Beloved Community
O God, all people are your beloved, across races, nationalities, religions,
orientations and all the ways we are distinctive from one another. We are all
manifestations of your image; we all bear your divine imprint.
On this day that we celebrate beloved community, we recall, in the words of Dr.
King that “we are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality and tied
to a single garment of destiny.”
We give you thanks for the legacy of Dr. King, and those who work tirelessly to
keep his legacy alive; for the civil right movement and the voting rights act of
1965 – and the importance of voting rights in our own day; and for the African
American inventors whom our children will learn about as they play on new
playground equipment.
Guide, us O God, to care for the children of our community, so that they know
that black lives and black minds matter. So they receive a quality education,
where gaps are eliminated. So they are not profiled, or arrested for minor,
childish crimes and activities.
Help us to work together – religious leaders, community activists, politicians,
government officials, concerned citizens – to be instruments of your peace,
justice, and love – never repaying violence with violence, but transforming
adversaries and enemies into friends.
May your image, O God, which is deep within our hearts… radiate into our
neighborhoods as we work together to care for creation and not only celebrate,
but co-create beloved community in this city. Amen.
Renewing of Our Minds
O God of all, you desire that we love you with our hearts, souls, strength, and
minds, and our neighbors as ourselves. We come together this day to celebrate
our beloved community and to remember the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Dr. King proclaimed, paraphrasing the
Apostle Paul, “we should be transformed, nonconformist, through the renewing
of our minds.”
O God of all, we give you thanks for African American inventors, like McKinley
Jones and Valerie Thomas, who transformed our society through the renewing of
their minds. We give you thanks for your call to us to be beloved community,
where black lives and black minds matter. We give you thanks for the new
playground equipment – for the insights, creativity, and the legacy of lived
experience that inspired it, and the for children who will renew their minds as
they play upon it.
O God of all, guide this community to “lift their voices and sing – sing of the faith
that the dark past hast taught, sing of the hope that the present has brought.”
Guide us to sing, as African Bishop St. Augustine taught, “not in order to enjoy a
life of leisure, but to make our journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going.”
Guide us, O God of all, to sing and to celebrate, and to keep going – keep reenvisioning our parks; keep closing the educational gaps in our schools; keep
loving our neighbors, and our adversaries and enemies too; keep building bridges
among our neighborhoods; keep transforming our communities (even through
non-violent non-conformity); keep renewing our minds. Amen.