Congregational StoryPoems
Poems written from an offering of words in worship
Choose a StoryPoem below:
A Prayer for Peace - May 2009
Blessing the Space Twice Over - January 2009
with Mt. Baker Park Presbyterian ChurchWe Are In God’s Pocket - December 2006
Who Do YOU Say That I Am? - November 2005
Old Zebedee - April 2005
The Bent Over Woman - November 2004
A congregational STORY POEM, Findlay Street Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Memorial Day Sunday, May 24, 2009;
written offerings of words in silent prayer, shaped by Rev. Joan Dennehy.
A PRAYER FOR PEACE
Dear God,
Teach us how to end the madness of war,
to refrain from harming those who hurt us,
to remember that each person wants happiness.
May we remember our enemies’ children.
May we teach our children empathy—
beyond sound bites, positions, media,
and instant connection. It is true bonding
we yearn for, heart to heart to heart.
Let us see others as fellow travelers,
try harder to understand their hopes
especially in other countries and cultures.
especially when it tests our comfort.
May we let go of fear, just release it,
and see them through eyes of respect,
see the unnamed burdens they carry,
offer a hand, a shoulder, a buck or two.
Now is our time to be your face in the world.
We see water dropping into this world.
Ripples of love you spread for us.
There is sunshine in our hearts
and it feeds that love. Leaves rustle
in the breeze of peace and we can
hear the hum of unruffled humanity.
Zounds! We dare not rest in easy thoughts.
Peace is work. Peace must be given.
Peace strives for justice in all places,
and weeps for moments lost, for severed family,
for choices ill advised, for victims of violence,
for how terribly slow we are to learn from our past.
Blessings. Kindness. We need them.
Every person on earth needs them.
Help us, God, not to be afraid to live in peace.
Help us try harder. Open our hearts.
Guide us into being the best we can be.
All we are saying to ourselves as we pray
is give peace a chance,
because you wonder if ever we have, really.
A StoryPoem written by Rev. Joan Dennehy using the offerings of words from members of
Mt. Baker Park Presbyterian Church and Findlay Street Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in a shared worship on Jan. 4, 2009, on the occasion of their Renewal of Covenant.
Blessing the Space Twice Over
We are immensely grateful we have a home.
We saw you marching toward us down Hunter Blvd.
And we will see you leave us someday,
Pilgrims as we both are, the moving-about church.
With travelers and strangers we share willingly,
Openly. One church. A gift from God.
Generous, loving, and yes, at times intrusive, annoying.
Like a child without a home I yearn and pray.
Like the Israelites, we set up camp,
Open and affirming wherever we are,
Called again and again to adjust.
Inconvenient, awkward, yet full of grace to wander,
Much like following the way of Jesus.
Afternoon worship is a problem but what a glorious place to be.
This building is blessing and burden.
You increase the blessing and help us carry the burden.
I remember when our sharing would not have been possible.
O what a commotion there would have been.
We are more grown up in faith now.
Energized, refreshed.
I see the obvious love our guests have for one another.
I don’t feel like a guest. I feel like family,
The risk of space between the fingers,
Strength of trust, the table as hearth,
Sharing common care and purpose,
Children the cornerstone, wise elders the threshold.
To be in this sanctuary—Grace!
We imagine no banners in this beautiful space.
What a privilege. What could be more hopeful?
This sort of sharing is easy. The ground is holy, a beautiful garden.
Did not Christ warn us about attachment to buildings?
We are made less insular and arrogant by your presence—
By your trust in God—a faith community
Who did not surrender to despair.
Still…my favorite pew was taken when we shared worship today.
When you have no house the whole world becomes your home.
Doubly for God’s people, Spirit is here. New faces. Pews full.
Blessings to you for being the tender welcoming hands of God.
Blessings to you for staying steady as a congregation.
A congregational STORY POEM, November, 2004; responses to the question Why is the woman bent over? (Luke 13:10-17)
The Bent Over Woman
Just then she appeared
bent over like my mother with years,
time spent with children on her back,
baking bread, carrying the weight of water, scrubbing,
a body spent well,
now in the long graceful wilt of the Gerber daisy.
Or was it the curve of too much humiliation
the posture of one with no voice, no power
invisible
bent double for her losses,
each year reaching longer into the past.
Unwilling to look up? Afraid to look ahead?
Hunched over, what do you see?
What can you hide, cover, ignore,
making yourself smaller,
like the tall girl in the wake of mother’s
STAND UP STRAIGHT.
She was quite unable to comply.
Too much following the yellow brick road, some say.
No, it’s the violence, say others.
She has seen its torture,
is bent over working for peace in a war her son will not fight.
Or was it unspeakable grief?
Life raped and empty of nurture
in her tiny corner of the world
or in the thick layers of history.
All the injustice like jagged bricks,
all the swallowed fears dense and throbbing.
The sky sat heavy in her thoughts.
Look up, sister!
You need not carry the burdens of this world.
Holy woman, any time, any day can bring freedom
for a moment, a season, a lifetime.
Better that you are bent over
because your necklace is really heavy.
A congregational STORY POEM, April, 2005; responses to the question Why didn’t Zebedee go with his sons? (Mt. 4:18-22)
Old Zebedee
Don’t rock my boat got as far as the throat
but passed not through the lips.
Was Zebedee too old for new adventures,
too comfortable to go off the deep end?
I don’t want to miss the boat ran through his mind
but did not linger.
They say the two best days of your life
are when you buy a boat and when you sell it.
It says nothing about just walking away from it.
But he named the boat after their mother
and could not bear to part from her twice.
It’s important for some to leave and for others to stay.
Some of us have a staying spirit.
Besides, he has heard a lot of fish stories
and wonders if this is the biggest fish story of all.
There go his sons with the street rabbi—off on a lark?
Young people, always with dreams in their heads!
They shrink from sight as they walk.
Someone has to put the boat away.
On that day it fell to Zebedee
born smelling fish, a practical man,
more rooted on water than on terra firma.
He knew when the “bite” was on;
he daily oiled the wheels of his community
by filling their stomachs, his dutiful love a godsend.
In the act of fishing he became one
with something greater than himself.
How can you look at the water and not see majesty?
Why didn’t Zebedee come along?
Jesus didn’t call him.
What if the boat is Zebedee’s altar of sacrifice?
A place of ultimate trust and devotion
inspired by his father in faith, Abraham.
He stands in that boat giving thanks
that the release of his sons has not harmed them.
He feels the double honor that his sons (like twin challahs)
are called into loving God by following Rabbi Yeshua.
He has fulfilled God’s high priestly calling and must now stay at his post.
A congregational STORY POEM, December, 2005; responses to the question from Jesus Who do you say that I am. (Matthew 16:13-20)
Who do you say that I am?
I wandered down each path he knew with reverent step and slow.
The old hymn points to you, a son, but also a sister of compassion,
Who lived in that place where humanity and divinity are one,
The one who first taught me what unconditional love means.
You, Itinerant Rabbi, Rousing Answer to my prayers
Are what I long for, hope for.
God’s love for me in a worldly way, ever-present power.
God-with-me even when I pay you no attention.
A puzzlement. I ask and the answers are strange.
Trust, so fleeting, my fear so difficult to overcome.
I cannot define you, Jesus,
The one who does not delight in evil as I may
The one who does not love with conditions as I may.
The one who calls me to be authentic,
Who could never turn his back on someone down on luck
Or leave alone the most unsavory of characters.
The one with deep compassion for those who hurt you.
Long ago in a dream, Mother Mary spoke to you about me.
She said “one of your priests hurt her.”
You knelt down, eye-level, and said, “I am so sorry.
That helped. Healing started to mend a tattered bond.
How can I be the things you are?
Revealer of life and love, ready to relieve my burdens
When I am ready to relinquish them.
You evoke intense reactions in me, both positive and negative.
You can be demanding and I am often angry about that.
You ask me to do hard things that I really don’t feel like doing.
Quit it! Like a gnat after me, you are some days,
To do this or be that. Yet you do not scold
But by example show me how to be fully human
You smile and want me to shine
And I always and forever love you.
You are my reason to stay connected to the world,
A reason to forgive,
You encourage me to know God at deeper and deeper levels
over a whole life time. What techniques did you use?
You are a question I ask in the night
And you are an answer in the form of ancient hands
That caress my well worn arches.
You are my friend but more elusive and impossible to pin down.
You do not belong to any ecclesiastic institution. You never did.
If now you belong to the world, so be it.
If others want to claim you that is entirely appropriate,
So long as they know that none of us can claim a definitive version
Of the mystery you still are, beyond my imagination,
Center of my joy, the one who helps me find the Messiah within.
A congregational STORY POEM, March, 2006; responses to the question: What does it mean for Findlay Street Christian Church to believe in the promises of God, to live for God the way Jesus did, when the cross is not small enough for just one person to bear?
We Live in God’s Pocket
I am in the moment of pushing—
showing those outside that we practice what we hear.
I am in the moment of shoving—
your Spirit through us, God, an opera of journeys,
all your people walking inside us. Show us the way.
I am in the moment of challenging—
saying “no” to much of the world yet remaining in that world.
Courage will change it.
I am in the moment of holding—
treating everyone with dignity and respect,
each person a valued person. Love.
I am in the moment of confronting—
moving forward without fear, knowing that God will carry us
when we cannot lift the burden.
I am in the moment of speaking—
room to grumble, show ourselves, give thanks, offer joy.
I am in the moment of not judging—
flexible, bending limbs in the wind.
When one drops another takes its place.
I am in the moment of embracing.
We are going to sit at the welcome table with all who enter our doors.
Hands joined we step off the cliff,
giddy as we fall together into God’s arms.
I am in the moment of walking with
God’s unending love. It gives us energy to go through any challenge
to receive our break-through as a community.
I am in the moment of walking from—
jumping off the burning platform of faith, alive, awake,
walking from what we know, what we relinquish,
seeing plants sprout, hearing birds sing. All is not lost.
I am in the moment of walking toward—
inviting others, healing the sick, befriending the lonely, feeding the hungry
pointing to God.
I am in the moment of believing—
following our heart, taking a stand,
snuggled in God’s breast pocket.
The divine heartbeat vibrates, sets the journey’s pace,
forms and informs us
every moment
moment
moment.