My prayer Amid Covid19, BLM and 2020.

God who is a working father and working mother:

You have tended your people, while caretaking all of humanity.

You have mourned and created sometimes simultaneously.

You centered  children, women, poor, the workers, the suffering in every aspect of your presence.

So here we are, your people, in the midst of a pandemic we made huge.

Amid an awakening where some people are newly aware of suffering and others are hoping beyond hope this might be the shift their lives and their people's need.

Here we are in whatever our realities are: privilidged perhaps in some ways and suffering in others.

Oh come, oh come emmanuel.

Come God and be with us, during this Advent year.

Remind us that education is not everything.

And that work isn't everything.

That aliveness is a gift.

And that life is a sweet balance of everything but that something is always out of balance.

Inspire in those who can make it happen policy changes big and small that protects lives, families, hopes, dreams, futures, and even caretakes our losses.

And pray in us, through us, live in us and through us for all that is unsaid here all the stories lived out in particularities.  Be alive in this weird ass remarkable year.

For me though God.

Give me the wherewithall to notice the sweet moments.

To learn something newly deep in myself and practice it.

For me God, remind me to give what I have to give.

To love well what I cherish.

To be gentle with myself.

To find the sacred in the ordinary.

And dear God, give me (and Sean) clarity about whatever decisions we wil face as a family this week.

Amen.