Liz Cooledge Jenkins

Category: Prayers

  • Lament Wall Prayer

    At the beginning of Lent, a team of people from my church put up an amazing “Lament Wall” in the courtyard. People were invited to write down prayers and laments on pieces of paper and stick them in the cracks of the wall. Prayers written during church services were stuck in there, joined later by…

  • Prayer: prepare

    I wrote this prayer back in Advent, but it feels about right for the last week or so. Grieving for and with those most impacted by violence, by power moving through our world in perverse ways. The original Advent prompt word was “prepare.” Prepare God, the weight of the world is still here. I know…

  • Prayer: Stillness

    During Advent I followed along with my church’s word-of-the-day photo challenge – sort of. Instead of taking pictures, I wrote a prayer inspired by each word. This basically meant that I would word vomit whatever came to mind each weekday morning as I contemplated God and life and the world and the word of the…

  • A prayer for 2022

    I wrote this new year prayer for my church community and thought I’d share it with you all as well. (Hopefully six days in isn’t too late to still feel like it’s a very very new year.) I also have two links to offer. The first is a piece on Trumpism and some of Jesus’…

  • Post-acquittal prayer

    A prayer for mercy as the news of Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial sinks in. God, have mercy on everyone who grieves this. Have mercy on everyone who rejoices. Have mercy on everyone who is oblivious. Have mercy on everyone who is numb. Have mercy on everyone who carries disillusionment like weight within…

  • Election Week Blessing

    Because I wanted to be cool like Nadia Bolz-Weber (just kidding―I’ll never be as cool as Nadia!) and write some blessings of my own. (Check out Nadia’s beautiful “Blessed are the Agnostics” piece here, if you like. It’s really lovely.) These words are loosely inspired by the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and much less loosely inspired…

  • Poker, Prodder

    Keeping with the theme of the recent Christian celebration of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, juxtaposed with this reality we find ourselves in: Poker, Prodder Holy Spirit, poker, prodder,  discomforter of unjust  horror-filled structures and disquieter of all who profit from them, table-turner of the wrongly weighted scales that weigh color and find darkness wanting,…