ALISON CASELLA BROOKINS
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Words for Worship and Ritual

What is here and how to find it (pinned post)

1/1/2027

 
Here you will find prayers and other liturgical writings. I'm an incorrigible borrow of others' writings, and started this archive to contribute a bit.

Things are posted in no particular order. Click "read more" at the bottom of each post for the full liturgy. Click on the "categories" in the sidebar (bottom of page in mobile) to see...you know, categories. I tried to include all the different ways people might want to search for liturgy: year of the revised common lectionary, book of the Bible, liturgical season, and element of worship. 
​
Feel free to use anything you find here, edit my words, or use them as a starting place for your own work. All my work on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows you to use and adapt my work with attribution for non-commercial purposes. Please credit me by name and link to this website.
Creative Commons License
This work by Alison Casella Brookins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Body Affirmation

11/3/2024

 
I learned this body affirmation from my dear professor Dr. Rachel Miller Jacobs, and am sharing it here with her permission. I use this in many different contexts, often as a way to open up a group, tweaking the motions and words as needed.
Gnarled tree roots
BODY AFFIRMATION adapted by Rachel Miller Jacobs

What’s the difference between an affirmation/confession of faith and a prayer? An affirmation or confession of faith is a statement we make in the presence of, but not specifically to, God and others as a way of concretely claiming something is true. A prayer is a spoken, silent, and/or physical “conversation” with God: it is addressed to God. I call this practice an affirmation because while we speak it in God’s presence, what we are saying is not specifically addressed to God. 

I am grounded                            extend arms wide overhead—orans posture

my roots go deep                       bend from the waist and touch toes if possible!

I am flexible                                 raise arms above head and bend to the right

I am resilient                                then bend to the left

I am facing my past                     dropping arms to side, turn half-way around

and am letting go                             turn the rest of the way to face the front; 
of what I don’t need to carry      make a rolling motion with the hands, then a releasing motion

I am honoring God                       from a bent position, straightening up
with my body and soul               while sweeping your hands up your body 
                                                             
then extending back into original orans posture

​Adapted by Rachel Miller Jacobs from a STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience, Eastern Mennonite University http://www.emu.edu/cjp/star/) “prayer” 
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Backpack and Learning Space Blessings

8/17/2021

 
A yearly blessing of the backpacks for teachers and students. People bring backpacks and shoulder bags or other symbols of their studies. Print off images on card stock, cut them apart, and make decks of cards tied together with string to give to each participant. The images represent each attribute we're praying for. As we name each attribute (curiosity, love, etc) we all find the matching card and put them in our backpacks. Scroll to the bottom to download the cards.
Backpack blessing I
All ages


Jesus our teacher, bless these backpacks. Fill them with your gifts that we can pull out whenever we have need.

Fill them with curiosity, so that we can imagine the potential in every person and idea we come across.
Fill them with love, so that our spirits are not quashed by stress or bustle but stay strong and centered.
Fill them with kindness, so that in the crunch of competition we don’t try to win at someone else’s expense.
Fill them with courage to take risks, to speak the truth, and to pursue justice in our schools.
Fill them with grace that releases us from the burden of perfectionism, from the devastation of a bad grade, so that we can truly believe we are known and loved in both success and failure.
Fill them with joy, buoyant, bubbling joy that fills in all the cracks and cannot be contained, so that we can burst out of ourselves and be fully present to our students, our teachers, our classmates, and the world.

Jesus our teacher, bless our backpacks with these tools, and bless us with the wisdom to use them.

Amen.

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Meal Blessing for a Celebration

8/17/2021

 
A meal blessing for a celebration. I wrote this for a graduation party for a child from kindergarten to first grade, but it could be used or adapted for any meal celebrating a person: birthday, baptism, etc.
​​Earthmaker and Lover of creation,
we know that this food before us
has already been blessed by sun, earth, and rain.
We are grateful 
for the hidden gifts of life in this food.*
We pause for a moment to remember 
the sound of rain, 
the heat of sun, 
the hard work of many hands.

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Boop your Belovedness

8/17/2021

 
This prayer/meditation/thing came to me one morning early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when I woke early Sunday morning feeling hopeless as the night leached into day. I did this first as a personal meditation, then immediately wrote it and led my congregation through it in Zoom worship.
​
Imagine that your belovedness is located deep inside of you. I’m talking about that core of who you are as someone made in the image of a God who loves you, that part of you that has experienced love and worth or that longs to feel that love. It’s there, whether you are familiar with it or not. Take a moment to locate it in your body.


For me, it's a spot about the size of a walnut, right behind my sternum. Maybe it's larger or smaller for you, maybe it's lower in your gut, maybe it's higher in your heart, maybe it's somewhere else.

Wherever the core of your belovedness is, reach down to it and give it a little nudge, waking it up. You can put your hand on your body if you like.

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A Hiking Prayer

8/17/2021

 
Picture
I wrote this while hiking ancient basalt riverbeds in northern Minnesota. Some really hard stuff was happening, and this just came to me.

​
​God, 

Give me feet
so I know I am on solid ground.

Give me tears
so I know I have compassion.

Give me laughter
so I know I am loved.

Give me hands
so I can hold on.

Amen.

​Come All Who Are Thirsty, I Shall Give You Wine - Call

8/8/2021

 
Written January 27, 2019
Isaiah 25:6–8 "On the mountain, God will serve a feast"
Matthew 11:28–30 "Come all who are weary"
​Revised Common Lectionary Year A


One: Come, all who are thirsty.
All: The hour has come
One: Come, all who are weary and heavy-laden.
All: The hour has come
One: Come to the Lord's table, come to the mountain of the Lord, come to the party. 
All: The hour has come
One: In this place, today, for us, the Lord has made a feast of fat things, a feast of well-aged wines.
All: The hour has come
One: A feast of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
All: The hour has come
One: Come to the party, all who are thirsty, for I shall give you wine.

God Who Redefines Strength - Call to Worship

8/8/2021

 
Written Jan 20, 2019 
Matthew 5, Beatitudes and turn the other cheek
Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday


Leader One: We come to worship a God who redefines strength...
Leader Two: Blessed are the meek...
One: ...a God who pushes the mountains flat and pulls the valleys level.
Two: ...for they shall inherit the earth.
One: We come to worship an unexpected, counterintuitive God...
Two: Blessed are the peacemakers...
One: ...a God who turns us away from our instinct to lash out, our longing for revenge.
Two: ...for they will be called children of God.
One: We come to worship a God who asks an awful lot of us...
Two: If someone strikes you on the right cheek...
One: ...but a God who does not leave us alone, who walks with us in a human body, who took the greatest of risks, and rose to joyous life.
Two: ...offer them your other cheek also. 
One: So come.
Two: Come to worship God.


Don't Let Our Hope Be Futile - Advent Calls and Prayers

8/8/2021

 
This is a set of Calls to Worship and Prayers for Advent. I wrote them in 2018 (RCL Year C), but aren't tied particularly to the lectionary. Rather they are tied to a theme of waiting in honest expectation for God to arrive, to make good on what God promised.

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Breathe in the Gift - Call to Worship

8/5/2021

 
Written October2018 
For a service of lament over the Doctrine of Discovery
Menno Heritage Day materials 

 
Leader:
Come. You are welcome here, as everywhere, in the faithful presence of God. Sit. Listen. Breathe. This presence is a gift.

All:
We breathe in the gift of joy. 

Leader:
Bubbling, beautiful joy that bursts from our lips in song and laughter. Joy in this earth, for the blessed bustle of beings that make their homes here.

All:
We breathe in the gift of hope.

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    Creative Commons License
    This work by Alison Casella Brookins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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