Stirring Petitions-Prayers While Making Pancakes

For people affected by wars and hurricanes (when you need to Do Something.)

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Stirring Petitions

Center yourself as marigold yolks

drop over the yellow bowl.

Sift and measure your thoughts as

teaspoons of soda, sugar, salt combine.

Let buttermilk stand souring. Wait

for the buttered, glistening griddle

to sing and sizzle, for songs will not come

from your own heart today.

Whisk flour just enough to mix,

stirring petitions while people are

battered a world away.

Give praise for quiet background piano,

the streaming unseasonal sunshine, calling

you to God’s presence here in your silent

kitchen, an altar on the other side

of the world.

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I first wrote Stirring Petitions a few days after the war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022. I remember the exact date well because it was my mother’s birthday (may she rest in peace). At the time, the world was confident-well, the USSR was confident-the conflict would be over soon. And yet, here we are. The enemy of Ukraine did not bargain on the resolve of the people nor its support from countries around the globe.

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I was drafting something different to share with you this week, then I read this in my post Archive and it seemed fitting, especially when I read the date. This poem is from this exact day one year ago in October 2023. The fact that I am still praying and stirring and poeming in response to not one, but two major wars on the other side of the world, makes me heartsick. I want to shake my head in disbelief.

“Here we are again.” I despair, then my hands and heart tell me what to do.

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I tend to pray best when I’m moving—walking or using my hands to chop, slice, dice or stir. It helps me center myself and focus, ‘stirring my petitions.’ It helps if I have a sharp knife. There is something final and decisive about a blade that means business, the finality is helpful as there seems so little in my control. At least I can cut up carrots while I’m talking to Jesus.

Goodness knows there have been many occasions to pray while I’m prepping lately: not just two decimating conflicts on the other side of the world, but a new hurricane barrelling its way to Florida and the ongoing clean up from Helene barely a week ago. I have friends in both places and sometimes it’s just too much.

So I chop and stir and pray at the kitchen counter, cultivating my small patch of domestic ground, as Jonathan Rogers (at the Habit) is fond of saying. I will tend to what is in my hand.

It’s not everything, but it is my something.

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Tell me friends, where is your favorite place to pray? In the kitchen? Your car? At your desk? While you walk?

Please share in the Comments; let’s edify one another.

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Stirring Petitions is from my book Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home, available HERE on the Books tab on my Substack site. Or you can order signed copies from my author website HERE. Thank you to each and every one of you who have purchased MBB—it delights me hear how you are making friends with poetry!

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