Season of Creation

 

Scatter us, O Holy One,

like seed into fertile soil.

Bury us, in the loam

of what is yet to come.

Give us the wisdom, Sower of Life

to learn the delicate art of dying,

again and again,

until we know the difference

between the shell and the seed,

the persona and the soul,

the role and the real.

 

Crack open our hard shells

and release the thin filament within,

that knows to reach for the sun,

soul’s fragile ambassador

heralding the universe of life

waiting to emerge.

 

Draw our greening souls upward,

in love with light,

And drive our roots deep,

allured by sacred darkness.

Grow us.

We consent to your evolutionary grace.

Amen.

 

Easter

 

O Holy One,

from the beginning

gave Yourself so that life might prevail.

You hid yourself in chaos,

so that out of filaments of gas

the galaxies formed;

from death stars,

new and necessary elements are born;

out of the fire of the sun,

a crocus pushes up through thawing earth;

out of the chaos and violence of injustice,

a wall is broken down,

a curtain pulled back,

a scapegoated prisoner makes a long walk to freedom.

 

And on this day,

we gather to proclaim that

from the tomb of violence, crucifixion, and death,

Christ sheds his grave cloths,

like a butterfly sheds a cocoon.

 

He emerges, our winged hope,

an elegant embodiment

of a new vision for humanity,

 

For You

chaos and death,

are but a prelude to an Easter,

which we could never imagine,

yet which is ours to claim –

a gift from an Easter God,

and an invitation,

for us to spread our wings.

Amen.

 

We open to you, Ever-Present Origin:

bring us breathing easy

into the present;

rescue us from our anxious rehearsing of the future

and our gnawing away on the bones of the past,

to a deep experience of the life we’ve been given.

 

We listen now for the rattling of new life,

your Spirit moving among the valley of death,

Weaving sinews of significance,

building the muscle of meaning,

fashioning the tendons of connection.

We hear the sound of our becoming

the resurrected body of Christ,

and the rattling of possibility,

born of the union of desires:

ours to be Christ’s renewed body in this age,

and Your’s that we might find our soul’s deep purpose.

We open to you, Ever-Present Origin.

In you is life and hope for an unfolding future

emerging from our deep embrace of now.

Amen.

 

O Holy One,

who gives life to the dead,

and calls formless potential

into fullness of being,

we feel your tug to realize a resurrection.

 

Bust open the tomb of cold and closed minds,

massage our hardened hearts into supple softness,

grant us the mind of Christ,

and the courage of the Spirit,

to become the people we were meant to be.

 

Show us where we have erected walls of fear,

and convinced ourselves

that they are not only necessary,

but sacred.

Show us what we are pretending

not to know

on this sacred path of becoming.

 

We commit to revealing and realizing

Your Kin-dom,

in our homes and houses of Parliament,

in our boardrooms and business deals,

in our policy-making and in our peace-making,

all in the name of the ever-rising Christ.

Amen.

 

We are scattered now,

like seeds,

in the rich soil of becoming.

 

This breaking open –

of atoms, galaxies, and bacteria

into the next-novel moment –

is beyond our comprehension.

 

Yet we know in our depths,

that we are most ourselves

when we are in the breaking through,

in the sprouting life,

in the death giving way to new life,

in the holy mystery

of unceasing yearning to manifest.

 

We are That,

beyond comprehension,

and yet as intimate and personal

as our breath –

the incessant sigh for completion.

 

And so we keep the expectant silence of the seed

before the mystery of emergence,

knowing that You are the One

who makes all things new.

 

Amen.