Interfaith Day of Prayer

Today is Interfaith Day of Prayer.  Here's a prayer by the Rev. Dr. Traci Blackmon that came in an email this morning.  She is Senior Pastor of Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri.  She is also Associate General Minister of the UCC's Justice and Local Church Ministries.

Holy One,

Here we are, called by your many names in many languages, to humble ourselves and pray.  Here we are, God, called together from diverse places and spaces to seek your face, to look upon the sickness that has infected our world, to acknowledge the wickedness of both our compliance and our complicity, and to lament the consequences of our actions aloud.  Here we are to wail.  Here we are to sound the alarm.  Here we are to groan.  Here we are, to cry out on behalf of Your creation.  And to turn.

For the voices gathered here as a cacophony of lament on this National Day of Prayer, I honor your power.  For the congregations and communities, both near and far, seen and unseen, heard and ignored, we represent, I honor your presence.  For creation wounded and trying to heal, I give you praise.  For the voices all around this world that never cease to call upon you for the strength to rise, for the courage to confront, and for the hope to sustain, we join our voices to theirs and offer these prayers.  We are crying out to you.

And we are listening.  We are listening for you in the wind.  We are listening for you in the quaking of the earth.  We are listening for you in the fire.  We are listening for you in cries of our people.  We are listening for you, listening in the stillness of our streets.  We are listening.  We are waiting.  Knowing that you hear our cries, we wait for your mercy as we turn our hearts toward your people and heal our land.

We pray in many names.
I pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen

In October 2019, I read White Privilege: Let's Talk ~ A Resource for Transformational Dialogue by Traci Blackmon, John Dorhauer, Da Vita McCallister, John Paddock, and Stephen G. Ray, that was published in 2016.  This resource is only 99-cents for Kindle, and resources for facilitators are available free from the publisher.  Here are some of my notes from that book:

"In the same way that a tinted lens will color everything seen through it, seeing the world through the lens of race changed the way I see everything" (loc. 119).

"Join efforts to repeal the 13th Amendment's exception clause.  Ostensibly, the 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, banned slavery.  But the exception clause still allows it.  The amendment reads: 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction" (loc. 2030).

"Rule 1:  Being a white ally is understanding the ubiquity of anti-Black animus held by a majority of white people, and therefore being inclined to believe Black people about the presence of racism in everyday life" (loc. 2233).

"Rule 2:  Being a white ally is not denying the power and privilege that your whiteness brings you, but rather asking how you can use it in the struggles to ameliorate the effects of white supremacy on Black persons and communities" (loc. 2262).

The "Do You Pray" illustration above was in the same email this morning from Parkway UCC.