Lenten Prayer
Holy mystery,
we offer praise for the slowly warming winds
and for the lengthening of daylight hours
calling forth the blossoms of springtime,
for the re-creation of hope and growth.
We are filled with gratitude
for the changing rhythm of the natural order
and the ways it brings nourishment and joy.
We give you thanks,
O gracious one,
for you have touched our soul.
You have loved us from the moment of our conception
and held us in grief and happiness.
As we travel our path,
call us forth from the prisons and bondage
we have created
by our narrow patterns of being and believing,
our limited acceptance of ourselves and others.
Show us a way through our wilderness.
Most generous lover
grace us with your presence.
You welcome us home.
You awaken our slumbering hearts
to the fullness of our humanity
so that we may claim our awesomeness
and fragile beauty.
We seek to be encouraged by your truth
so that we might restore compassion
to the human family,
renew the face of the earth and
give expression to your light
in the midst of the world’s wilderness.
Christ spirit, in these days of Lenten prayer,
stir up our dream of true peace with justice.
We believe prayer to be
a radical act of faith,
a spirited give and take with ultimate mystery.
Show us the ways to give speech to the longings
of our world and of ourselves and
to extend that speech into action.
Palm Sunday and Holy Week
Gracious, eternal one,
we celebrate this morning in the tradition of Palm Sunday,
offering our Hosannas of praise and thanksgiving
for Jesus and the way he lived his life.
We offer praise
for the expressions of your covenant with us through him.
We gratefully acknowledge
our tradition that also proclaims this Passion Sunday
and are thankful that
Jesus was a person of deep compassion,
willing to accept the consequences of such love.
We embrace with gratitude
his willingness to ride a lowly donkey into the city,
realizing the limits of his power
to bring change to that city
and to change the actions of his followers.
Compassionate womb,
awaken in us a fresh awareness of the richness
the images of Holy Week offer.
Remind us that Jesus’ actions throughout the week
were on behalf of the whole world.
Encourage our understanding of how
taking up our cross means
abandoning neutrality,
making the invisible visible,
sharing God’s vision.
We offer prayers of intercession
as our compassionate response to your call
to join Jesus’ Holy Week journey.
The Easter Story
Eternal, empowering, Holy One,
we praise you
for the promise and fresh energy
the Easter story brings into our lives.
We are thankful
that Jesus continues to show himself to us in new ways
and that we can experience
his love, presence and vision for the world
in our own lives and times.
Gracious God,
we praise and thank you for
the witness of the women who went to the tomb.
The scripture describes
the fears as well as the joys and relief they experienced.
We too are caught
between the fears and doubts of our faith
and the joy and affirmation of what we have seen and known.
It is good to recognize ourselves
as part of the history of your people struggling
between fear of what is and has been
and a desire to affirm
an open and unknown future.
Unexpected, moving, evolving spirit of God,
you bring about powerful reversals
in the world and in our lives.
The mystery of your created universe is
a constant reminder
of the ways you create and re-create
through cycles of death and new life,
through change and fresh beginnings.
As your Easter people,
we want this new life to be offered and experienced
by people and situations all over our world,
for hope to be known and embraced.
Easter
Risen, living Christ,
we embrace your gift of resurrection power.
We open our whole being to your invitation to
join you in moving from deadness into fullness of life.
We respond,
“Yes!”
to your call to live.
Jesus, spirit, companion, friend,
you embrace the whole world with human/divine love and caring.
You ask each of us to show our love for you
by tending and feeding your world and its people.
Enable us to recognize the people and places
to whom we are being sent.
Enable us to offer love.
Open us to fresh expressions
of your loving of us,
so that we can be more whole and more accepting of ourselves
and out of that acceptance
move toward others with trusting hearts.
Turn us from mourning into dancing.
Loosen our sackcloth.
Gird us with gladness.
Christ spirit,
you go before us and call us into the future.
Encourage our community
as we form and re-form ourselves as your Body.
Just as the revelations of Easter
energized the first disciples,
so we would be energized to dream new visions
and be open to new risks
and to the unknown.
We join your embrace of the whole world
with our prayers.
Veni Sancte Spiritu
Holy one, we come
ready to receive anew the gifts of your spirit
that will give us vision
to form and reform ourselves as a people of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.
Free us from fear.
Give us courage to speak of your marvelous ways
and of your hope
so that we may live each day fully.
Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.
Awaken us so that we may be bold to be
the body of Christ’s presence in the world,
renewing our life together,
renewing the world.
Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.
Spirited wind of change
enable the bending of what is rigid,
the reversal of what has gone astray,
the freshness of new possibility.
Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.
Come as comforter and offer us and all people
relief, consolation and companionship.
Tend to our woundedness.
Restore us to life that we may be healers.
Come, Holy Spirit, come and be a new reality.
Reconcilor and spirit for justice,
empower our prophet’s voice
that it may be heard throughout the land
retelling the gospel vision,
praying for the unity of all true spirits.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
You are the reason
this gathering is a holy place.
Come, Holy Spirit, and be a new reality.
