March 19, 2025
A Note from Pastor April
Dear Friends,
I pray that your Lenten season has been one filled with space for reflection, connection, and community.
This season, the practice I chose to add was a Loving Kindness Meditation. I’ve found it even more helpful to visualize and hold space for others if I am also creating space to listen to the real struggles they are holding in their hearts.
As we read the laments of our ancestors in the Book of Lamentations, for the next two Letters of Encouragement I want to offer you some modern-day laments.
The first of these is written by Cole Arthur Riley, a contemplative, writer, and theologian who weaves her own experience as a Black woman into the depth of her prayerful writing.
As you read her words, notice if you have a reaction to hearing her perspective. See if you can stay with any discomfort and try to listen more fully in an effort to understand her experience and point of view.
For Those Taught to Believe in Scarcity:
Abundant God,
Remind us that there is enough for us. We are grateful that the earth we have been entrusted to care for is one of beauty and provision. We have all we need. Reveal the hypocrisy and corruption of the privileged. In a world of men who have more than it would ever be humanly possible to spend, we have let entire countries starve and thirst, often because we have stolen the resources of their own sacred lands. Protect us from the myth of scarcity sold to us by white capitalism, which tells us we must fight for scraps because there is not enough. Rid us of the lie that the only way to contentment and survival is to sacrifice our bodies in work and toil. Expose the deception at work in our financial systems and economic processes. And help us tell new stories of what business and compensation might look like in a just society. Give us an imagination for a culture that leverages its resources for the protection of the vulnerable — human, creature and land. Convict the overprivileged and wealthy to rend their own dignity and self-actualization from their possessions. And let those living in scarcity be reminded that there is enough for them. May they feel no guilt in claiming it.
Amen.
Source: Riley, Cole Arthur, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems and Meditations for Staying Human (Convergent, 2024), pp. 141-2.
On the journey with you,
Pastor April
The Rev. April Blaine
Lead Pastor
