Prayer - The Rev. Angela Herrera

We give thanks. We give thanks for hope, and that change is possible. We give thanks for this moment, and for our lives.

We give thanks for all that sustains us, for all that is the very ground of our being: for the air, which bathes us night and day: the air, our breath, and the breath of our ancestors, and the breath of the trees and the beasts, the air, which passes through ocean and sky.

We give thanks for the water, which flows in streams and storms and in our bodies, water, which formed a womb with the earth in primordial times, and gave birth to life and to us and to everyone we love.

We give thanks for the fire, burning in the sun, warm energy that dances with water and air, feeds the plants and trees and plankton.

And we give thanks for the earth, our mother, our home. For her nourishing darkness and mountainous strength, for her ageless patience. We give thanks for the earth.

In our gratitude, may we be wise, grounded and strong.

May we love and be loved.

May there be peace in our hearts.

And may we make our lives a blessing upon this world, through our manner of being.

Amen. Peace be with you.

"Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (poem)

 

(Title taken from the first line from Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem)

“Let this darkness be a bell tower / and you the bell. As you ring, /what batters you becomes your strength.” (Rilke - Sonnets to Orpheus II)

Batter me, Love, like a bell. Till I ring
and ring and ring because everything
I am, my whole being, is vibrating
with the urgent, pressing call
for love—not the sweet love
of lullabies, but insistent love
that rings through walls,
love that drowns out any voice
not in service to the whole.
Batter me love, until there is no one,
including me, who cannot hear
the pounding imperative to be kind,
to find compassion,
until all beings feel real love pealing
through their bodies—
a resonant command
so true it cannot be unheard.
I have heard other love-battered
bells of humans, and the song of them
is charging me, changing me,
making me long to be rung only by love—
It is not easy to keep asking for the battering.
But worse to be silent.
Worse not to be bell.
Worse not to be an instrument of love.
Once I feared the battering.
Now, I fear it and thrill in the ringing—
love, the only song I want to sing.

"How the Light Comes" by Jan Richardson (poem)

 

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.

What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.

That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.

That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.

And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still

to the blessed light
that comes.

"Winter Poem" by Nikki Giovani

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and i loved

it so much and i kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and i squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and i stood perfectly

still and was a flower