Peaces of PIE
P.I.E. meets I.C.
Public Intentional Explicit prayer using Intentional Creativity.
I was asked to present the community prayer for Bedford United Church on March 13th, 2022 as part of our PIE Day service. Knowing I wouldn’t be in service, I recorded the prayer, and took the opportunity to add an Intentional Creativity twist with drawings and watercolour.
You may know March 14th (3.14) as International Pi Day for the mathematically inclined. National Affirming/PIE Day also marks March 14th by taking the notion of love as a circle. It’s irrational, inclusive, and infinite.
Find out more about PIE day at National Affirming Day (pieday.ca)
Find the Bedford United full service atBedford United Church - All are Welcome, All the Time | Facebook
Oh Holy One, we come to you with both joys and sorrows of our hearts.
We are grateful for the gift of life
And the joy it can bring.
For families and friends who love us.
For friends who stick up for us.
For the lessons in a humble PIE.
We give thanks for the luxuries of ingredients and kitchens to cook in – butter, sugar, flour, Kitchenaid mixers and grandma’s bowl and wood spoon. We know that sometimes ingredients on their own, like salt and flour, are hard to swallow, but mixed with intention and love in a family recipe can be absolutely delicious.
Please help us remember that, like rolling dough, every one of us is under pressure, spread a little thin, yet holding together.
When we peel the apples, remind us to look for the bruising under the surface and know that we all have hidden hurts. Compost those peels and cores so something new can grow.
And let us rejoice in our clean up and notice the flour we see everywhere, evidence of the love we’ve left behind.
(RED)
Creator of rich diversity,
We affirm that all people are endowed with inherent dignity and worth and we are called to treat each other in ways that honour and value that worth. Life is sacred. All life.
On this PIE day we lament that too often the lives, rights and freedoms of 2-spirit LGBTQ plus people have not been valued in our communities.
We celebrate with Rev. Bob Fillier and the folks at St. James United Church in St. John’s, NL as today they Affirm diversity is a blessing.
Guide and strengthen us as we seek to answer your call and resist all forms of injustice.
(ORANGE)
Open our hearts and minds to the passion and wisdom of Indigenous peoples. They are the stewards of your beautiful and abundant creation. Our colonial actions have caused grievous harm to their way of living, to their families, and to their sense of self - and they are grieving. Help us be agents of healing.
(YELLOW)
Oh Great Lover of peace – we are heartbroken over the war in the sovereign nation of Ukraine and elsewhere. How can there be more armed conflicts brewing in more places around the world than at any time since the second world war? Yemen, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya and Mali, drug wars in Mexico and Colombia, terrorist insurgency in a dozen African countries… Right now there are 84 million displaced peoples due to war, political chaos or deprivation. Give them courage to keep going and to know they are not alone.
(GREEN)
Holy Divine Mother – this is your planet, your gift to us. We rejoice in the life-giving green growing things, the solidness of the ground beneath our feet, the unseen quantum world of energy and matter. We delight in the miracle of individual snowflakes, the way sunlight sparkles on water in Lew Turner’s photos, and the way trees communicate with each other. You gave us the Rainbow as a promise to support all life on earth. Grant us wisdom to reverse the climate crisis.
(BLUE)
God show us the way of harmony. Give us the courage to be our authentic selves, to practice self expression and to be a voice for change.
We ask for wisdom and strength to undertake this work even when it’s scary (or maybe especially when its scary)
We pray for new ways to see you, to understand new ways of being in the world. We pray for healing and for redemption, and, where possible, reconciliation.
(PURPLE)
We thank you for the spirits who were trailblazers. Stir up in us the same fire as those who helped pave the way for where our 2 spirit LGBTQ+ siblings are today. May we never stop expanding the borders of love and acceptance.
We give thanks for all the people who bake these colourful PIEs with great love. We offer up our own silent prayers.
(Pause)
Rainbow colours come together to make one light.
The light still shines
Disrupted but delivered
In Jesus’ name, may it be so,
Amen.