Feather (prayer): Creator God, we the children of your creation lift our prayer for those whose voices have been silenced, for those lost to the struggles of change and control, for the peoples suppressed for just existing. We pray to you and lift up to you our relatives in the Indigenous circles across the land: the many caught up in the Sixties Scoop; the survivors—or conquerors, you could also call them, because they were undefeated—of the Indian residential schools, industrial schools and day schools. We pray for those who keep going, despite the legacy of the processes of assimilation and the resultant effects. We pray for those searching for lost family and identity, the wounded, rejected and broken. We pray and remember the missing and murdered Indigenous women and men, the families seeking justice and closure. We pray for all our relatives across the face of creation affected by war and inequality. Help us human beings to lay to rest the weapons of word and hand, and instead lift up the feather of prayer and love. Help us your children of this world to see you, in the eyes of the other, and treat the other before us as our family in you. Forgive our failures to listen and understand, our failures to accept truths other than our own. Guide us and help us this day to walk with you, guided by your Spirit, and to be renewed. Guide us to be better today than we were yesterday and the day before. Bless us now to be a blessing to others. This we pray in Jesus, the peacemaker. Amen.
Sage (Offering): As the print edition of the Anglican Journal takes its usual pause for the summer months, and with June 21 being the National Indigenous Day of Prayer, I wanted to leave everyone knowing that the church and its ministry do not stop. More importantly, prayer does not stop. As we step into the summer months, I ask that you continue being the prayer warriors that we are all called to be. Pray for your community and church leaders, councils and committees, elders, children and youth, parents, extended families and church families. Pray always and be wrapped in prayer, knowing that someone is praying for you always. Pray for wisdom and peace, that love and truth can abound. Please, all of you, go into the summer knowing that you are loved and blessed, because God is with you … and because we together walk in prayer. Peace and safe summer.
