Given by Rainer Frost
On Sunday, November 4

Words can be empty.  I am looking to the goodness in your hearts, that I call God, to fill my words with meaning.  The following is a passage from Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen.  Earlier in the book, the speaker has told us, “I am ninety.  Or ninety-three.  One or the other.”  This comes one morning as he lies in bed in his room in a rest home.

I reach for the napkin, and as I do I catch sight of my hands.  They are knobby and crooked, thin-skinned, and—like my ruined face—covered with liver spots.
My face.  I push the porridge aside and open my vanity mirror.  I should know better by now, but somehow I still expect to see myself.  Instead, I find an Appalachian apple doll, withered and spotty, with dewlaps and bags and long, floppy ears.  A few strands of white hair spring absurdly from its spotted skull.
I try to brush the hairs flat with my hand and freeze at the sight of my old hand on my old head.  I lean close and open my eyes very wide, trying to see beyond the sagging flesh.
 It’s no good.  Even when I look straight into the milky blue eyes, I can’t find myself anymore.  When did I stop being me?

This passage struck me as an allegory for an easier topic.  Or a harder topic.  One or the other.  Who are we spiritually?  Are we the Appalachian apple doll that others see?  Or the vibrantly good babe or stud that we feel like inside?  Does our own belief structure show through to others, or only our liver-spotted skin?

Here is the exciting part.  Unlike aging, we can discern—and narrow—the gap between the spiritual goodness that we know at our core and the self that we project to the world.  “Living who we are” sounds obvious and simple.  It is not.  It takes courage.  It takes the kind of courage that we have to muster to speak up when we hear a friend utter an unkindness that we know is not right.  It takes the kind of courage that we have to muster to open our homes, not just our wallets, to others who have less than we do.  It takes the kind of courage that we have to muster to recognize, own, and admit to our own mistakes to our children, our parents or peers that we would prefer to impress.  It takes the understanding and open expression of things that are hard to understand, and harder to express.

Living our spiritual identity is an easier topic than aging, because unlike the effects of aging, we can change who we show that we are spiritually.  We can be who we are, and who we are can be who we want to be.  We can remove our liver spots, remove the wrinkles and dewlaps that mar our Appalachian apple doll faces, grow in hair in the color that we want, and shorten our long, floppy ears.

So here is a prayer for today.  Let each of us look at ourselves and at who we want to be and find that person in ourselves.  Let each of us look at ourselves and try to discern what others see.  Let each of us be whom we want to be and live who we are in a way that lets others see us as we see ourselves.

Given by Mimsy Beckwith
on Veteran’s Day, November 11

O loving God, we come together in this beautiful sanctuary—
     and together, in our music, in our words, and in our silence,
         we come to you.

On this day, we pray with all our hearts
     that peace will someday, somehow,
           prevail on our earth.
There is barely a one of us who has not lost
     a friend or a loved one
          to war.
So long as we live, these lost soldiers will live also,
     a part of us,
     never to be misplaced or forgotten,
          – ever.

But how we wish that it might not have come to this.

And so today we pray.
We pray to God
     who loved us each so dearly in our making
           and who then let us go:
Please don’t take your hand entirely from us.
Stay near to us.
Raise us up from fear and pride,
     and dignify our world struggles with acts of honor and compassion.
We ask in the names of all who have gone before
     that you will be with us,
     be in us,
           make of us thy rod and thy staff.

O God of the beautiful and nationless universe,
     whose hand has touched not one or another
           but all of us:
Let this hymn be our hymn: “a song of peace for lands afar,” and ours.

                                                            —Amen.

Given by Rainer Frost
On Sunday, November 18

            Since time immemorial, agrarian societies have celebrated the Fall harvest, and our own Thanksgiving holiday represents such a celebration.  As our society has evolved further from the earth, so too have we evolved further from the fields of harvest.  Today, at times, it feels that what is being celebrated is not the abundance of the earth brought forth through our own laboring hands, but just “stuff.”  My prayer today is that we can find and act on a deeper gratitude.

            When I was a child, my family moved to an ancient house so small that one man whom my father consulted about it looked at the blueprint and asked what kind of shed it was.  With borrowed money and his own hands, my father built the house to a size that would fit our family.  A friend came down from the North to do the electrical wiring for the entire house.  It was a lot of work, and I asked him what he would charge us.  He laughed, and said “nothing.”  I asked him how he could do so much work for nothing, and he laughed again.  Then he said something that I have never forgotten.  He said, “the world has given me so much, that if I give back for the rest of my life, I will never be able to repay all that has been given to me.”

            In her book, The Mole People, Jennifer Toth writes about the literally thousands of homeless people who live underground in the tunnels and caverns beneath New York City.  She describes one social outreach worker who was ordered out of the tunnels after going deep underground to work with the homeless every day for four months straight.  The worker explained that his dedication to the cause stemmed from his own history of being one of the underground homeless.  “I know what it’s like for people to give up on you,” he said, “and you lose your spirit.”  He wanted, he said, to repay those who had helped him to break out, by helping others.

            Among the dozens of homeless underground tunnel people, track people and mole people that she interviewed, the principal recurring themes Toth found were that the homeless felt that society had rejected them and that they were invisible to society.  She found a fascinating analog in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the African-American protagonist explained that he was “invisible in New York’s racist society of the fifties ‘simply because people refuse to see me.’”  It is striking that an act as basic as “seeing” another person can be an act of kindness.  Striking, too, that the act of “seeing” another person could be in such short supply at different layers of our society.

            Please take a neighbor’s hand in each of yours, hear this prayer, and hold it for a moment in your heart as we all hold hands and through our touch, see each other.

            Let us pray today that we may become more aware of, and give thanks for, what the world has given to us, including the kindnesses of others, whether great and tangible, or subtler, such as simply being visible to those around us.  Let us, in gratitude, find the resolve to give to the world our own kindnesses, knowing that we can never repay what has been given to us.  And let us find in ourselves the resolve not to let others in our world go “unseen” by us.  Rather, let us pray that we may “see” others and help them to feel visible to us.

Given by Adam Bailey
on Sunday, November 25

This prayer was inspired by Joan Mansfield’s Lay Prayer in December of last year.

During this week of thanksgiving, we give thanks for the people of this earth.  Their passions and loves are as varied as they are, and each one adds meaning and richness to the world.

We give thanks for the potter
Who sits at her wheel with clay and water on her hands.
Out of the endless, spiraling movement
She creates something beautiful.
Can the making of a bowl be a prayer?

We give thanks for the writer
Who sits for hours and days, patiently honing his art.
Through his extraordinary imagination, his flights of fancy,
We’re all enriched.
Can the writing of a story be a prayer?

We give thanks for the gardener
Who works in her garden in all seasons and all weathers,
Who loves to get dirt under her fingernails.
Can the growing of a flower be a prayer?

We give thanks for those who photograph the natural world.
They wait for long hours to capture just the right moment.
Can a photograph of a landscape be a prayer?

We give thanks for those who cook,
Fascinated by the mingling of tastes,
The alchemy of ingredients.
Can the baking of bread be a prayer?

We give thanks for the nurse’s aid
Who takes time out from his duties
To listen to the old woman, sickly and bed-ridden,
As she thinks back wistfully to her childhood.
Can listening to another human being be a prayer?

We give thanks for the doctor
Who spends her life with the sick and the infirm.
Can the setting of a bone or the healing of a disease be a prayer?

We give thanks for those who study the natural world
In all its splendor and crystalline complexity:
Who spend their days in laboratories and on scientific expeditions.
Can the study of a chemical reaction be a prayer?

We give thanks for those who gaze at the stars
And wonder about the mysteries of the universe.
Can a long look at the heavens through a telescope be a prayer?

We give thanks for the baseball player, the figure skater, the runner.
Their speed, skill and grace are miraculous.
Can the playing of a game be a prayer?

We give thanks for the gathering recently past,
The table heaped with delicious food,
Turkey, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie,
The laughter, warmth and conversation.
Can a gathering of loved ones be a prayer.

And last but not least, we give thanks for you, O Great Spirit.
We all long to be close to you.
Some of us wonder if we can feel your presence – or even if you exist at all.
But could it be that when we’re expressing ourselves,
When we’re doing the thing we love most,
Then we’re tapping into the hint, the glimmer of You
That’s there deep inside us?
And then we’re bringing You to life in the world?

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