Prayers for Learning, Living, and Loving in Between

By Mindy McGarrah Sharp, Associate Professor of Practical Theology and Pastoral Care & MAPT Program Director

In between fall and spring, God remind all caretakers that new life remembered at Christmas is worthy of ongoing celebration and praise. Empower all caretakers to nurture creation’s crawling. God help us move ever deeper into an inclusive desire for living, loving, and learning.

In between seed and fruit, God nourish rich dark soil, tap thirstquenching streams, direct sunbeams to neglected concrete cracks and planted rows of crops alike. God help us soften even the frozen places of our hearts.

In between neighbors, God bring reconciliation, interdependence, mutual concern, and desire for well-being for all people. God be both the potter who makes and the mosaic artist who remakes. God help us notice beauty. In between virus and vaccine, God comfort all who are ill and guide all who care for the sick. Spark wonder in science and awe in the strange beauty of creation. God help us endure.

In between election and transition, God be wisdom and truth that honors collective dreams and visions for nations that desire and abide in peace. God help us expect and enact accountable and just practices. God help us mend old and new wounds. God help us transform words and weapons from machetes into maracas.

In between isolation and shared meals, God hold tender fragments of memories and hopes, help us honor absences and longings with dignity, and sparkle in glimpses of delight. God help us reimagine what it could be to feast.

In between here and there, God embolden all your children to resist hatred, renounce investment in oppression, awaken compassion where care and concern are lacking. God help us turn walls into bridges.

In between diagnosis and response, God heal your creation, gather rituals of support, sustain courage in the waiting, ease fears and reveal your steadfastness in uncertainty. God help us hope.

In between invitation and event, God encourage joy and creativity that taps into the deep yearning for celebration, commemoration, proclamation, and dedication. God help us co-inspire.

In between yesterday and tomorrow, God abide in the possibility of now, the dependence on this moment. Be the mighty wind that accompanies each heartbeat, breath, and thought. God help us live.

In between syllabus and final exam, God inspire teachers with insight and humility, spark clarity of purpose for students, and remind all of the responsibility of collective voice. God help us learn.

In between piercing loss and patchwork rituals of remembrance, God help us honor the dead, accompany and acknowledge the dying. Craft pathways for connection across miles and masks. God help us grieve.

In between ancestors and future children, lace generations with threads of becoming, visions of a belonging that endures, renew shared investment in always possible intergenerational healing. God help us listen.

In between the pages of our open books, inspire writers to imagine worlds, to attend faithfully, to report truthfully. Encourage readers to learn, engage, receive and respond with confidence. Help us remember the wisdom of old words and the joy of new sentences and translations. God help us come to voice.

In between what used to be and what is to come, move through the now, accompany stillness and inspire rest, motivate actions that liberate movements, be present now. God hold us in presence, steady while always changing. In between speech and being heard, God bend ears to hear, open eyes to see, and awaken desire to believe in every other fragment of creation’s sacredness. Choreograph creation’s chorus into a living song. God help us dismantle disrespect, convert complicities, and remember each other.

With each passage of oxygen through creation’s lungs, God bless the breath of life that flows in between inhale and exhale. Help all people breathe and be breathed into life.

With each recommitment to learn, ponder, and imagine, God bless the marvelous matter we call brain funding in between with ideas, naming needs, and weaving possibilities. Help all people learn and teach the collective truth of our precious lives.

With each movement of love embodied in acts of justice and mercy, God ignite hearts with passion that dreams in between time and space. Help us love and be loved.

In between sorrow and gratitude, God help us live, learn, and love.

Note: this prayer is written into the multiple public health, racialized violence, and climate pandemics of 2020 at the turning of the new year with inspiration from (1) the January 2020 CTS immersion course in Cuba where we learned of an indigenous pea pod called both machete and maraca, (2) the author’s experience of recovering from COVID with all the resources and within the structures of an inequitable society, (3) ongoing commitment to learning to desire and partner in justice, and (4) the insight that the corona virus attacks the lungs, brain, and heart, loci of breathing, learning, and loving that inform these short breath prayers.