Kindle Notes & Highlights
Rage prayers are an invitation to bring the whole self to our spiritual practices. In the messiness of grief, anger, joy, surprise, annoyance, peace, and everything in-between, we simply can’t limit what we bring to prayer. Rather than cultivating what feels like the most acceptable version of ourselves in our conversations with God, what if we brought our most authentic selves? Even if that means bringing our doubt, uncertainty, and anger at God. What if we brought that to prayer?
Justice can never stop at “thoughts and prayers.” It demands our action, for us to show up in the world, and shape it to give dignity to all of creation. “Thoughts and prayers” are not the ending, but the beginning. They are the fuel that pushes us to see, to not turn away from the brokenness around us.
We should not debate the dignity and worth of another human being.
The hope that things can be better, should be better, is a subversive hope. It defies the odds to believe that a system too heavily favoring those already in power might ever change to truly support and care for the marginalized. This is the work of faith. It forces us to remain unsettled when the praying is done. It makes us face the suffering we might want to turn away from. It drives us to keep trying to make things different. Perhaps we cannot fix everything. But we can change some things—and that is worth doing.
