Prayer by Langston Hughes
Gather up
In the arms of your pity
The sick, the depraved,
The desperate, the tired,
All the scum
Of our weary cityGather up
In the arms of your pity.
Gather up
In the arms of your love—
Those who expect
No love from above.
Park and Pray at 1:11 pm 🙏🏾🙏🏼
Please stop what you’re doing at 1:11 pm. Declare a time out from whatever you’re doing. Pause for a moment and be present in body, mind, and spirit. Virtually, join with others who park and pray at 1:11 pm.
I wrote this prayer at the end of Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s three days of Confirmation Hearings. I needed a time out and I am certain she deserved the same. Let us welcome God’s Holy presence in our lives. Let us park and pray at 1:11 pm.
Gracious, Loving, Holy, Merciful God, we enter your presence with praise and thanksgiving. You are a constant source of love, power, strength, and healing. Your peace calms raging seas and overcomes deadly forces. God, we need You today. God have mercy on us. Help us to overcome the pandemic nature of hatred that is killing the souls of nations throughout our world.
Give us strength to peacefully overcome limitations, distrust, disappointments, and dissatisfactions. Help us to resist the temptations to allow hatred and fear to guide us and flourish in our heart. Holy One, arrest acts of aggressions. Arrest each situation and desire to stop a Black woman judge from being her great self in service for all people in our nation.
God, it’s hard to recall a time of peaceful reflection. It’s hard to imagine the growth of a diverse nation of leaders in my lifetime. Too many are weighed down by a pandemic of racial discord. It becomes a deadly force that prevents a Brown and Black gifted person from being celebrated as a member of one nation under God.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is a confident, intelligent, stately, and an accomplished woman of color whose brilliance is perceived as a threat. Her faith in God is familiar to many of us, and her desire to serve You and your children are not self- serving. She is faithful and faith filled. Thank You for her life. Loving God, help all who gather in her presence to hear her and to discern Your message for us. We pray for a Time Out so we may check out the righteous desires of the God we serve.
When books fall off the shelves, and the pages open to God’s plan we pray to You O’ God who prepares a place for her even in the presence of her enemies. God, anoint her with the oil of gladness. Deliver her from the depths of evil. For it is Your presence, Your power, Your love, and Your glory that is our hope and strength. We give thanks O God now and always. Amen.
As we begin the Lenten Season…
let us begin with prayer:
O Holy and Great God lead us through the wilderness as you led Moses and the Hebrew people. Let us use this time wisely to repent, reflect and recharge. Lead us in your righteousness and help us to make room in our lives for for Jesus. Amen
Rev. Barbara Smith
Nay Says, “We All Win!”
We do and don’t get to decide
which part of a genius
to uphold and celebrate with pride.The beauty of art and all its glory,
if one takes the jolted ride,
is that “it’s all good.”
Every intimate and infinite story.The sum of one’s parts
is not greater than, or lesser;
Then…
Celebrate every blessed thing!
No matter the reason, form, or fashion.Take what wills you
to your own greatness.
The Godly message –
“We all win.”
When intentions, pure
emanate from the heart.Every active mind and spirit’s candle
ignites what one’s backbone
and spine can handle.Wisdom breathes below, on, above,
and well above the line.
Faith lives below, on, above,
and well beyond all of time.Love,
Nay
Nay is a prolific inspirational writer, teacher, and author of several books for all generations. Nay’s writings will be periodically featured in Park and Pray at 1:11.
Check out her books. Each one is filled with amazing stories.
