Dr. Dorsey Blake | Dr. Howard Thurman | Rev. Kathryn Benton | More
Prayers
DR. DORSEY ODELL BLAKE, Pastor
Source and Ground of Our Being, we bring our whole lives to you: our weakness and strength, our faith and doubt, our deception and authenticity. For those who have been too hurt, too bruised to open themselves to the pain of others, we request your balm of healing to attend their way. May our lives sooth places that are hurt and keep our hearts mindful of beatific vision.
Ever Present Spirit, lead us from dim understanding of what is possible in the world. Let us not shrink from our high calling that would have us beacons of hope and freedom, harbingers of justice, love, and peace even in these times when violence stalks our globe and the masses of the peoples of the earth languish in poverty. Though we sometimes feel insignificant, we can and must stand for the greatest and noblest truths. Give us courage that we may live with such integrity that those things of imagination and spirit critical to the uplifting of humanity may be embodied in our presence. Unbind our obsession with ourselves that we may discover our true selves by serving something much greater than the pettiness that traps us in anxious and unfulfilled living.
—Amen
Lord, we give you thanks for shepherding this sacred venture we call Fellowship Church. Continue to sustain and call us to ever higher, deepening, nobler trysts into unknown territories of human and spiritual encounter. Birth us anew for the times ahead and the new earth we must create. Give us heart -- your heart -- large and juicy enough to hold the pain and promise of the world, all the Adams and Eves, the Cains and Abels; strong enough to lift us from weakened resolve; courageous enough to answer defeat with renewed vigor and stubbornness; trusting enough to perceive a way out of what appears dead end; permeable enough to massage our shortcomings into passageways of hope; and, open enough to feel the hastening of common ground and the Beloved community.
May the totality of our being experience that all things are possible to those who truly believe that we are anointed for such a time as this.
In the name of the One who calls us to be one, we pray.
—Amen
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DR. HOWARD THURMAN, Co-founder of Fellowship Church
The New Year
[Something] very important belongs to the New Year. It is the chance to relate to something beyond our families, our cares, our responsibilities – some cause, some purpose, or some kind of human need. Suppose this year you select one thing outside the needs of your family and your responsibilities about which you will be concerned. This you try to understand and to relate to so that you will feel yourself being extended beyond the boundaries of your little world and its responsibilities.
In addition to all the things that you are doing as a part of your responsibilities as a husband or wife or daughter or what have you, there is something else, some independent something out here, some people, some causes, some purposes, something to which you will give part of yourself. Now this may be done in terms of the repairing of fences that broke down in your relationships during the past year, so that as you move into the New Year, you will have a sense of being present and accounted for in every minute, in every hour, in every day.
*
The Christmas Candles
(from The Mood of Christmas)
I will light a candle of fellowship this Christmas.
I know that the experiences of unity in human relations are more compelling
than the concepts, the fears, the prejudices, which divide.
Despite the tendency to feel my race superior, my nation the greatest nation,
my faith the true faith, I must beat down the boundaries
of my exclusiveness until my sense of separateness
is completely enveloped in a sense of fellowship.
*
Blessings At Year's End
I remember with gratitude the fruits of the labors of others, which I have shared as a part of the normal experience of daily living.
I remember the beautiful things that I have seen, heard, and felt—some, as a result of definite seeking on my part, and many that came unheralded into my path, warming my heart and rejoicing my spirit.
I remember the new people I have met, from whom I have caught glimpses of the meaning of my own life and the true character of human dignity.
I remember the dreams that haunted me during the year, keeping me ever mindful of goals and hopes which I did not realize, but from which I drew inspiration to sustain my life and keep steady my purposes.
I remember the awareness of the spirit of God that sought me out in my aloneness and gave to me a sense of assurance that undercut my despair and confirmed my life with new courage and abiding hope.
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REV. KATHRYN L. BENTON, Assistant Minister
“To become human one must make room in oneself for the immensities of the universe. Unless we do so, we cannot find our true nature. We will wander in pain and loneliness. We will never learn how the Old One thinks. Caught in fragments of our nature, we will attach ourselves to one fragment after another, each taking us further away from our center.” ~ Brian Swimme
God of the Universe… God of the human heart, we make room today for the immensity of You. To make room, we must clear away all that keeps us from the experience of this immensity… the experience of ourselves as a part of the Universe. We search, O God, for vision… the vision that allows us to see the whole, not only our tiny fragment.
May this vision give us the courage needed to work through the fear and uncertainty that haunts our days… the fear and uncertainty that clouds the vision of the whole… the vision of the immensity of the Universe… the fear and uncertainty that keeps us from standing up and speaking our truth… the truth about what we see around us.
We search, O God, for compassion… the compassion that reminds us of the sacredness of all life… the compassion that reminds us of our responsibility as part of the Universe to care for each other and care for our earth home.
We search, O God, for peace… peace in our hearts and peace among people and all living things. We seek this peace even as we must come to terms with our violent natures.
Fill us, O Spirit of the Universe with Your vision, Your compassion, and Your peace, that we may share in the immensity of the Universe, coming back to the center of our being… where we are whole.
Amen.
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The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples was founded in 1944 by Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk as the nation's first interracial interfaith congregation.
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