Ingredients for Worship

Way back when I left my last full time call, nearly five years ago, I established this little home on the internet. I had read a bunch of books about blogging then. The trouble was that my internet home wasn’t what those books had imagined.

There isn’t a whole lot of click bait in worship resources and ministry ideas. I wasn’t going to trend even if I had been consistent with the features I imagined way back when. And I wasn’t. I wanted to write. I imagined a book. I spent hours upon hours writing that book and it was too much to maintain both my writing practice and this internet home.

Most of that book is now written. There is one last chapter to write and a whole bunch more editing to do. I’d spent the very end of last year writing a book proposal. Friends gave me feedback on that proposal and then a worldwide pandemic walloped all of us. The world is not the same as it was. No matter how ready I had been just a week before to send in my proposal, the urgency disappeared. It no longer felt like it mattered.

I’ve occupied my time in isolation potty training my toddler. I have spent most of the past month staring at my bathroom tile, reading books about poop and dancing around like a maniac when my sweet darling actually peed. Poop is a whole other story. At the same time, my baby girl learned to crawl. She has decided she has places to be.

I haven’t read much nor taken on any projects. I have not written a word outside of a text message but it was in a text chain that I felt a nudge to revive one of the old features. Some of my favorite clergy women were lamenting the fatigue and exhaustion that felt all the more palpable after Easter was over. Somewhere in the middle of Lent, they got locked within their own rooms. Few of them were upper rooms. It happened fast without much preparation. They innovated the crap out of those last few Sundays in one of the most holy seasons in the Christian calendar. They became producers and televangelists. They brought meaning and purpose. They built community in a format that most of their church members have bemoaned before the pandemic hit. And then, they made Easter happen with butterflies and choral anthems. It was amazing to watch. I am truly in awe. Then, Easter was over and all of the hope that this might only last through that Sunday vanished. They are tired. They are grieving.

They have no idea how much longer this will go on. They are, as we are all, hunkered down which another dear friend described really well earlier this week. They don’t know how to temper the expectations of those in their congregations any better than they know how to filter their own feelings. It is so much. It is just so much.

Before Easter, and especially during Holy Week, these amazing women told me that there was a wealth of resources. Artists and musicians were gifting free material to use in worship during those High Holy Days. There was so much good stuff that could be copied and pasted so that they could spend the time figuring out how to do a funeral for the saint that died in isolation at the nursing home or the young man who fell victim to this virus that has upended all of our lives. This broke my heart.

So I’m reviving this old feature so that my colleagues and friends can copy and paste into Zoom and Facebook Live when they are doing so much.

Ingredients for Worship will once again feature prayers following the Revised Common Lectionary. New liturgies will appear each week on Tuesday for the upcoming Sunday starting this coming Tuesday. All of the prayers will focus on this strange new interim season in which we now find ourselves. Themes in these prayers will emphasize change, uncertainty, discernment and discovering who we are and who God is now.

It’s a small thing that I can do and I hope it helps.

I’m praying with you and for you, dear clergy.