New Ingredients for Worship
Possibilities to add spice to worship
My newsfeed has been full of new bouts of COVID. People who never got it are getting infected. Some of them are really sick. Heck. I was one of those people a few months ago. My sister and mother-in-law both have it right now.
There is talk of a new vaccine and I’m remembering that long season where I wrote so many pandemic prayers. My baby was actually still a baby then. She doesn’t remember the “yucky germs” and doesn’t really understand my raised eyebrows every time it arises. She balks that I still make her wear a mask when we travel while her sister tries to instruct her on how important it is. Wisdom comes to seven year olds.
We moved to Germany while the pandemic was still in full swing and it still feels strange to live in a world where the horrors are further away. I still get asked if I’m nervous living as close as we do to Ukraine and even Israel but it scares me more to go back to the United States and live in the reality of the persistent gun violence. These are prayers on my heart right now though I’m not sure if they will ever find words. Still, I know God is listening. God hears it all.
New Prayers and Liturgies for Ordinary Time
Though I have mostly been writing prayers for my spiritual direction practice and my other newsletter Prayer Threads, in the midst of this redesigns, I felt inspired to create new liturgies for the autumn months. I haven’t yet managed anything new for congregational worship in Advent though I am keenly aware of how much it already feels like that expectation and longing has already come. I am still struggling to find the words and find myself craving more and more silence.
If you are looking for more ideas for Advent this year, here are a few of what I’ve written that feels to speak to the moment we are in now:
Sometimes Prayer for Peace (Advent 2C)
Prayer of Confession (Advent 3C)
Call to Worship (Advent 4C)
Epiphany Comes
As the new year dawns, and in the United States of America where a new president will be inaugurated, I am wondering about what we see in Christ that we didn’t see before. Advent is full of the frustration but there is a release that comes in Epiphany. We have found what we wanted, at least liturgically. I wonder what it means to wrestle with the complex emotions that many progressive communities are experiencing right now and still find that our light shines.
I wonder what it means to renew our baptisms this year and what it is that we need to remember in those promises as a new reality emerges. Do we need more space to play in the water to understand what it is we are dare to proclaim? Do we need to remember that God is well pleased with us? I imagine there is much that we need.
New Website Design
As summer ended, I spent some time revamping this site because I got annoyed that I couldn’t find some of the prayers myself. I started creating a new index both by season and by scripture. It’s still being updated as I sort though typos from several years ago but then I decided to make more changes. I redesigned the whole site so that it has a new but still familiar look.
Was I inspired by the changes at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s RCL page? Probably. Change is good for the soul and even though there might be a few more dead links than I would like, it feels good to have things more organized.
More Daydreaming
I hope and pray there is more daydreaming and imagination for all of us in the days and weeks ahead. I’ll be praying with you and for you and hope you’ll remember me in your prayers too.
I’m honored that there are a number of new subscribers to this newsletter that hasn’t gone out in over a year. I hope you’ve found what something good and that you are ready to create holy space for all of the questions before us. Thank you so much for the amazing work you do, dear pastor.
silence... we can't forget about that...
Love the new! (Thanks for the rfedesign. And, is that me in the first line about new Covid? should be, ugh.)