The Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poems to Find Strength in Small Moments

by K.J. Ramsey

When we cannot find the words to pray, we are not faithless. We are feeling the fact that we are both embodied and vulnerable.

To bless is to bridge. A blessing is a bridge to belonging, built right in the place we feel separated from hope. Words of blessing bring us back to the beautiful truth of being human: we belong to one another, and it is in the space between our souls that we become strong.

It’s hard to pray when we feel powerless because our bodies need the presence of someone else to soothe us and speak us back into safety. Fear and stress temporarily disconnect us from the language centers of the brain and the calming, regulating power of the prefrontal cortex, but the presence of another safe, empathetic person can bring our minds, bodies, and hearts back together.

A fourteenth-century definition of courage is “to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.”4 Courage is connecting one’s heart back to one’s mind, stitching together the separated parts of ourselves and one another. Courage is holding the heart when the mind can’t hope.

Courage is not the possession of the bravest or biggest but the choice to move toward the heart when the mind and body are separated by fear. Courage is the choice to move our fear into communion.

When we don’t have words, we need a witness. We need with-ness.

Courage isn’t the opposite of fear. Courage is the practice of trusting we have a Good Shepherd who always cares—even when vulnerability is shouting otherwise.

When we don’t have a witness and we lose our with-ness, we struggle to see the Word-become-flesh is still with us.

When it is hard to pray and hard to hope, we do not have to try harder to pray ourselves from fear to faith. We can enter the rhythm of others’ prayers. We can let a form of prayer hold us as we journey back to strength.

Christ emptied himself and became as human as you and me so every part of our humanity could be lived in his presence. Emptiness precedes presence. And courage is the practice of coming to the empty space where heart and mind struggle to meet, expecting to encounter the Good Shepherd emptying himself and embracing us even still.

What is your only comfort to be courageous in life and in death? That everywhere I go, I belong —body and soul, in all my days, all my doubts, and even all my despair, and my coming death— to you, my Savior and my friend, Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, there is nothing in life and no manner of death that can separate me from your friendship. Everywhere I go, you go with me. You are always glad to be with me. Because you became like me, I can become like you. Because you felt fear, anger, and betrayal, even in my anguish, I can partake of your life. Because you were faithful to feel and trust, even in my fear, I can be faithful too. Your trust in the Father to work goodness and life re-creates my own. Your courage in the face of death has made the Father mine, the Spirit present, and my future secure. You have fully paid for all my sins and all my debts, with the precious currency of your own blood. Your broken body and spilt blood have set me free from the chains of evil. You see me with such tenderness and attentiveness that not even a hair can fall from my head outside of your care. Every detail of my body and soul belongs to you and is held with constant kindness in your heart. There is no hour of my life that is lived outside your care. No part of me will ever be lost. You are presently gathering up all the shattered pieces of me, together with all the broken pieces of this earth into a brilliant world that will never die. Every moment of my story is but a movement in your ...

As the artist pulls paint across canvas until color and light are wed in joyous sight, you were a thought so beautiful in God’s mind that you had to exist. You are the art God did not need and yet wanted so much that he knelt on the ground of his new world and painted the dirt with the brush of his breath until your heart and lungs and limbs were birthed from his.

Creator and Sustainer, who with a word spoke skies and seas into being from nothing: speak life into the empty space of my depleted energy that in your words I might trust: you are the God of new beginnings and I am the friend whose void your word will fill. Amen.

Faith is not mustering up courage to no longer be broken. Faith is practicing the courage to name even your broken pieces as beloved.

Religion said sanctification meant making myself small. The church handed me scissors and commanded, Get to work. Cut away all the parts of you that are “flesh.” I became more scissors than a self. I swallowed a story of war as grace. I made my mind a general, barking orders to march hard. I declared corporeal war for spiritual gain. Truth against tissue. Faith against fear. Holiness against the heart. I named my skin an enemy to subjugate, my feelings foes to fight, and my desires rivals to oppose. I marched until I collapsed. What good is a Christian soldier marching as to war with the cross of Jesus crushing them into the floor? My body was never territory to colonize. But down on the ground, in the dirt and the grime, I could see past the lies to a riven side. Holes in hands spoke peace to mine. The scissors were never spiritual. The war was never divine. The truth was that this body was already a place with holiness inside. Sanctification is like stitching the sinew to the soul. And grace is but a thread sewing mind and body whole. The body is not a barrier between the Bible and belief. It is the tissue where tenderness can speak the truth in relief: your body is already the beloved dwelling place of God.

Can you stomach a Savior who felt fear and stress so acutely that sweat spilled like drops of blood from his skin? Does your theology include an incarnate God, whose anxiety was so great it ruptured his blood vessels? If we cannot trace God in the most human fear, we won’t get to see him drawing near. I will not allow myself to be less human than Christ. If we cannot be human, we cannot be upheld.

Almighty and Everlasting God, You made the world in a whirl of wind and by your word emptiness became extravagance. Hover again over the blank spaces between our breaths where the pain of being a person punches our chests; that we might sense this void is blessed; that we might welcome the wind is still where you will make all things new. Amen.

There are no ashes on my head. I wanted to make my way down a creaky aisle today. I wanted to hear my priest speak the truth that I am dust and to dust I will return. I wanted liturgy to cut like a knife through the strands of this season that seems hell-bent on strapping me to sickness. But I spent the entire day in bed. Forehead bare. Schedule canceled yet again. Soul-weary of new diagnoses and scary symptoms and the endlessness of it all. I know I’m not alone in feeling like I’ve been living an endless Lent. Today, just as I was lamenting—languishing really— a knock came to the door. A care package. A blanket. Orange sunglasses. And the kindest note. And wrapped in that love on a bench in the cold, watching the afternoon turn to night, I know: just like the fire that burned last year’s palms into today’s ashes, the purging fire of today is being tended by others with care. There are no ashes on my head. There is only hope, burning like a fire through my hardest days, lighting up incandescent moments when time folds in on itself and I suddenly see: human and heavenly hands are tending this blaze into that which will enrich the brightest blooms. This fire isn’t for nothing. And long after this fire loses oxygen, the ash that will remain will become a source of life. Not one speck of this soot will be wasted. All our ash will nurture new life.

Lord Jesus, You pulled up a chair to the table of this earth and drank the whole cup of human suffering and hurt. We ask you to fill the cups of our lives to overflow with you. Make us chalices of your compassion. Where the world overflows with hatred, let us hold hope. Where there is sorrow, let us savor the sacredness of every tear-stained face. Where there is doubt, let us spill over with grace. For it is in emptying the cup of our prejudice that we become filled; it is in swallowing the wine of sorrow that we are surprised by grace; it is in drinking the dregs of doubt that we digest a love stronger than fear. Because you held this cup first. Amen.

Blessed are the broken, those shattered in spirit by those who should have made them strong. Blessed are the grieved in a world that pretends positivity will take away pain. For while the kingdoms of the able and affluent corral and crush, the kingdom of God is a seed split open. May you know your breaking is a broadening. May you trust your ache is an awakening. The kingdom of God is a seed split open, and the kingdom belongs to you.

Grant us, O God, the faith to pray: Come, Lord Jesus. Help us this day. For yours is the glory, the honor, the might, but ours is the sorrow of this long, hard night. Feed us from your table. Fill us from your wounds. That your faithful suffering would empower us to trust that on this day we are not forgotten or condemned but only being further thrust into the story of a redemption that nothing can rust, of the kindest Parent, who is coming back soon. Amen.

Resurrected Lord, you who let them bruise your body before rising again on the third day: grant us imagination to bless even the groaning of our bodies as the brave beginning of resurrection, that in the beating of our hearts and the breath within our chests each day we would practice the exhale of disdain and the inhale of the Spirit’s love instead. Amen.

Jesus, You promised your Spirit would dwell inside us. Rebuild the house of our humility. Because so much of our lives have been spent trying to build a kingdom for you, when you have been building a home in us all along. Amen.

Courage is a circle. Christ never stops chasing us where pain is piercing us through —into communion, into joy. Courage is simply the surrender to Love —who finds you in your sin, who seeks you in your pain, who weeps for all the wrong that has smeared mud over your name. Let this Shepherd lead you into courage with every passing day, and freed by Christ’s own scars, may your wounds become the welcome for those who are still chained.

Jesus, you who saw abundance where your disciples saw lack: help us bless what we can offer today. Because every day we are invited to become like that kid who showed up to listen but was not too proud to offer the little bit he had to help feed the crowd. May our cracked yet open hands find that abundance is a mystery you make when we show up with our little loaves and fish and expect you to multiply grace. Amen.

May the God of courage fill you with all you need. Bear witness to your life, trusting you are being followed and called by the Voice of Love every day. Receive rest as your right. May quiet waters drip you into remembrance of your baptism as one whom God always loves. When you are afraid or ashamed, may you find your breath can bring you back to life. Refuse to separate God’s glory from your good. Even though valleys will stretch across your life, may you walk in wonder at how God will pave vulnerability into the intersection of sorrow and joy. Remember that fear is only the first moment of courage, for fear is always a place Christ has visited before you and waits with you. Look for the Shepherd’s staff to rest across your shoulders as a reminder of divine presence rather than a rod of punishment. Return to the table God keeps preparing for you. This seat and food and wine are yours regardless of those who uninvite you. God will never leave you without a witnes or a name. God anoints you not for what you’ve done but for who you will become. When you have been emptied, poured out like wine, may you find you were somehow being filled. May these words become your truth, forever your sign: My cup overflows. In me, Love resides.