Lent 8

For something a little different, I'm going to post the prayer I wrote this morning for my CPE work. We've started a unit on Gender, Power, Sexuality, and Spirituality (GPSS) which will ask of us to be more open and vulnerable than we really have been this far. The assignment for this morning was to write a prayer that celebrates my sexuality. I include it here, asking whoever reads this to not get bent out of shape over anything you may read. I find it very easy to talk about gender and sexuality in the abstract, but it's a bit more difficult to do in the personal sense. I truly have spent far more of my life in a place of shame and hidden-ness than I should have. There is an old saying that goes something like "If we could see each other and ourselves as God sees us, then we would see angels surrounding each other with trumpets and singing, 'Make way, make way for the bearer of God's image.'" Why then, have we spent so much time diminishing these bodies that not only were we given, but that we are?

Here's my prayer I submitted for the group's review this morning:


God, I give thanks for that which I have so often been embarrassed.


God who is not only one but three, God who is not just in relationship but is relationship:
I remember the deep red in my cheeks the first time I ever heard Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise.’ “Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I’ve got diamonds / at the meeting of my thighs?” My sexiness, my sexuality, and the sexiness of those around me has upset me, Lord, because I sometimes forget that we are made with desires for touch and intimacy. I am thankful for those desires which make me know I’m alive.


Creating God, in whose image I was made:
I have spent so much time wishing I had a different body. My body image has been a source of discomfort and unease for most of my life. Thank you God, for making me who I am. Thank you for the curve of my hips and my breasts, for all of me. As I continue to grow more and more comfortable in my own skin, I give thanks.


God who is so much like a mother to me:
I have spent and still spend far more energy than I should being embarrassed about and hiding this body you have made for me. While at a friend’s house on my 12th birthday I got my first period, but I was so embarrassed that I snuck off and made a whispered phone call to my mom to come pick me up. I have been embarrassed by the widening of my hips and the growing of my breasts. God, from whom no secrets are hid, I offer thanks for this body. This body which was made to care and carry and nurture and reproduce and feel the cycle of the earth just as you do.


As I move from shame to celebration, O God, I give thanks for how I was and am created.