A Poemish Prayer (or a Prayerish Poem) for Advent and Christmas
By Leah D. Schade
Contemplative verses for Advent and Christmas in the face of those intent on crushing and cowering innocent lives.
(Watch the video here.)
What can one newborn’s cry mean
In a world so mean that it means to snuff the soft glow of new life?
What can one child’s tiny fisting hand mean
As some meander along bomb-cratered ways
Meant to crack and crush a crowded and cowering people?
What can one toddler’s wide eyes mean
Taking in a scene of love colliding with death?
What I mean, Holy One,
Is that when the meanness chokes our cries into muffled silence,
When our fists unclench into desperate palms of prayer,
When salty drops squint our once-widened eyes,
Then . . .
Reclaim our eyes with baptismal water that rinses away salty sadness and
the grit of collision’s aftermath.
Reclaim our hands for fisting with resistance and praying with relief and gratitude.
Reclaim our cries with that soft glow and a parenting breath that says . . .shhhh.
Amen.
Read also:
315 Today: A Poem about Gun Violence
Undo the Folded Lie: A Prayer for Preachers
The Origami of Grief: Unfolding, Refolding, Enfolding
Peace On Earth and WITH Earth: Christmas, Psalm 96 and 97
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky and ordained in the ELCA. Dr. Schade does not speak for LTS or the ELCA; her opinions are her own. She is the author of Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015). She is the co-editor of Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Her newest book is Introduction to Preaching: Scripture, Theology, and Sermon Preparation, co-authored with Jerry L. Sumney and Emily Askew (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).
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