By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster A 1,500 pound bell hangs at Harvard’s Memorial Church with an inscription, “in memory of the voices that are hushed.” It’s weighty call rings out every morning across the now-hushed closed-due-to-COVID campus and rang out across campus through the years to mark celebration and sorrow. The inscription [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster Unlike Phyllis Tickle who says, “Prayer is the natural habitat and function of the soul as well as it’s natural desire,” Karl Barth takes an opposite approach saying, “Prayer is not an act that comes naturally to us.” Humans pray. It’s what we do. It’s how we connect [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster Because I am working on 100 Days of Homegrown Prayer my summer reading list has so many prayer books. I believe prayer has transformative power, that it changes us as we ask God to change the world, and so here’s a photo of my current [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster Presbyterians have a hard time navigating biblical scholarship without running into Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann writes early and often with an attentiveness to the prophetic voice of freedom and justice. Profuse. Profound. Always grounded. His prayer below uses this word kairos, a word that describes time, but not [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster In the ancient near east, there was a time when one would prepare to enter a holy place with precision and attention. Wash ahead of time. Wash again before entering. Again when entering the vestibule. Each washing, an opportunity for prayer. This attentiveness to preparation is [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster My God is a hand-me-down. Even our foundational biblical texts echo this refrain. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” says the Lord our God, the great I AM at the holy mountain [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster I was trying to find a prayer by Søren Kierkegaard, nineteenth century Danish poet theologian whose existential writings ask some of the most enduring human questions. Sure enough an entire collection of prayers by Kierkegaard has been published, but in my search I stumbled across the above quote: [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster The rhythms of summer always move me outdoors (and winter, to curse the lake effect snow). I love this prayer below by Christina Rosetti for that reason: wind, dove, water, cloud, dew, fire are so tangible and alive by mid-June. Rossetti was a nineteenth century poet, considered a [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster Sometimes prayer is inward, asking God to penetrate what is deep within our heart and soul. Sometimes prayer is outward, a living expression of the change God calls us toward. We pray with our hands and feet, the work of our lives, the sacrifice and struggle [...]
By The Reverend Dr. Katie Snipes Lancaster Emails. Video conference calls. Online orders. Text messages. Contact-free delivery. Behind every electronic interaction is a person. People. Communities. A multitude of workers of every nation and walk of life. Archbishop Desmond Tutu—South African theologian and human rights activist—says, “My humanity is bound up in yours, [...]