Additional prayers

(Praise and petition)

Creator God,
out of love, dust and bone
you made us;
moulding, stretching, and dreaming
of who we were to become.
From the dirt of the earth
you imagined us;
to which we belong,
to which we will return.

For your vision of “something more”
we praise you;
for your dream of love made human
we praise you;
within this space you gift us –
between dust and dust –
we turn in wonder,
to you and each other:
we who were made from dust and bone

to stand
to gaze
to touch
to smile
to weep
to share
to love

each in our own way –

restricted, at times, by our bodies,
limited, at times, by our imaginations.

Creator God,
in ourselves and through each other,
tracing the path of incarnate love,
may we discover who we are
and who we are to become,
seeking in our words and actions to be
as you made us to be,
out of bone, dust and love.

Laurence Wareing

(Confession)

Spirit of Life,
You know what is in us.
You come into the secret place,
where we are alone in our minds,
where no one else can come.
You know our fears and anxieties,
our feelings of guilt, inadequacy, despair.
All this we bring to you.

Forgive and make us whole.

Divine giver of wholeness,
we are relatively comfortable and perhaps, because of this,
we are often shy Christians:
slow to witness,
complacent about our spirituality,
apathetic about working and giving for your Kingdom,
altogether too easily satisfied.
All this we bring to you.

Forgive and make us whole.

Rosemary Wakelin, adapted
© Christian Education Movement www.retoday.org.uk
reproduced with permission

(Petition)

Allow more and more thoughts
of Your thinking to come into our hearts,
day by day,
till there shall at last be an open road
between You and us,
and Your angels may go up and down amongst us,
so that we may be in Your heaven,
even while we are upon Your earth.
Amen.

Adapted from a passage in David Elginbrod by George MacDonald, included in Celtic Daily Prayer Book One: The Journey Begins (2015: London, HarperCollinsPubishers)
© 2015 The Northumbria Community Trust

(Petition)

Once upon a timeless God,
who imagined the unfinished story of creation, peopled it,
and gave it countless twists and turns,
help us to discover your unfinished stories within us:
stories of walking on water and through water,
of red earth and dry bones spirited,
of desolations becoming homecomings
and death transformed by love.

Through our witness dispel wistful thinking,
false promises and the desire for happy endings
and replace them with generous, honest,
life-giving communities of hope.
Amen.

Barbara Glasson, President, British Methodist Conference 2019/20,
Methodist Prayer Handbook 2019/2020
© Trust for Methodist Church Purposes, reproduced with permission

(Litany)

A litany from Methodist worship resources for Living with Contradictory Convictions in Church

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was imagination,
and imagination stepped into our dreams.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was creativity,
and creativity stretched the web of our being.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was diversity,
and diversity danced with possibility.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was challenge,
and challenge whittled away prejudice.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was equality,
and equality released trapped wings to fly.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was value,
and value accepted difference with joy.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was integrity,
and integrity clothed truth and justice.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was welcome,
and welcome outstretched its arms in love.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was hope,
and hope filled the chasms of despair.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was peace,
and peace hovered like a dove.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was joy,
and joy came as an unexpected gift.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was love,
and love filled the life of promise.

In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word became flesh,
and the flesh brought new meaning to birth.

And the Word lived among us, as a human being.
And we beheld God’s glory,
full of truth and grace.
Amen.

(Blessing)

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Traditional Gaelic blessing

(A shared Grace)

As it was,
As it is,
As it shall be
Evermore,
O Thou Triune
Of grace!
With the ebb
With the flow,
O Thou Triune
Of grace!
With the ebb
With the flow.

John Stewart, merchant, Lismore (Carmina Gadelica)