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Prayer Stations for our Ordinary Lives

Prayer Stations for Ordinary Time
May 29, 2016

The Church calendar is strange -- all the big things happen in one half of the year.

We begin the Church year with Advent, when we get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas.  Then Christmas, when God came among us as Jesus.  Epiphany, with it's stories of light.  Then before you know it, Lent and time to get ready to enter the mystery of Easter.  We go through Holy Week, living inside the events of Jesus' last week.  Then it's Easter, and we are celebrating his resurrection and hearing about how he was with his disciples in new ways.  We hit Pentecost, with the coming of the Holy Spirit like fire to enliven and empower the disciples and the Church.  Finally Trinity Sunday last weekend, which ties some of these other pieces together.  

But now through November we are done.  For the next 20-some weeks, we are in what the Church calls the "season after Pentecost".  Which, to me, does not seem like a very descriptive or romantic name.  In the old days, the Church called this "Ordinary Time," and I, for one, much prefer that.  This is the season when we figure out how to incorporate all that we've been hearing for the first half of the year into our ordinary lives.  In Godly Play, this time is called "the great, green growing season.  I like that too.  This is the time when we are growing into the People of God we are called to be.

And so instead of a sermon, I set up prayer stations around the room.  Prayer stations that hopefully will help us to ponder and pray about how we live our ordinary lives in this Ordinary Time.


Candle Lighting
We join our prayers with those of the community, lighting a candle as we pray.


Labyrinth
We walk the labyrinth, a symbol of our life of faith, with it's twists and turns.
 


Scrabble Prayer
We add a word about our experience of God to an image that the community forms.
Pray for the World
The Prayers of the People become visible as we pray for the cares and concerns of our world, so racked with pain and violence. 


 Praying our Day
Considering how we spend our ordinary days, we think about whether there might be pieces we'd like to change, and invite God to be part of every hour.

The Story of Our Lives
Viewing our life as part of God's story, we think about the big events.  What might we call those "chapters" of our lives?  We look back to think about how God might working in our lives during those times.


Faith Conversations
The community engaged in discussion about some of the big questions of faith, knowing that we have a lot we can learn from each other in our lives of faith.

Praying in Color
Coloring becomes a meditative practice as we transform blank circles into our prayer mandalas.

Remembering our Baptisms
We can dip our hands into the baptismal waters and make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, a reminder that we are marked as Christ's own forever.  Prayer books are marked to think through the baptismal promises made at our own baptisms that we reaffirm at each baptism in the Church.

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