Index

One of the primary goals for this site is to offer resources, especially for churches.

Many of those resources are posted as PDF files, so that the formatting of lyrics and poetry can be preserved, and so that you may more easily download or print the materials.

This page is a brief index of the resources and writings that are available here.

Resources generally will have a short blog post with an introduction, and a link to the PDF file as appropriate. You can post comments on the blog post.

Worship Life: Liturgy

  • A Holy Week Service of Lament and Hope for Creation
    The service may be used for Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. It will take less than an hour (depending on how long it takes for you to do Communion). If you have a choir that usually sings during your Holy Week service, you could have them sing following an appropriate reading (one that fits with the theme of their anthem). Or, you could begin by gathering the congregation around tables for a simple meal and conversation, and then moving into the service itself.
  • A Service of and for Creation
    This service will take up a large portion of a regular Sunday service. It could be used in place of the sermon and some of the prayers. Make sure to research the most recent Parts Per Million (ppm) of Carbon in the atmosphere a day or two before the service.
  • Advent for a New Creation
    This resource covers all four weeks of Advent, and consists of Advent-themed readings, a song, and worship pieces. It is not an entire service. It does, however, have a complete Lighting of the Advent Candles ritual. In the song “Come, Thou Unexpected Jesus”, the middle verse changes each week to reflect that week’s Advent theme. (A complete copy of the song with all its Advent verses is in a separate PDF document.)
  • Advent for Creation on the Edge
    This resource covers all four weeks of Advent, and consists of Advent-themed readings and worship pieces. It is not an entire service. It does, however, have a complete Lighting of the Advent Candles ritual, which will take some setup work ahead of time.
  • Advent for Ordinary People in Not Ordinary Times
    This resource covers all four weeks of Advent, using the traditional Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. It focuses on what we can learn from the “ordinary people” in the Christmas story. While each week does not constitute an entire service of worship, it does include major service components: Call to Worship, Readings, Advent Candle-Lighting, Song, and Benediction.  The two-verse song changes each week to reflect that week’s theme.

    Take special note that, unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture readings and opening Meditation reading need to go at the start of your service, even before the Call to Worship. And the Candle-Lighting service takes some advance preparation.
  • All Saints Day
    This is a brief ritual that can take place within the regular Sunday service. Use it in the fall, around Dia de los Muertos/Totenfest/All Saints Day
  • Baptismal Vows
    This is a collection of baptismal vows for use with an infant/young child. They could be easily adapted with a few word changes to reflect an older child or adult’s vows of commitment.  But these vows work best for an infant/young child.
  • Blessing of the Animals: A Celebration in Two Parts
    This liturgy is in two parts: Blessing of the Wild Creatures, and Blessing of Our Animal Companions. They belong within the regular Sunday service, and do not make up the entire service. You can do them sequentially (in any order) over two Sundays, but I don’t recommend doing them both in one service. That’s an awfully long time for pets to be sitting in church (and some people, too!).
  • Blessing of the Ballots – 10/18/20
    A few weeks before the 2020 election, Washington Park United Church of Christ in Denver, Colorado, devoted part of the Sunday morning worship service to a blessing of the ballots. (Colorado elections are primarily mail-in.)
  • Christmas Eve 2024
    This collection of readings and worship pieces is not meant to be a complete service in and of itself. Rather, these pieces may be used to supplement what you will be planning for your own unique Christmas Eve service. The Lighting of the Christ Candle is its own complete ritual (although you can certainly add a song!), and will take some preparation ahead of time.
  • Christmas Eve for Ordinary People in Not Ordinary Times
    This is a collection of resources; it is not an entire service. It does, however, include an entire ritual for Lighting of the Christ Candle. There are also various readings – responsive readings for the congregation, and readings done by one or two worship leaders. There is also a song that summarizes the four preceding weeks of Advent. These resources can fit into your own unique Christmas Eve Service.
  • Christmas Eve in the Family of Creation
    This is a collection of resources; it is not an entire service. It does, however, include an entire ritual for Lighting of the Christ Candles. There are also various readings – responsive readings for the congregation, and readings done by one or two worship leaders. It’s a way to help you in the planning of your own unique Christmas Eve Service.
  • Easter Resources for a Season of Lament and Hope for Creation
    These Easter readings are not a whole liturgy in and of themselves, but are simply a collection of readings to be used as you see fit and within the framework of your own Easter service. Each church has its own unique way of celebrating this high church holiday. The “blurb for the bulletin” piece may be printed in your bulletin before the start of the service. Or, you could use the “Alternative Version” that follows, as a responsive reading with the congregation sometime towards the start of the service.
  • Easter: Wonder, Absurdity, and Holy Questions
    This is a short collection of readings, and two suggestions for a ritual, to supplement your own service for Easter Sunday. The readings are best read by one or two worship leaders, and not as congregational readings. The suggestions for ritual are found in the “Notes to the Pastor” section on the first page of the materials.
  • For the Love of Creation: A Journey from Separation to Community (Ash Wednesday)
    This is a short Ash Wednesday service of readings, candlelight, imposition of ashes, and of Communion. Around the middle of the service, there will be a time for silent reflection. Since sitting in silence can be hard for some folks, especially if you’re doing this service on Zoom, have some quiet music playing in the background during this time.
  • Interfaith Service of Prayer and Healing – 11/4/2020
    On the day after the 2020 elections, Washington Park United Church of Christ in Denver, Colorado, joined with another UCC congregation and a Jewish synagogue in Ocala, Florida for a service of prayer and healing.
  • Lent: A Journey from Separation to Connection, for the Love of Creation
    This is a collection of resources – prayers, songs, responses, readings – for use during Lent. It is not theme-based week by week, but its overarching theme is movement from separation to community. It is not lectionary-based, so you can use it in any year. It includes a candle-lighting ritual, as well, to be used each week.
  • Lent: Lament and Hope for Creation
    This is a collection of prayers and readings for use during Lent, from Ash Wednesday through Easter. While some of the readings are inspired by lectionary texts, these resources may still be used in any Lenten season.

    While these resources include a longer liturgy for Holy Week, that liturgy and the other Lenten resources do not constitute an entire worship service. They are simply pieces you may work into your services. And they do not need to be read one after the other in your service; they may be spread throughout your service. In fact, it’s a good idea to intersperse a hymn of one or two verses in between some of the readings.
  • Raggedy Church: A Call and Response
    This service will take up a large portion of a regular service of worship, if not the whole thing. It is a call and response – the poetry, read by a worship leader, is the “call” and after each one there is a response by the congregation – a reading, or a prayer, or song or an action.
  • Ritual for Leadership and Action
    This short ritual is to be used in worship (or even in committee meetings!) during the time of the Glasgow Climate Summit (COP26), running from October 31-November 12, 2021. It consists of introductory words (background information), and a prayer using two readers and the whole congregation. The introductory words may be either read aloud or printed in the bulletin or on a slide (see the notes at the start of the ritual).
  • Ritual of Lament and Promise
    How often have we lit candles in memory of lives lost to gun violence? While “thoughts and prayers” are not enough (are they ever?), it is still important for Church to gather in lament, grief, and commitment to change.
    While this service is specific to one such particular gun violence tragedy, it can serve as a possible template or frame for other such tragedies, either on a local or national/international level. Because, God knows, we’ll probably need to do this again.
  • Tenebrae for Creation
    This service is to be held during Holy Week, preferably in the evening, as it involves the extinguishing of candles. It is a full service, and not just part of another service of worship. It is best done in person, not via Zoom. You can begin it with a simple soup supper around tables, where you will also be serving Communion (the text of the service on the website goes into these details).

Worship Life: Readings and Prayers

  • Beloved Community
    A reading best done by a single reader/worship leader, not unison or responsive reading.
  • Creation at the Edge: Prayers and Readings for Election Season 2024
    This is a collection of individual resources, and not intended to be an entire service of worship. Use them throughout the election season this autumn as occasions call for.

    You can use these pieces separately (or one or two together). They can be used in worship, integrated into your sermons, read/prayed at meetings or retreats – however you see fit. They are meant to be used in community – we lament together, we give thanks together, we laugh together, and we cry together.
  • Dark-Light Times
    This reading is formatted for a single reader, but it could be made into a responsive reading, as well. Permission is granted to re-format for a responsive reading but not to change or delete words or phrases.
  • Deep Into The Dark
    This reading is most effective at a Christmas Eve candlelight service, but I suppose you could use it during Advent, if you want. It’s best done by a single reader.
  • Easter
    This is a reading for Easter Sunday (but you probably figured that out!). It’s designed for one reader/worship leader. It’s not a unison reading.
  • Easter Anthem
    This can be read – on Easter – by two voices. Use your discretion (and creativity!) in dividing up who says what; just don’t change the order or delete lines. Towards the end of the reading there are longer spaces between words. Hold the silence there for a bit each time.
  • Holding Light
    This poem can be used during Advent/Christmas, but doesn’t need to be limited to that season. It’s about Church, not so much the holiday of Christmas.
  • Lament, Confession, and a Song to the Future
    This is written as a reading by a single voice. It’s long, so you could try having two readers/worship leaders. Please use the whole thing and don’t leave anything out. If you can find a graphic of the plaque on the Ok Glacier that is mentioned at the beginning, and put it in your bulletin, that could be effective.
  • Not Ordinary Times
    This is a long reading, best done by one voice.
  • Proclamation and Confession of Faith
    This could be read by one or two readers/worship leaders. It’s not a congregational responsive reading, though.
  • The Qualifier Angel
    This is a whimsical reading from the perspective of an angel greeting a human. It might be fun to put this into your Christmas pageant!
  • This Is What We Do
    Written at the start of the pandemic, so it’s “dated”, it might yet work when you begin to gather in person, remembering what we did and who we are as Church. It is mostly a poem about our connectedness.
  • Vigil
    Perhaps this series of haiku can go in the service order for any social or environmental justice vigil you might do as a church or a community.

Worship Life: Songs

  • Annual Meeting Song
    To the tune of “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” you can sing this as a way to get psyched up for your church’s annual meeting. Sing with gusto and not a whole lot of seriousness!
  • Come, Thou Unexpected Jesus
    This hymn was written for the Advent for a New Creation worship resources. In those resources, it’s a three-verse hymn, with the middle verse matching that week’s Advent theme (hope, peace, joy, or love). Here in this version, those three middle verses are all included, if you just wanted to sing the piece during Advent, without using the other materials. I would not recommend singing all 6 verses each week in Advent, though!
  • Creation Will Dance
    This is a hymn for congregational singing. The tune is a familiar one – many will know it as the tune to “Lord of the Dance.” Since it has four verses, and could run long, I’ve suggested that the refrain come just after the 2nd and 4th verses.
  • For All of Life
    This is a song is a response to the practice of many churches to stop singing/saying “alleluia” during Lent, thus making for a more somber tone to the season. I suggest that instead, we sing our alleluias as a proclamation of hope in the face of these hard, hard times, even as we work to tend and mend Creation. This rationale needs to be explained before the song us sung, otherwise it won’t make sense to the congregation. The tune is to “From All That Dwell Below the Skies”.
  • Hope and Promise
    I chose this tune intentionally – it’s very upbeat, even as the words are pretty heavy. But I like the image of holding onto hope and real joy, even in the midst of hard stuff. If you use the UCC New Century Hymnal, the tune (Beech Spring) is #332
  • Keep the Circle Whole For All
    This is a lively song, and can be done in a variety of styles: folk guitar, blues/jazz piano, or something else of your choice! It’s a good “sending forth” song for the end of the worship service.
  • Our God Calls to Us
    This can be sung as a hymn by the congregation, although the tune is not a familiar one to many. It may also be sung as an ensemble/small group song, in a two-or more-part round. If it’s sung as a round by an ensemble, print the words in the bulletin, because it’s often hard to understand the words in a round. Don’t sing it too slowly. The tune is to “When Jesus Wept”.
  • Stewardship Song
    Here’s another song that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has some fun with Pledge/Stewardship Sunday. Sometimes the words don’t fit the meter, so play around with forcing them to fit (sort of like swimsuit shopping, right? At least for me!). I usually opt for words over meter.
  • We Will Not Keep From Singing
    This is a congregational piece and could be sung in a variety of ways. For example, you could insert the refrain only after two verses, instead of after each one, to shorten the piece a bit. Or, you could break up the verses and sing each one (in order) throughout the service – this could be especially effective if you’re doing a service on the healing of creation, and include confession, lament, and ultimately wonder, action and hope.
  • When We Survey God’s Creation, Our Earth
    This is a congregational hymn, but you could also use a verse or two as a prayer response. It’s sung  most appropriately during the Lenten season, but isn’t limited to that. The tune is to When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.
  • Who Is This God Who Calls To Us?

Worship Life: Worship Service Pieces

  • Affirmation of Faith During These Times
    This responsive reading was written for the ritual Blessing of the Ballots, which was held at my home church just before the 2020 election. This can, however, be used at other times of the year. The Vigils and Rituals Team at the church wrote the ritual, and I wrote this Affirmation.

    In the reading, there is reference to the denomination to which I belong, the United Church of Christ. We came from a merger of other U.S. denominations. If you are not UCC and still wish to use this, you can delete the phrase, “In the United Church of Christ, we come from a history of mergers…greater whole”, and pick up with “Our ancestors in faith…” Otherwise, leave it as is.
  • Be Blessed
    This is a prayer of blessing for those in the long-haul work of justice and care for creation. It can be used in a variety of ways – anointing service, a benediction, a commissioning of church folks for a project or a protest. Use your imagination. We could all use a blessing, and words of encouragement in this good work!
  • Call to Gathering
    This responsive reading was first used at my church’s Annual Meeting. It worked well there. It could also be used in a regular service of worship.
  • Called Together
    This is a call to worship and can be done with two readers. You can divide the reading up between readers as you see fit; just don’t change the words or the order of the phrases. I’d be interested to see how you divided the parts up!
  • For Comfort and Calling
    This is a responsive reading. It can be used as a Benediction at the close of a worship service, especially one around community and Creation.
  • Imagine! A Prayer for Community
    This is a responsive prayer. It could be used at the close of a worship service, or at the start of a church or community meeting.
  • Living God, Touch Our Hearts
    This is a sung response to the reading of scripture/other readings in the service of worship. The music is included here and may be used with acknowledgment. It also lends itself to being read instead of sung.
  • Prayer of Confession and Lament for Creation
    This was originally written for one voice, but I think it needs to be done responsively, with the congregation taking part. It lends itself to a responsive format nicely. You have permission to make it a responsive reading, without changing words or deleting or re-arranging phrases.

Reflection Pieces and Poetry

  • Angel Unaware
    This is simply a poem in praise of dogs. It could possibly be used during a “Blessing of the Animals” service.
  • Carve Out Hope
    This is a reading/a poem about hope and community. Too wordy to read in a service of worship, but could be a reflection piece personally or in a small group.
  • Credo
    This personal poem/credo came out of my arguing in my head with a quote I read in adrienne marie brown’s wonderful book “Emergent Strategy”.  The quote itself could be a good discussion starter in a small group, and folks could then write their own Credo.
  • Etude
    This is simply about the power of music, where I cite some of my favorite artists. Who are yours? What does music do for your heart?
  • Falling in Love with Creation
    What does it mean to love Creation? And who, really, is my neighbor? This could be read in a worship service, as well as for personal reflection.
  • It Doesn’t Fit
    This one may be best read out loud, since it plays with meter (or lack thereof!).
  • It’s Out Of Order Again
    This was just a reflection piece in response to a poetry prompt: “your reaction to an Out of Order sign on a vending machine.” Perhaps it could turn into a reflection exercise for an individual or group.
  • Kaleidoscope
    A poem that suits itself more for personal use than for use in a worship service.
  • Nameless One
    An experience of God on a soft spring day. Could be used during an outdoor retreat and have people write about their own sensations.
  • Oratorio
    Conversation starter for a group – what is the music you hear, what is the song and who is singing it? Where are you in the song?
  • Pilgrimage
    This is a very long reflection on my experience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. It moves towards reflection on privilege and silence, among other things.
  • Sacred Heart
    This could be read at a service about commitment and love, or maybe even on Valentine’s Day!
  • Say Their Names
    This could be used in a memorial/ritual/vigil around violence towards people of color, around missing and murdered indigenous women and trans people. And, unfortunately, you’ll probably have to update it every time you use it.
  • Shadow Climber
    A reflection piece on about owning up to America’s real history, not what we’ve mostly been taught.
  • Superpower
    This can be used in a group conversation about community and hard conversations.
  • Thanks, I Think
    Personal reflection on prayer and wishing God would clearly tell me what to do.
  • Waves
    Definitely a reflection piece, not something to be read quickly out loud.
  • Wholly Wonder
    Gotta have another poem about a dog! Could be read – in a group or alone – during a service/ritual of gratitude and wonder at “everyday” miracles.

Comments, Essays and Rants

  • Here We Go Again
    Reflections on yet another mass shooting. One week after our church lit candles for the victims of the shooting in Atlanta (targeting primarily Asian-Americans), and read their names, we held yet another short ritual in church for victims closer to home – in Boulder, Colorado.
  • Holy Distraction, Batman!
    A fun little reading on where the holy actually is. Could be a good one to read at a prayer group gathering.
  • Lament, Rant, and Affirmation of Faith
    A Holy Week meditation piece on the temptation to be a church that is nice and safe, comfortable, sheltered (yes, we need some of that, but we can no longer afford a church that retreats into Business as Usual; we never really could afford that, actually).
  • Start With Your Socks
    This could be used as part of a group conversation on “the other”, or “communicating across the divide”.