Liturgies Of Lament

Advice for using prayer forms to deal with tragedies and trauma.

EVERY MOMENT HOLY, Vol. 2: DEATH, GRIEF, & HOPE, is a book of liturgies for seasons of dying and grieving--liturgies such as "A Liturgy for the Scattering of Ashes" or "A Liturgy for the Loss of a Spouse" or "A Liturgy for the Wake of a National Tragedy" or "A Liturgy for the Weighing of Last-Stage Medical Options." These are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose and eternal hopes even when, especially when, suffering and pain threaten to overwhelm us. -over 100 liturgies for seasons of dying and grieving -beautiful leather-bound hardcover -over 20 illustrations by Ned Bustard -silk bookmark -gilded edges

Join with Yohanna Katanacho, a Palestinian Israeli Christian, in praying through the Psalms. After completing his PhD on the book of Psalms, Yohanna Katanacho felt led to pray every psalm in the context of the Middle East. These prayers transformed him. They helped him expand his understanding of Psalms as he prayed out his theology. They also enabled him to express all of his frustrations, hopes, joys, and many other emotions. His feelings were sanctified in the presence of the Lord and this experience created a healthy theology of tears in the midst of oppressive realities. Lastly, these prayers strengthened him to face the harsh realities of the Middle East from a biblical perspective. This collection of 150 beautiful and unique prayers, inspired by each of the Psalms and birthed in the same land as Jesus, will help you grow in under- standing the struggles of Christians in the Middle East, and deepen your love for God.

Suited for gift-giving, This Year, Lord: Teachers' Prayers of Blessing, Liturgy, and Lament is a collection of honest prayers that emerged from two decades of teaching and working beside teachers.

The biblical Psalms in Christian worship : a brief introduction and guide to resources by John D. Witvliet (2007).

A Struggle for Holy Ground results from thirty-five interviews with participants in the 1989 consolidations of then parishes in Chicago's Englewood and two parishes from the San Francisco consolidations after its 1989 earthquake. It explores the roles of ritual and pastoral care in this sometimes highly conflicted situation through the lens of trauma and reconciliation. It proposes a series of new rites: group reconciliation, atonement, lament, leave-taking, memorial, and inauguration based on the experience of people most impacted by parish restructurings.

This unique new service book includes liturgies for blessing and healing as related to childbearing and childbirth. It includes prayers, Scripture readings and hymn suggestions organized around the blessing of a pregnant woman; loss of a pregnancy; repentance and reconciliation for an abortion; difficult decisions, unexpected or unwanted pregnancy, loss of a child, termination of pregnancy, infertility, sterilization, and adoption.

It’s been said that prayer is the vocabulary of faith. This book offers a wealth of resources from forgotten places to help us create a new vocabulary for worship and prayer, one that is located amidst the poor and the major issues of violence and destruction around the world today. It is a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, rites of healing, Eucharistic and baptismal prayers, meditations and art from four continents: Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and Europe. Liturgies from Below is the culmination of a project organized by the Council for World Mission (CWM) during 2018-2019. Approximately 100 people from four continents worked with CWM, collaborating to create indigenous prayers and liturgies expressing their own contexts, for sharing with their communities and the rest of the world. The project was called “Re-Imagining Worship as Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of Empire”. The author and others spent weeks living in each of four communities for several weeks/months, getting to know the people, and then facilitating the people’s own creation of prayers and liturgies. The author, other scholars, pastors, artists, activists and students all came from radically different ethnicities, races, sexualities, churches and Christian theologies. The people in each location were poor, living in very challenging communities, living in oppressive and seemingly hopeless situations. After some time, they wrote prayers and stories of their experience trying to live the Christian faith in utterly abandoned places. What we have here is an immensely rich and varied collection of liturgical sources from various communities dealing with issues of violence, immigration/refugees, drugs, land grabbing, war on the poor, attack on women, militarization, climate change, and so on.