It is the church season of Ordinary Time, and so I offer a prayer for justice-seekers in Ordinary Time, so that we can be changed by this most commonplace and everyday moment in the church calendar.

Easter and Pentecost are in our rearview, and Advent is a small dot on the horizon. Ordinary time is the name we give this season of daily attention to the familiar. 

Our lives and our world mirror the church season: 

Long days, less ordered by the rhythms of work and school, more open to the creaturely habits of gardens and gatherings, sand between our toes and mountain air in our lungs and garden dirt under our fingernails.

Flowers grow and bloom. Long days of warmth and sunlight give way to evening storms. Vegetables are seeded, matured, harvested and shared with friends and neighbours. While the work of righting wrongs and building a more beautiful and welcoming world for all is often described in terms of ‘big’ moments – Protests! Marches! Sit-ins! – it is important to remember that justice work is ordinary work for ordinary times. And so, in that light, here is a justice prayer for Ordinary Time. 

O Lord Christ,

Our Teacher and Friend,

In this most ordinary season, school us. 

School us in openness. Move us, so that we are open to the lives of those who know injustice and suffering and loneliness, the lives of those who strain to delight in the simple gifts of our creation.

School us in attention. Move us, so that we can be attentive to the broken and damaged relationships that stain our everyday lives: the grocery staff who did not make a living wage while their CEO’s wealth grows and grows; the families living on the street while we work on home improvement projects or fret about water in our basements; the folks around the world and in our own country who still do not have clean drinking water, while we swim in pools and run through sprinklers. 

School us in delight. Move us, so that we can delight in the good gifts we’ve been given – good food, opportunities to explore, homes to live in and friends with whom to share them. Move us, so that our delight does not lead to shame (for shame rarely moves us to justice) but leads instead to gratitude for the simple abundance of our lives, and a willingness to share that abundance with others. 

School us in care. Move us, so that our care extends to those whose distress and pain we often miss in the routines of our lives: animals struggling to adapt to a hotter and noisier and more crowded planet, neighbours whose poverty moves them into the shadows of our communities, older folks suffering in the heat of hotter summers. Move us, so that we may alleviate their suffering through small acts of kindness and persistent advocacy on their behalf. 

School us in the slow work of change. Move us, so that each day we can make Henri Nouwen’s questions our own:

        Did I offer peace today?
        Did I say words of healing?
        Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
        Did I forgive? Did I love?
        Move us so that we can learn to trust “that the little bit of love that we sow now will bear many fruits, in this world and the life to come” (Nouwen).

Teach us, Friend and Teacher, as we walk with you through Ordinary Time.

School us in the everyday and commonplace of our lives, so that we may be more like you: 

Friend of the suffering, Teacher of loving justice, 

Liberator and Lord of all.

Amen.