A Prayer Practice
Episode 21: The Good News
June 6, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Dear Jesus - Thank you that the Good News is Love. We ask that you might show us our behaviors that are getting in the way of our loving people well. What fears might we have of living into perfect love? Are we scared it might put us in places where we’re not comfortable? It might ask us to give of ourselves and our resources more generously. It might mean that things we believed made us special are no longer true. Show us our fears, humble us that we might step into a life of love. Lord, we ask that you put a Jesus in our life. Put someone in our life that models what it means to love others well. Lord, we ask that we might be Jesus for someone else. Allow us to be a model of love for someone who needs to a model. Thank you that it is simple news and that it is truly good. We love you. Amen.
Episode 20: Prayer for Contentment
May 23, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Dear God, Allow us to trust our bodies that they will teach us how to recognize the clinging of our hearts and minds and hands to that which is not life giving to those things we should not worship. Make clear to us the times when we live into the Grace that is offered us in every moment. Help us not just to pay attention but to recognize and shift our behavior so that we may live simply, with contentment. And allow our longing to be only for you. Amen
Episode 19: Prayer for the Exhausted
May 9, 2022 • Kelley Weber
God of all love and mercy - rain your grace down on us this day. Cover us with healing waters that wash away the worry, that allow us to let go of what we can’t control. Give us a moment to catch our breath. Give us room to be grateful. We ask for a respite as we are in need of rest. We are tired, Lord. We are tired. Hear our prayer. Amen.
Episode 18: Prayer as an Act
April 11, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Dear One, Teach us to care. Teach us to care by teaching us to pray. Teach us to care so that we do not co-sign on dysfunction, but rather become a companion towards Grace. Teach us to be in wonder before the beauty of creation, especially the creation of your people who have come to think of themselves as less than. Teach us to use each act of caring as an act of praying so that the person being cared for experiences dignity instead of condescension. Dear One, Teach us not to care. Teach us to tread softly, aware that you were here long beforehand creating, loving, and wooing. Teach us the humility of not jumping to solutions, so that we do not use anyone’s need as a workshop to cobble together makeshift, messianic work that inflates our own importance. Teach us not to exhaust our resources so that we have the time and energy and space to realize that this work is done on holy ground and in your holy name, that people and communities in need are not a wasteland where we feverishly and faithlessly set up shop, but a garden, a rose garden, in which we work contemplatively. Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still, even among these rocks. Amen.
Episode 13: Perspective
March 7, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Our prayer today ... 🙏 God of dusty things, Of moon dust and cat dander - Of crystalline silica and sawdust - Of the dead skin of the ancestors we never met but still breathe into our lungs each day. We acknowledge that we are small things. Us, people trying hard to be big. Forgive us. We confess that we don’t want to live out of “justs;” To us, just an ordinary day is a humiliation. And yet, to a man sick or a woman scared - such a day is a gift. To be dust, to be anything.. To just be. We thank you.. Thank you for the nobility of the normal, For the weight of each moment, heavy, not with potential, but with the moment itself - with isness. Ground us in the everyday, each day. Prepare us for the journey of this season, And help us recognize that in our quotidian lives, Our dusty existence matters In as much as we can be present to it And mark its magnificent unfolding. Amen
Episode 11: Compassion
February 14, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Our prayer today is to claim our true belonging. 🙏 Dear Jesus- I know I am not what I do. Neither the best thing I’ve done nor the worst. I know I am not what I have. Neither what I have in abundance nor in scarcity. I know I am not what others say about me. Neither the accolades nor the criticisms. I know my true identity, my belonging, does not come from me. It is not self-generated. It cannot be earned. The answer to what I am is simple, I am beloved. My belonging requires nothing of me. It is my inheritance. Show me how to claim it. To live into it. To wear it like a warm sweater. Amen
Episode 10: Belonging
February 7, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Our prayer today is to claim our true belonging. 🙏 Dear Jesus- I know I am not what I do. Neither the best thing I’ve done nor the worst. I know I am not what I have. Neither what I have in abundance nor in scarcity. I know I am not what others say about me. Neither the accolades nor the criticisms. I know my true identity, my belonging, does not come from me. It is not self-generated. It cannot be earned. The answer to what I am is simple, I am beloved. My belonging requires nothing of me. It is my inheritance. Show me how to claim it. To live into it. To wear it like a warm sweater. Amen
Episode 9: Listening
January 31, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Dear God, Help me to be at ease in silent spaces. Quiet the ruminations and worries and allow me to be Centered on you. On listening for your voice. In this silence, I consent to your action and presence within. (Let’s spend a minute or two in quiet. Practice noticing when your mind chatter wanders to the past ruminating or the future worrying. When you notice your attention wander, gently return to the presence of God that is right here, now with you.) Lord, as I continue to learn to be ok in the silence, Allow me to be similarly present with other people. Teach me to listen well. To be curious and ask questions. Teach me to put aside my own story in order to invite the stories of others; And when my story is invited, fill me with gratitude And see it for the generous gift that it is. Amen.
Episode 8: Value of Others
January 24, 2022 • Kelley Weber
God of Abraham, Who sustains us through relationship over rightness, Through covenant over correctness. We ask that you speak in and through your church. Teach us to love what you love. Make us mediators of your light to the world. Not the easy light of Sunday school songs, But the radical light of redress and recompense. May the dungeon’s doors be cast wide open and those seasoned fears, those generational wounds Be tended to with our very lives. Teach us to be a community of forgiveness, that draws Endlessly from your love until we learn That we are all, in fact, the other - all of us grasping For love in wrong places. Teach us to reach for one another because the value of the other Is that it is in the other, that we find You. Amen
Episode 7: Forgiveness
January 17, 2022 • Kelley Weber
Dear Lord, we ask that you make us aware of anything we are holding on to that is keeping us stuck regarding this person. It may be small or large, it may be hidden or it may be obvious. Gently, bring to mind what we need to let go of, what we need to forgive.