Coming Home to Prayer & Poetry

plus welcoming the solstice gently

Hello friends,

Today we close out this series on the Everyday Portals of Poetry & Prayer.

I hope you’ve been held here, even for short moments, in spurts and starts, in ebbs and flows.

I want to close out this series with hope, because we need it right now.

Perhaps I can’t help it, being a poet, that I respond to the pain of the world (and my own beloved pain) with words, with images, with metaphor, with shapes and shadow.

Padraig O’Tuama writes in his book In The Shelter:

I wonder if all my longings

could shape for me a ship

of hopes to carry me on

these seas of homeward yearning.

I yearn for home.

I am not someone who hopes with naievity; I am an Indigenous woman who has faced multiple traumas; I am a daughter of abandonment and divorce; I have lived with grief moving throughout my body for many years.

I am a product of religious trauma, but it has not totally taken my soul, my freedom, my joy. I gain it back, find it, hold it, every single day, and that is one reason I decided to produce this series on prayer—because we have space here to reclaim things that have been lost to us, traumas forced upon us. We have a chance at freedom.

Recently I was an at event, and it was going late into the evening. I was increasingly tired, mostly of being around people. I can get that way sometimes, this feeling of needing to escape, but also feeling bad about it. I should really stay and participate, I thought.

I told a friend of mine how much I needed to rest and be alone, but that the guilt was creeping in, and he stopped me and said, “Be free.”

Something cracked open in me there.

Be free.

Be free to be who you are, to hold your boundaries, to stop people-pleasing, to let the guilt and the shame slide off of your precious body.

Be free.

Be free to be in your beloved body. Be free to pray however you need to pray. Be free to hope deeply for things to be better, and invest in moments that create that reality.

Be free to love and find joy. Be free.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

I have personally freed myself by being the in active work (because I’m never quite done!) of decolonizing my faith, embracing the “pagan” roots of my ancestors, finding the sacred in Potawatomi prayers and ways of belonging, writing poetry that draws me into the soul of myself, into the deep parts that cannot be touched by colonial ways of belonging.

That is coming home, at least for me.

So how are you coming home to prayer, to your soul, to freedom?

Let’s now tie this into the sacred space of this week, the Winter Solstice.

Photo by John Price on Unsplash

The solstice marks liminality.

We are in the darkest night of the year, and yet we celebrate the sun, the birthday of the sun, the coming of spring and the coming of the cold months, the hibernation, the storytelling season, the watching and waiting time.

How can we mark liminal space this year?

Maybe you find a new book on liminality.

Maybe you listen to music and sit with the silence.

Maybe you take time to honor what’s now but not yet.

Maybe you hold the grief between spaces.

All is welcome in liminality—even and especially, hope.

a prayer for liminal solstice

O Good Earth,
Holy Sustenance,
Tender Spirit,
Multi-faceted Universe,
thank you for holding us,
for teaching us to hold
the liminality of our
deepest and truest selves.

Thank you for teaching us
to arrive gently, to take up space,
to claim freedom, and to pray
without ceasing in a world that
needs our breath and heartbeat
constantly pointed toward
kinship and care.

Hold us here, tend to us,
and teach us to tend to 
one another in this
tired and weary world.

Thank you,
thank you,
thank you,
thank you,

for the darkness and the light,
for the joy and the spaciousness,
for every lesson learned as
the seasons change once again.

We listen,
we listen,
we listen,
we listen.

Amen.

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

I want to share 2 lovely things with you as we close out this series and head into the end of the calendar year:

1. My friend Daneen Akers wrote a book a few years ago called Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, and I am so happy to announce that there is a book 2 coming! I was so honored to be featured in the first book, and these are wonderful for kids & adults alike.

But Daneen needs our help. These books are made with so much love and care, and they are made for, by, and in community. To create the books sustainability, to get them printed and ready for a waiting audience, Daneen needs to raise money.

Please open your generous hearts and give what you can to the kickstarter for the project.

Click here to donate

And while you’re here, grab the first book for a friend, for family, for yourself that you can enjoy as the new year approaches!

Order Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints here!

And lastly, my friend Katie Spring, who is a part of our community here at The Liminality Journal, has some poetry prints for sale on her pop-up shop!

It’s open through December 19th, so grab something while it’s available! Katie’s poetry is beautiful, tender, and invitational, something we could have more of in the coming year.

Here’s a sample of one of my favorite prints in the shop:

Order from Katie’s shop here, and be sure to sign up for her newsletter!

And stay tuned friends, for some exciting book news coming in the new year! Sending lots of solstice love your way.