Every Moment Holy is scheduled to print in just a few weeks. This past weekend at the Rabbit Room Writers Fellowship, we read through one of the liturgies to close our meeting. I thought I’d share it with everyone this morning so you can get another peek at what we’ve been working on. It’s written for writers of fiction, but I think it works well for writers of any kind.
If you’d like to be one of the first to get your hands on Every Moment Holy, consider becoming a Rabbit Room Member (members will receive a free copy as their 3rd quarter thank-you gift).
A Liturgy for Writers of Fiction
from Every Moment Holy
Writers: Lord, let me love this world into being
Leader: Even as you, in the infinite poetry of your thoughts and the inexhaustible joy of your love, spoke a universe into existence, into life, into the complex motion of its myriad particulars, so grant the grace that I might trace by my thoughts and words the echoes of some infinite pattern of your creation.
Take these my small offerings: my pen, my paper, my words, my willingness to be still and present.
Fill my imagination. Be to me both fire and wonder, inspiration and guide.
Take these my small offerings. Take and multiply them into a story that might stir or salve, that might shape or strengthen, that might name hidden wounds or secret hopes, that might open hearts to your mysteries. May your Holy Spirit meet me in the process of creation, for even as you called into being all things from nothing, so would I now step into the nothingness of an empty page, trusting that your Spirit might be manifest in this act of faith and stewardship.
Lord, let me love this world into being, and let me love each of the characters I create, even those who choose to harm, who choose their own pride, their own strength, their own glory above what is right and good and true; let me love even those who turn from righteousness, who eschew grace. May I allow them the dignity to become themselves within the world I have created, and may I not impose my own will upon these creations, but leave room for them to make real choices of consequence to themselves and others. May they have something like a breath of life in them, and not be the shriveled fruit of my own moralizing.
Shape me by these labors. May I return from sojourning in this world of the imagined, made—by the long practice of empathy—more fit for acts of mercy and service in this true world of your creation.
Lord, let me love the reader, ever writing for their good, writing words that might, in the employ of your Spirit, bring life and hope and conviction.
And when I have written lines that are but my own vain ramblings, or when I am too enamored of my own cleverness, grant me the humility and the courage to make the hard choices, to amputate my own ego. Reveal these deficiencies to me before I send my words out into the world, that I might not add to the noise. But if I do, may it please you by your grace to turn even my darkness to light so that even the fruits of my pride and insecurity would be redeemed for the good of your people and the furtherance of your kingdom and the glory of your name.
Lord, let me love this world into being because you are the author of stories within stories within stories and of poetry within all of creation and you have made us lovers and stewards of this gift of story. We who live out our small stories within your greater story would also tell, by your grace, such stories as would somehow awaken hearts to wonder, to beauty, to truth, to love. It is in the name of Jesus that we ask this.
Lord, let me love this world into being Oh Spirit of God, be active!
Lord, let me love this world into being. Oh Spirit of God, breathe life!
Lord, let me love this world into being. Oh Spirit of God, brood over the waters of my finite imagination!
Call new worlds and stories into being. Oh Spirit of God, breathe life!
Copyright 2017 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey