I wrote this reflection for the Integrity "InfoLetter" a few weeks ago and now, since we're at "Proper 10" week thought I'd reprise it here:

Ode to Proper 10

It may just be my favorite prayer in the prayer book, and it doesn’t have a catchy title or zippy heading. It’s just the Collect of the Day: Proper 10.

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

It is the prayer I more-often-than-not default to when opening a meeting or a conference or an education forum because I think it offers the perfect balance of prayerfully inviting the gifts of God’s wisdom and human understanding along with the grace and power needed to put those understandings into action.

So as we move forward together into this long, green season of the Sundays After Pentecost, I invite you to join with me in making this prayer part of our common prayer.

Let us pray together for God’s wisdom to continue to inform our advocacy.

Let us pray for understanding to “choose the better portion” as we are confronted with the challenges of proclaiming God’s inclusive love.

And let us pray for grace and power to accomplish the goal we have claimed in the work we have been given to do: the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments of the church.

It is an audacious goal and we have a full plate of work ahead of us as we work toward accomplishing it. (And that plate was already full before the California Supreme Court added marriage equality to the mix on May 15th!) So let’s claim “Proper 10” as our common prayer for this season of our life and work:

• as we look toward Lambeth Conference and beyond to General Convention 2009;
• as we work to build community in our regions, our dioceses and our congregations;
• as we witness to the nation, the church and the communion the
  truth of God’s love and grace manifest in the lives, relationships and vocations of the LGBT faithful.
  

And may the God who has given us the will to do these things give us the grace and power to perform them.