A Prayer for the Reckoning

by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann and Kateri Boucher | Published 19th January 2021

School of Americas Watch in Georgia, November 2008 by Geez staff

Oh God,
whose spirit rests in the
contours of Indigenous lands,
whose breath rises in the streets
chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
whose rage boils when the cross
is raised as weapon,
whose being is re-imagined by the honey bees,
the mycelium, and the snow covered cedars.

We stand at a time when
the powers of death are gasping for air.
We are witnessing the ways that
Christianity’s tentacles have bound themselves
to patriarchy, nationalism, and white supremacy.

For many of us rooted in this tradition,
this is a moment of reckoning with its violence.

We watch in terror, but not shock
grief, but not despair,
trembling with the question…
What does it mean to be a Christian?

We ask you to hold us in this tension.
Help us ground in our bodies
and remember our histories and yearnings.

Send us Shiphrah and Puah
to summon our courage of disobedience
and resistance to empire’s demands.
Send us Miriam
to remind us to sing and dance and trust the waters
as the walls come crumbling down.
Send us Mary and Magdalene
to help us tend to bodies and the places of death
despite the risks and fears.

May the red, white, and blue behind our altars come down
and the blue eyed, blond hair Jesus’s be removed.
May we find church instead in the small and prophetic,
entwined with justice, community, and liberation.
May guns be beaten into garden tools.
May history be studied and ancestors be summoned.
May we pray for the nonviolent collapse of the US empire.

And may the remnants of these prayers be on our hands
and woven into our lives in the days to come.

Amen