Prayer for the Forgotten
Against this sky growing gray,
Help me to bring light.

Today, God,
Help me get out of bed
Early and alone,
Just to listen.
Help me hear your good Spirit.

God, help me do
What I need to do
To be your hands,
Your smile,
Your feet,
To the other people here
In this hospital,
This jail,
This institution,
This house.

Please, God,
Purify my impatience
Make me go the extra mile
But not today.

Today,
I am struggling.
If it’s your will,
take my burden.

Lord, make it go away.

Heal this head, this heart, these hands.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

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Knower of my weaknesses, there is trouble everywhere.
Even my hours of pleasure are commingled with hardship and threats of despair.
Sustainer, as we exist in cultures of overindulgence,
give us a hankering for you.
Let our hearts partake of the succulent feast that is your
mysteriously mundane splendor.
Give us today our daily bread and crumbs of your kin(g)dom.
Revealer, help me in my watching and waiting,
to live in harmony with your Spirit.
Release me to proclaim love and mercy to all,
especially those who seem undeserving.
Help me to recognize your speech,
which is riddled throughout the universe.
Instruct our hearts and minds to mimic the love
and wide embrace of Jesus of Nazareth.
Let this love be a glimmer of hope amid the emptiness and ugliness
through which we so often trudge.
Creator of my heart, help me through the hindrances which keep me from
knowing the joy of kinship.
Help me to loosen my grip on the bounty you’ve provided to your creation,
so that my hands can be free to distribute your plentiful provisions
with equity and grace.
With much thanks for your beauty,
I rest forever loved and blessed in your ever-presence.
Amen.

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One: Sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones—we come together this day.
All: We come together with common dreams, common hopes for the world, and common purpose.
One: We gather with great joy in one another’s presence
All: We gather with great sorrow and a heavy burden
One: We gather with great sorrow because there are sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones who are suffering.
All: Suffering under the burden of slavery and oppression, even right now as we gather.
One: We stand now in acknowledgment of those slaves in our neighborhood and throughout the world.
All: We open our eyes to their truth, we open our ears to their plea, and we open our hearts to hope.
One: Let us now turn our hearts and minds to these sisters and brothers, because we seek to bring about God’s desires for them, for us, and for all the world.
All: Amen

The U.S. State Department estimates that there are twenty-seven million slaves worldwide. To find out more about the current issue of slavery and what you can do to help, visit: http://www.humantrafficking.org, .

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As a group, we frequently say together this traditional prayer, versions of which are in several denominational prayer books.
Almighty God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves;
We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy,
forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
that we might walk in your way
and delight in your will
to the Glory of your Holy Name.

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Almighty God,
We praise for all you have done.
Help us with all that you want us do to.
Come, holy creator,
and rebuild the city of Camden
so that we do not labor in vain without you.
Come, holy Savior,
and heal all that is broken in our lives and in our streets.
Come, Holy Spirit,
and inspire us with energy and willingness
to rebuild Camden city to your honor and glory.

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Every few months here at CONSP!RE, we enact a strange form of community. Across the wire. Through the air. Connecting organic chemicals in our bodies via blips of zeroes and ones. To be sure, living on opposite coasts presents a challenge. But still we connect. We submit and surrender, discuss and arrange, ponder and rearrange to compose an artifact. Thoughts. Content. Image. Art.

You hold in your hands the end product. Stories sifted through, images to stir the soul.

This magazine is an exercise in community on several levels. First, there is the grand community of creation that we are all a part of. We try to draw in experiences and reflections from across the world. Second, there is a more self-selective community at play. We circle around a common faith tradition, sometimes dancing closer, sometimes spinning away, trying to make sense of it all. Doubting, hoping, praying, believing, and doubting again. We write in hope that someone out there will be moved, encouraged, helped along.

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From The Editors

Revolution is at the heart of the biblical story. Scripture tells of the liberating God Yahweh who overturns the power of Egypt to accompany a ragged bunch of disbelieving slaves into a barren desert and work with them to build a new social order rooted in covenant and shalom.

This same God inspires prophets whose visions of justice pour down like a terrible wind through chasms of rock – the relentless hope of Isaiah, springing water in deserts; that lamentation of Jeremiah, weeping for the children of Rachel; the amazing dreams of the praying Daniel; and Ezekiel’s heartrending cry for a faithfulness that reweaves dry bones.

Mary’s song heralding her coming child is a manifesto more encompassing and revolutionary than anything penned by Marx – and more immediate, insisting as it does on present tense. It ushers in a Jesus who talks about the reign of God among us this very moment. His passionate stories and teachings evoke a social order which in mustard-seed fashion erodes the powerful rule of Imperial Caesar.

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History and its future are not determined by God from this perspective, but in a sense, the future is doomed by God – not doomed to failure and destruction, but doomed to eventual healing and joy, doomed to resurrection, because the living God will never give up and abandon creation.

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The church that I served as pastor was in the midst of a heated conflict about the new attendance of a gay couple. One woman, vehemently opposed to the church opening the doors to homosexuals, marched into the senior pastor’s office screaming, yelling, hollering, and threatening my colleague. She was so loud that I wondered, from my office next door, if I should call the authorities to ensure our safety. She left in a rage. Shortly thereafter, another couple was scheduled to visit the senior pastor about the same issue. He was quite nervous, for he loved this family dearly, yet he new that they were quite conservative about the issue and feared they might leave if a gay couple became active members of the congregation. When the couple came to the door, they had in hand a pitcher and a basin. My colleague looked at them with a question. They said, “Before we begin this conversation, we wanted to wash each other’s feet to remind us all that we are to love and serve each other.” It was another sacred moment, bursting with the Divine.

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I live on a ridge top in a Christian intentional community in rural Kentucky. Together we have bought land, shared prayer and built resource conserving houses. I moved here to answer a call to become a steward of our eight acres, to live responsibly and lovingly among it. What I have learned is that I am not a mere observer, a custodian in a watch house. As I peel away layers of modern conveniences, I have found that I am a part of a holy, circular cycle.

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