Day 1: Love

OPENING PRAYER

Mother/Father of Life, Maker of all things, we come together guided by love, with the singular desire to live in love, with creation and with each other, because you are Love. Keep our feet on the path of love, holding hands with our fellow humans, especially those who we were taught were unlovable, unworthy of our time and attention, and to be feared or hated. We are so much more alike than we are different from one another. Help us to be mindful of this today and always.

OPENING SONG: I Know

I know that you move through me
Show me your rhythm
to move through this world with your Love, Dear Love.

Hold me,
Show me,
Speak to my spirit
to move through this world with your love, Dear Love.

FIRST READING: Austin Channing Brown

I need a love that is troubled by injustice. A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice.

SUNG PSALM OPENING

O Love, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. (Repeat)

PSALM 34

With humility I bless and praise You Lord.
The sweetness of Your grace upon my lips.
I called to you and sought You and You found me and delivered me from my fear.
Broken open I stood before you in my pain:
You watched me and held me in your gaze.
Your light shone right through me, bringing peace and wholeness to my life.
So taste and see the goodness that is God. Live in this Truth.
With reverence and beauty you abide in us when we abide in you.
A lion share of riches and of power cannot protect us from suffering or pain.
Keep an eye out for evil for its hatred can lock us out from within.
While the pure of heart are humble, God’s light protects them.
So act with kindness, seek peace and pursue it as best you can.
Your tender heart knows how to reach to God to find healing and refuge and peace.
For You are ever with me God, I thank you , my soul finds rest in You.

SUNG DOXOLOGY

Glory to the Maker, Lover, and Keeper; as ago, in this breath, and will be ever. Amen, Amen.

SECOND READING: Steven Charleston

The key to stopping the environmental apocalypse is not science but love. For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired to change our apocalyptic reality. But where science has failed, faith can succeed. We must help humanity rediscover their loving parent, the living world that sustains them.

SILENT CONTEMPLATION

PRAYERS OF CONCERN

Blessed Holy One, how did we, created in love to be love, find ourselves separate from our true nature, bright beings of love? So often we find ourselves embroiled in strife, division, and hate. Peace on earth seems impossible within these conditions, and inner peace unattainable. Where is the love we’re meant to live in, love that extends outward? Restore us to living love.

SUNG RESPONSE

O God of Love, receive the prayers we offer.

Lover of the World, do we see ourselves as we truly are, or do we clean up our image in our minds? Can we recognize the aspects of us that don’t align with love? Do we ever view ourselves as greater than or less than others, when neither is true, when love is the great equalizer? When do I walk away from love? Show me, so that I may return to it.

SUNG RESPONSE

O God of Love, receive the prayers we offer.

Gracious Divine, how can we say we love you, but not creation or humankind when you are the creator of all? How can we cry out for justice for those in far off lands, and ignore the injustices those in our own communities face? So often we are full of contradictions. Give us the will and ability to keep choosing love in both desire and action.

SUNG RESPONSE

O God of Love, receive the prayers we offer.

Please add the prayers you are longing to express.

SUNG RESPONSE

O God of Love, receive the prayers we offer.

CLOSING SONG: There is No Gift So Holy

Chorus
There is no gift so holy as the gift of love, oh love.
There is no gift so holy as the gift of love, oh love.

Praying for mercy, sobbing for freedom,
a heart of hope and pain.
Troubled in spirit, restless with visions,
a creature held in God’s sweet embrace.

Long have you traveled pilgrimage journeys,
longing to free us all.
Mother to many, seeking forgiveness,
devoted to Christ’s love and call

CLOSING BLESSING

A Blessing to Live in Love

If the words we speak
can break hearts and heal them again,
but we do not live in love,
our utterances are all noise.
And if we give prophecies
that bloom the buds of mystery,
and have faith that makes mountains leap,
and we don’t live in love,
we are among those in most need of mercy.

May we see lovelessness as crippling poverty,
and grow rich in love.

May we cultivate care for others,
and surrender the memory of their sins.

May we bow deeply to love,
allowing it to have its way,

May we let love open sweetness in us to share,
the way lilacs and roses gift us their scents.

May love open our eyes to see clearly the good in us,
and move our gaze away from what’s best left
in our painful, distant past.

May love never fail us,
and like the Divine,
despite obstacles and at all times,
may we live in love to stay.

SUNG AMEN