A Prayer About Praying
Peace, friends. Recently, I was invited to draft a prayer in relation to James 2 for a crew who is having some conversation around the text.
While being written, the prayer sort of transmuted into a theopoetic essay (in prayer form). Not what I expected. And, also, I really am happy with it. So I thought I would share.
I know it says copyright on it. But of course, it is also copyleft, so you are free to use it in faith-y-ish settings for liturgies, for morning prayer, etc., with whatever gathering of beings might be kind of fed by it. You have my permission. I used it today with a crew of pastors and I think it landed alright.
It's printed big so it's easier to see (or to print in booklet form). Here's a PDF of it, too. :)
As always, I am indebted to Rubem Alves for many of my articulations of things related to faith. In this thing, this shows up especially in the articulation of prayer as desire expressed. So please consider this preface a giant footnote. Thanks.
Much love, all. And peace on the journey.
- Tom G.
A Prayer About Praying
Thomas R. Gaulke, September 2022
If a sibling is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” ~ James 2:15-14
We begin with silence.
We sing a song of hope or longing.
And then we pray:
When We Pray With Our Community
Prayer is the name we give to our deepest desires when your Spirit gives us courage to say them out loud. And Amen! is the sound of our community, chiming in and praying along: “I agree! I want your desires to come true. Because I love you. Because you are my sibling! Because you matter to me deeply, heart, body, mind, and soul.”
When Jesus Prayed With Community
“The last shall be first,” was the prayer that Jesus prayed, with: “The hungry shall be fed. The chains shall be broken. And powers shall be removed from their thrones!” Jesus called these prayers God’s Reign of Love. And the crowds who were hungry, along with the crowds who had been forced to be poor, said, “Amen!”
Because they agreed. The world as it is was eating them up, even as they were left with no food. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, the disparities they faced were killing them, as they were more violent, destructive, and devastating than any weapon that existed in their day.
And so, “May God’s Reign come!” they prayed with Jesus. And they said, “Amen!” Because they agreed. Because they knew that their lives had value. And because their desires and Jesus’ desires were one.
As James Reminds Us
Today, your Word invites us to cast our own amens wider and to push our prayers beyond our own bodily bounds. If a sibling is lacking you remind us, and if we claim to pray: “For the hungry!” and “For the lonely!” and “For those in prison or detained!” while we sit with loved ones in padded pews, thinking mostly about where we’re gonna go for brunch, then, perhaps, you suggest, our prayers might be something other than sincere.
Because prayer is the name we give to our deepest desires! And, indeed, if we desired these things, we would quickly find a way to make the world change.
A Prelude to Love
Prayer is the name we give to our deepest desires. But, said out loud, it can also be a prelude to love–that moment when the desires of the suffering and the desires of Jesus become infused with our own. When this happens, “I wish you well,” can no longer be seen as a blessing. And, really, we realize, it never was.
Blessing takes place, we find, in an, “I hear you,” that gets shared. In an: “I’m here for you,” and in a, “Come over. Let’s eat. And let’s fight like [hell/mad] to change the world and its ways so that nobody ever goes hungry again.”
At Last (A Prayer)
O God, we know that prayer is the name we give to our deepest desires when your Spirit gives us courage to say them out loud. And we know that Amen! is the sound of our community, chiming in and praying along: “I agree! I want your desires to come true. Because I love you. Because you are my sibling! Because you matter to me deeply, heart, body, mind, and soul.
Unite our desires with those we have hidden beyond barriers and behind bars–be they physical or more complex. Infuse your dreams of God’s Reign of Love–where the last become first and the hungry become fed–into our own. Make our Amens sincere, so that our prayers might be a prelude to love and a fire that moves our bodies into acts of service, solidarity, justice, and care.
Amen.
A Prayer About Praying
Written for use in worship by Rev. Thomas R. Gaulke, Ph.D.
© 2022, Thomas R. Gaulke Books
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