Prayers of Adoration & Confession

Watch or 6:42

Creating God
You offer a vision of good times after hardship
Of a future that is full of hope
When crops will grow, and produce will be plentiful.

Forgive us when we are overwhelmed by the present
When we find it hard to dream
And see a future that is hopeful and full of life.

Jesus who speaks to the Pharisees and the tax collectors
You challenge us to be humble
To see ourselves as only we can
And embrace our weakness.

Forgive us when we get caught up in the world of status
When we value some people’s work, some people’s ethics,
And some people’s position above others.

Spirit of the Living God,
You pour out your spirit upon us all
Promising that we will dream dreams
And see visions.

Forgive us when do not feel your Spirit moving among us,
When we hesitate and are worn down by the things that are happening all around us
And do not live out your promise.

Amen.

Word of Grace

Siblings in Christ,
God sees us as we are,
And Jesus teaches us that God welcomes us when we come in humility.

In Christ, through Christ and because of Christ,
our sin is forgiven.
Thanks be to God!

Kirsty Bennett, offered for worship 23/10/2022, Pentecost 20C

Prayers of the people

Watch or 42:47

Today for the Prayers of the People I will use a mediation drawn from Joanna Macy’s book Active Hope.

So let’s get settled, plant our feet and connect with the ground beneath us. Either close your eyes or focus on the candle flame if that is more comfortable for you.

Now, focus on your breathing. Don’t try to breathe in any special way, slow or long. Just watch the breathing as it happens, in and out. Note the accompanying sensations at the nostrils or in the chest or abdomen. Stay passive and alert, like a cat by a mouse hole….

As you watch the breathing, note that it happens by itself, without your will, without your deciding each time to inhale or exhale. It’s as though you’re being breathed — being breathed by life. Just as everyone in this room, in this city, on this planet now, is being breathed by life, sustained in a vast living breathing web….

Now visualize your breath as a stream or ribbon of air. See it flow up through your nose, down through your windpipe, and into your lungs. Now take it through the heart. Picture it flowing through your heart and out through an opening there to reconnect with the larger web of life. Let the breath-stream, as it passes through you and through your heart, appear as one loop within that vast web, connecting you with it….

Now open your awareness to the suffering in the world. For now drop all defenses and open to your knowledge of that suffering. Let it come as concretely as you can, images of your fellow beings in pain and need, in fear and isolation, in prisons, hospitals, tenements, refugee camps…no need to strain for these images; they are present to you by virtue of our inter-existence.

Relax and just let them surface … the countless hardships of our fellow human beings, and of our animal brothers and sisters as well, as they swim the seas and fly the air of this planet… Now breathe in the pain like granules of sand on the stream of air, up through your nose, down through your trachea, lungs and heart, and out again into the world…You are asked to do nothing for now, but let it pass through your heart… Be sure that stream flows through and out again, don’t hang on to that pain… Surrender it for now to the healing resources of life’s vast web.

“Let all sorrows ripen in me,” said Shantideva, the Buddhist saint. We help them ripen by passing them through our hearts… making good, rich compost out of all that grief… so we can learn from it, enhancing our larger, collective knowing…

If no images or feelings arise and there is only blankness, gray and numb, breathe that through. The numbness itself is a very real part of our world. And if what surfaces for you is not pain for other beings so much as losses and hurts in your own life, breathe those through too. Your own difficulties are an integral part of the grief of our world, and arise with it….

With Mother Theresa of Calcutta, we can say: May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.

Should you fear that with this pain your heart might break, remember that the heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe. Your heart is that large. Trust it. Keep breathing. Trust in God.

Remember, your kinship with God and with all of creation and your desire to find healing for ourselves and for the world. Amen

Meredith Budge, offered for worship 23/10/2022, Pentecost 20C