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dreamprayact

~ Reflections of a preacher, poet, and contemplative activist

dreamprayact

Monthly Archives: November 2013

Thanksgiving Eve Prayer

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Prayers, Uncategorized, Worship Liturgy

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

blessing, Christ, creation, forgiveness, grace, gratitude, Psalm, source of life, thanksgiving

First United Methodist Church, Santa Maria, CA, USA

First United Methodist Church, Santa Maria, CA, USA

I will be sharing this Opening Prayer I wrote for our 13th Annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Eve Service in Santa Maria, California this evening. We are the host church for this annual event involving about ten congregations. If you wish to adapt this prayer for your own use in worship, please feel welcome to do so. ~ Mark

God of all creation and Source of all life,
tonight we offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving.                                        Psalm 50:14
We bring ourselves, humble and broken though we may be,
to the altar of your blessing and grace.
We bring our voices, frail and hesitant though they may be,
in joyous praise to the One who gives us a new song to sing.                  Psalm 40:3
We bring our gifts to the One who is awesome,
who inspires fear in the rulers of the earth.                                               Psalm 76:11-12
We thank you for these moments we have together
to pause from the busy pace and endless noise of our lives
and simply rest in a spirit of gratitude for all you are to us.
We thank you that as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is your steadfast love toward us,
and that as far as the east is from the west,
so far do you remove our transgressions from us.                                    Psalm 103:11-12
We thank you for your deep compassion over your creation,
and the ways in which you constantly call us back to you.
Most of all, we thank you for your Son Jesus,
who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.                       John 10:10
Christ is the morning star who rises in our hearts,                                    2 Peter 1:19
the true light which enlightens everyone.                                                  John 1:9
Christ instructs us in your holy way of love,
and invites us into that perfect love that casts out fear.                            1 John 4:18
We pray this day for people and nations the world over
who need to be blessed by the bounty of your grace.
May our thanksgiving bring others closer to you,
O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.                                                         Psalm 19:14
There is no other rock besides you, O Lord,                                             Isaiah 44:8
our fortress in whom we take refuge.                                                        Psalm 18:2
So we join the multitude from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages,
and all the angels standing around the throne
worshipping you and singing,
“Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”                                                  Revelation 7:12

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Small Town Boy

22 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems, Reflections

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

childhood, Dallas, JFK Assassination, lost innocence, Pacific Northwest, President John F Kennedy

scrapbookSmall Town Boy

Life in a small town in the Pacific Northwest was grand
for a boy, playing outdoor games with neighbor children,
climbing fir trees, riding a blue Schwinn bike with pedals
I could barely reach, throwing balls over the pitched roof
of the corner house as friends waited on the other side,
hiding and seeking in our tidy little alley cul-de-sac.

My cousins lived on a nearby farm
where the barnyard was a world of fascination
complete with milking cows and squawking chickens.

I was a first grader in Miss Iva McGillivray’s class
at the Everson-Nooksack Elementary School.
I was so proud of the first and third place ribbons I won
during the fall running races on the school lawn.

Then one terrible November day,
clouds solemnly assembled on distant hills,
children scattered across school playgrounds.

President Kennedy was shot.

Later in our living room at home,
the television showed footage of the Dallas motorcade—
the commotion and screaming,
a car rushing away from the grievous scene,
faces in the crowd marked by tears, wounded by worry.
The strange firecracker sounds kept ringing in my ears,
making me dizzy and uncertain, shattering my innocence.

My mother cried, my father held a troubled look,
a pall settled over my tender years.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Building an Altar for All

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Peace with justice, Reflections

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Altar for All, biblical obedience, Body of Christ, Book of Discipline, Christian views on marriage, Frank Schaefer, homosexual unions, human sexuality, LGBT, marriage equality, Methodism, Pastoral ministry, social justice, United Methodist Church

P1010306I am a United Methodist by choice, since I did not grow up a Methodist. I am a Minister of the Gospel by calling, and that calling originates in my relationship with God. It is a calling I received before choosing the Wesleyan path of discipleship for my own. It is a calling to serve a higher purpose of bringing a message of reconciliation and hope to a broken and hurting world. It is a calling to bless and not to curse, to heal and not to harm, to speak and not to be silent to injustice!

There is a crisis of conscience in my beloved church. Although we say that we discern matters theologically using the lenses of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, I believe that on the question of whether homosexuality is compatible with Christian teaching we disregard everything but a few select verses of Scripture. We certainly disregard current and historical understandings of human sexuality, we disregard the prevailing views of major mental health associations, and most importantly we disregard the profoundly painful experience of exclusion that is resident within the voices of LGBT Christians. These are our sisters and brothers in Christ. We effectively slam the doors of our churches on them when we say that their sexuality is inconsistent with being Christian.

In recent days, with a formal complaint being considered against a retired bishop of the church for conducting a same-sex wedding and a trial and punishment of a clergy colleague for officiating at the marriage ceremony of his gay son, it is clear that traditionalists within the church will not even allow ministry to all persons regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression. The Book of Discipline is being lifted up as the ultimate rulebook for appropriate forms of ministry, and within its pages it explicitly states, “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.”

Shall not.

Yet they have been and will continue to be because for some of us there is no way to be true to our calling as Ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ while excluding some from the means of grace expressed through our ministry.

Indeed more than a thousand United Methodist clergy across the United States have signed a statement (see Altar for All) committing themselves to fulfill their vow to be in ministry with all people by offering the grace of the Church’s blessing to any prepared couple desiring Christian marriage regardless of their gender. It is a form of biblical obedience for those of us who do not consider Scripture to be error-free truth devoid of cultural context.

So along with other United Methodist ministers I face the daily question: Do I follow the immoral remnant of discrimination written into the Book of Discipline decades ago or do I follow the words on the very same page under the heading Responsibilities and Duties of Elders that make me duty-bound “To build the body of Christ as a caring and giving community, extending the ministry of Christ to the world?”

I don’t see how I can do both!

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

A Room Remembered

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

childlike devotion, good memories, grandparents, imagination, Jesus, Pastoral ministry, preaching, sacred calling, worship

Nooksack, Washington parsonage

Nooksack, Washington parsonage

A Room Remembered

Granddad’s study
is a modest room
off the living room
in the two-story Nooksack parsonage,
a half block from the wooden country church
where he preaches every Sunday morning.

Its scents fill the air
and remain with me to this day —
wood paneling,
serious books,
mimeograph ink and paper.

In this room every Saturday my granddad copies bulletins
on an aging mimeograph for the next day’s worship service.

At the tender age of five
I am his able assistant.

We watch as sheets of paper fly rhythmically through the machine
and are caught in a tray on the other side.
Then he and I fold the bulletins,
careful to find the middle of each one,
and I am again swept up
in my imaginings of being him.

I imagine standing before a congregation someday,
with a stain-glassed Jesus holding a lamb tenderly in his arms
on the wall behind the pulpit,
and daring to tell the truth about God’s ways in the world.

I am no mere admirer gazing upon my granddad’s noble calling.
No, I love him with eager childlike devotion –
my heart full of wanting to be like him.

Words (c) 2004 Mark Lloyd Richardson

My Granddad, the Rev. Norval Sweet Richardson

My Granddad, the Rev. Norval Sweet Richardson

November 2013
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