er all venal indenture and vile deception.

The terror of God is the Risen One’s threat
to every merchant of death, every marketer’s breath,
every peddler of gun-wielding promise of power,

Do you wish to inquire into the purpose of the Most High God? Do you long for wisdom?

Do you pant for the breath of life? Does the Song of Creation reach your ears?

If you ask the animals, they will teach you. Ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you.

Every bird in flight, every creature of sea, every hair of every head is numbered and known.

In darkness and in light, whether happy or sad, asleep or awake, there is an Advocate who lingers, Who does not forget, Who notices every tear and cherishes all laughter.

Who is this Advocate, this gracious Father, this guardian Mother, this Presence whose Way is peace, whose Will is justice, whose Weal is shaped in mercy.

     Call to worship
Welcome to this Circle of faith. Today we mark both the palm and the passion of the human journey toward the arms of God.

Jesus, riding a humble donkey, entered Jerusalem, cheered by the crowd.

Palms and cloaks were laid in his path as a sign of messianic hope for deliverance.

Encouragement is the lime and silica that cement fickle sand into concrete resolve. The ministry of encouragement is not the “soft,” interpersonal side of our more hard-charging, public mission of confronting disruptive power.

We rejoice in the Blessed One,
who draws us up and circles us round
and builds a bulwark against gales of destruction.

Offering pastoral encouragement within the Body is not “feminine” work where mission in the larger world is “masculine.”