Alternative Pastoral Prayers: Liturgies and Blessings for Health and Healing, Beginnings and Endings

By Tess Ward

This book is intended as a supplement to Common Worship Pastoral Services which provides liturgies for use in ministry to the sick – distribution of communion, emergency baptism, laying on of hands and anointing. Many hospital chaplains find their services are needed in other acute situations and often by people who have no church connection or knowledge of religious language. Here chaplains need to improvise. This practical volume draws on the experience of numerous clergy and chaplains and provides tried and tested liturgies in accessible language for a wider range of occasions.

Prayers are included for
- occasions surrounding birth: thanksgiving, baby blessing and naming, emergency baptism, prayers for a stillborn child
- healing rites: communion, anointing, laying on of hands, confession and reconciliation
- marriage in hospital, blessing of a civil union, affirmation of a relationship
- prayers for every stage of a hospital stay – on receiving a diagnosis, before an operation, when life support is withdrawn
- occasions surrounding the death of infants, children and adults

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Release date: Feb 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781848254114

Tess Ward

Tess Ward was a psychiatric nurse and is now an Anglican priest and spiritual director/counsellor. She has been chaplain at an Arts Centre, alternative worship leader, leads retreats and spirituality groups, and has been "road testing" her prayers for 8 years. She lives in Oxford, England, where she is now a hospital chaplain.

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Copyright information

© in this compilation Tess Ward 2011

First published in 2011 by Canterbury Press

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13–17 Long Lane,

London, EC1A 9PN, UK

Canterbury Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd (a registered charity)

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www.canterburypress.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.

Scripture Quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins Publishers © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tess Ward has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84825 120 5

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Printed and bound by

CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Dedication

For the patients and staff at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals, and the chaplaincy team there.

For the patients and staff at Katharine House Hospice.

For the families of every ceremony or service I have been privileged to share.

Yours were the faces I saw when I wrote these words.

Thank you.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: Baby Ceremonies

1. Baby Blessing and Naming

2. Baby Blessing and Naming (Earth)

3. Baptism of Original Blessing

4. A Celtic Baptism

2: Ceremonies for Occasions where a Baby has Died or is Dying

5. Emergency Baptism

6. Baby Naming and Blessing after Death

7. Funeral of Babies at the Graveside

8. Funeral of a Baby (Conventional)

9. Funeral of a Baby (Earth)

10. Prayer for Grandparents

11. Liturgy for a Burial after Miscarriage (Earth)

3: Funeral of a Child

12. Funeral of a Child (Conventional)

13. Funeral of a Child (Earth)

4: Liturgies and Prayers of Healing and other Liturgies from the Hospital

14. A Service of Holy Communion for Use with the Sick

15. A Service of Holy Communion with Reserved Sacrament for Use with the Sick

16. A Celtic Communion for Use with the Sick

17. Liturgies of Anointing and Laying On of Hands

18. The Ministry of Reconciliation

19. A Hospital Psalter

20. Prayers for those with Mental Health Problems

21. Prayer in the Morning

22. Prayer at Night

23. Morning Prayer in Hospital

24. Midday Prayer in Hospital

25. Prayer at the Close of Day in Hospital

26. Liturgy for the Closing of a Ward

27. Liturgy for the Blessing of a Ward

5: Weddings, Blessings, Civil Partnerships and Separation Ceremonies

28. Wedding Blessing (Earth)

29. Blessing of a Civil Partnership (Christian)

30. Blessing of a Civil Partnership (Earth)

31. The Blessing of a Second Marriage

32. The Renewal of Wedding Vows

33. The Renewal of Wedding Vows as Reconciliation

34. Psalm for the Breakdown of a Relationship

35. Private Blessing for One after Separation

6: Blessings of Transition

36. Blessing for Coming of Age

37. Blessing for Moving to a New Area

38. Blessing for Retirement

39. Celtic Mezuzah Blessing

40. House Blessing Liturgy

7: Liturgies of Death and Dying

41. Anointing at the End of Life and Prayers and Blessings for the Dying

42. Ministry at the Time of Dying (Conventional)

43. Ministry at the Time of Dying (Celtic)

44. Ministry at the Time of Dying (Earth)

45. Last Prayers (Conventional)

46. Last Prayers (Celtic)

47. Last Prayers (Earth)

48. Last Prayers in the Face of Tragic Death

49. Funeral (Conventional)

50. Funeral (Earth)

51. Funeral of a Young Adult (Conventional)

52. Funeral of a Young Adult (Earth)

53. Burial of Ashes (Conventional)

54. Burial of Ashes (Earth)

55. Scattering of Ashes on Water (Earth)

56. Two Prayers for Families in Grief

Commonly Used Bible Readings

Acknowledgments

Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England are copyright © The Archbishops’ Council, 2000. Used by permission.

Common Worship: Daily Prayer © The Archbishops’ Council 2005. Used by permission of The Archbishops’ Council.

Common Worship: Pastoral Services © The Archbishops’ Council 2008. Used by permission of The Archbishops’ Council.

Common Worship Christian Initiation © The Archbishops Council 2006. Used by permission of The Archbishops’ Council.

The Lord’s Prayer and the Nunc dimities as they appear in Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England (Church House Publishing, 2000) is copyright © The English Language Liturgical Consultation, 1988.

Funeral Prayer by Janet Morley taken from All Desires Known, SPCK copyright © Janet Morley 1992. Used by permission of SPCK.

Introduction

The need for a book of alternative prayers

This book is intended to be a companion to denominational pastoral service books but I will refer to Common Worship as I am ordained into the Church of England. There is a need because of the gap often experienced between the provision of Common Worship and the practice of chaplains and parish clergy. Even though people come to the Church for a Christian service, much of the language may be hard to understand for those without faith, and it could be argued that in places it is not always helpful to those with faith.

The prayers in this book are written through my experience of being a part-time hospital chaplain. In the rest of my professional time, I write, lead retreats, and am invited to celebrate people’s rites of passage, most commonly funerals but also weddings, baby blessings and others if chosen. People say they invite me because they respect the Church that I stand for – and are clearly attracted by the tradition and the expression of spirituality – but they find that a traditional church service does not express their spirituality and often is too impersonal. They know that a humanist ceremony is an option but they want a ‘spiritual’ ceremony. As our culture is historically Christian this makes it trustworthy for some. With the growing popularity of choosing an independent celebrant for the occasional offices (ceremonies around births, marriages and deaths), a gap has opened up in what has become a market. Those of us who are clergy could fill this gap if we were prepared to be a little more flexible when listening to the needs of the family in front of us. Both sides of my work appear in these pages. I also draw on my full-time experience in a parish which shaped the work I currently do.

Common Worship is designed to be supplemented and used with additional material, and many clergy use it in this way. This is a collection of prayers that I have written to add to or adapt a particular liturgy. In some cases, depending on the pastoral need, I have created a completely new liturgy or prayer. Common Worship is a mixed bag. The flexibility of it is to be greatly welcomed and some of the prayers in Pastoral Services are good, sensitive prayers that I have used throughout my 11 years in ministry. Our Common Worship books should be scrawled over with pencil, the spines should be broken from alternative prayers on bits of paper stuffed into them. That is how they were intended. The liturgies and prayers are there to be chosen judiciously and appropriately to the context. However, although liturgy means ‘the work of the people’, the authorized liturgies often contain doctrinal statements that are beyond many people in a hospital, prison or place of education. Where we are ministering to unchurched people, theological language can cut across what should be our primary concern in those situations, which is pastoral.

In the hospital where I used to work in Oxford, the chaplaincy team was agreed that people experiencing the acute shock and grief that chaplains are called in for, do not properly hear the words we use. What people remember is how we speak them and how we were with the family. Even so, it is important to find the right words – and the wrong words do have a potential to make a negative impact. The words are almost like music that we come in and play. People will not remember the notes or phrases but they will know if they liked the tune, and so getting the notes and phrases as good as we can will help the tune to be the right one for the moment.

A particularly problematic prayer in Common Worship – and I have never yet met a hospital chaplain who has used it – is in the emergency baptism service. We are meant to approach the incubator with a tiny scrap of a baby, perhaps in its last hours of life, surrounded by a weeping family, and utter the words, ‘Jesus says: I have come that you may have life and have it in all its fullness.’ This book aims to offer some words that chaplains have found that they can use in such circumstances.

At the sublime end of the spectrum, Common Worship uses several times this funeral prayer by Janet Morley:

O God, who brought us to birth,

and in whose arms we die,

in our grief and shock

contain and comfort us;

embrace us with your love,

give us hope in our confusion

and grace to let go into new life;

through Jesus Christ. Amen.

(CWPS, p. 355)

This is about as perfect as a prayer can get. It is short: Morley’s economy of language here is enviable. It opens with an image that is not only extremely comforting but echoes Psalm 139 which is the most popular psalm.

For it was you who formed my inmost parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb. (v. 13)

The next two lines ask that comforting God to hold us while we can barely contain our grief. It lets those who grieve know that the person praying the prayer, and, if we are ordained, representing the Church, understands the process of grief. It then offers hope, but it is not an easy hope. It acknowledges that we will need grace to move on from where we are now. This is how grief feels. We do not know how we will get through it because the pain feels bottomless, but we also know on some level that how we are now cannot be permanent. The phrase ‘new life’ is clever. If we are religious it renews the meaning of resurrection, but if we are not, it is a rich phrase that means ‘there will be a time where it will not feel so unbearable’. ‘Through Jesus Christ’ is far simpler than more complex formulas which can get repetitive and meaningless when overused.

How to use this book

In Common Worship, between these two extremes, there are some good usable prayers and phrases that might inspire a prayer that I write. I would encourage the prayers in this book to be used in the same way, while acknowledging copyright. Borrow a phrase or word and write around it for the context in which you are working. I am a liturgical magpie and borrow bits from here and there, or delete bits to create the right words for a particular setting. Some of the prayers are called ‘Conventional’. These are Christian prayers or liturgies, drawing on official words already provided but intended to be slightly more user-friendly. The prayers that are called ‘Earth’ provide the same function but are not full of religious iconography and can be used in wider settings. The prayers that are called ‘Celtic’ refer to Christian Celtic prayers and draw on the Carmina Gadelica, a book of hymns and incantations collected in Scotland in the nineteenth century by Alexander Carmichael. They enjoy the theology of Celtic Christianity which has less of an emphasis on the Church as separate from the world and as the exclusive location of Christ’s revelation. It is surprising how strong this theology is in official fare. Rather, all the world and living things within it including the Church, are full of good and evil and Christ is everywhere.

The most commonly used Bible passages in this book can be found at the back so that they are not repeated throughout. They are in the NRSV version. The modern versions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Nunc Dimittis can also be found there, as the traditional versions appear in the liturgies. The Common Worship material used is copyright © The Archbishops’ Council, though acknowledgement for other copyright is given where needed. CW refers to Common Worship Services and Prayers for the Church of England; CWPS refers to Common Worship Pastoral Services and CWCI refers to Common Worship Christian Initiation.

The difficulty of names for God

All the spirituality and theology in this book is Christian but not all of it points to Christ explicitly. Outside the hospital, whenever I work with people who are not Christians, we have a discussion in the first meeting about what language they like to use for the Divine and I write prayers that honour that. For example, at a wedding the groom said that he thinks of God as the ‘Great Mystery’. At a woman’s funeral, the word God had negative connotations for her and was too masculine but she requested that ‘Spirit’ was used throughout. Some prayers from this side of my work appear here. The word for God is an abiding problem. I try not to use male pronouns or names for God except for the word ‘God’. It is not technically male but of course everyone thinks of it as such because it has been used as meaning male for over two thousand years. It is difficult to find an alternative. In my first book, The Celtic Wheel of the Year (O-Books, 2007), I used generic names like ‘O Divine One’, ‘Sacred Spirit’, ‘Maker of all’, ‘Spirit of love’, ‘Living One’ and I turned adjectives into nouns or picked up on the theme of the prayer, for example, ‘Still point at the centre’, ‘Spirit Weaver’, ‘Bearer of the World’, ‘Love Bringer’, ‘Freedom Giver’, ‘Still Small Voice’, ‘O Oneness’, ‘Gracious One’, ‘Ground of my being’. In the hospital, there is no time to work in this way so the prayers and liturgies to be used in a hospital setting use more recognizably Christian language.

You may wish to adapt some of the names for God or the Divine in these prayers. There is a simple way of doing this. ‘May Christ bless you’ can be changed to ‘May Spirit bless you’, or even ‘May you be blessed’. Equally, if you prefer some of the Earth prayers, it is simple to add or change the names to Christ or language that feels more familiar.

Why do good prayers work?

To begin with, we will take a closer look at why good prayers work, which will explain some of the assumptions behind the prayers in this book and I hope will help us when we are considering which prayers to use for a pastoral situation.

1. Natural metaphors

For many Christians and non-religious people alike, the words of psalms or particular prayers or even song lyrics work because of natural metaphors. This is as old as the hills. The four elements are a common way of thinking about ourselves in the universe for many cultures. This imagery appears in the iconography of Japanese, Tibetan, Chinese, ancient classical, medieval, Celtic, Native American, Greek, Hindu and Buddhist cultures. It is central to the chakras and to our scientific understanding. For many of these cultures there is a fifth element. It is often called Ether, Space, Void, Sky or Heaven. In Celtic spirituality, it is Spirit – Spirit is around and within everything and the source of the other four elements. There seems something primitive about the way the four/five elements speak to people across different cultures and in different times. It is not for nothing that the old Irish blessing, which contains all five elements, is found on many walls and in many hearts:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be ever at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face.

May the rain fall soft upon your fields

and until we meet again,

may God hold you

in the hollow of his hand.

For many, the earth stands as a universal embrace in which we live out our lives and to which our bodily remains will return. With the decline of Christianity and the rise of ecology, its potency has been strengthened. The earth is a living metaphor of something constant and ancient, its uncertain future only making us more aware of how precious it is. It is older than ourselves and will outlive us. Even though many of the people I meet in my work would not consciously describe their beliefs in this way, they would describe their relationship with nature as spiritual. For some with a more intentional spiritual focus, the land is a key element through which they experience the Oneness of all things. For Christians, it is consonant with a Trinitarian understanding. Through creation metaphors we can feel, on an intuitive level, our dependency on God our Maker, our bodily kinship with all living things which we believe to be blessed by Christ’s walking the earth, dwelling among us, dying and rising again, and the Spirit sustaining throughout all.

Natural images have inspired artists since the beginning of time and have particular resonances around death and threshold moments because they remind us on a daily basis that we are all caught up in the rhythm of life–death–new life.

Support us, O Lord

all the day long of this troublous life,

until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,

the busy world is hushed,

the fever of life is over

and our work is done.

Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us safe lodging,

a holy rest, and peace at the last.

(CWPS, p. 272)

This, one of our best-loved prayers by John Henry Newman, which we say at funerals, works so well primarily through the image of the day and night, a natural image which we all share. The feeling of coming home after a long day is also known and familiar to us. As with all poetry, the beauty and universality of images can take each listener to a place where their personal story can fill in the detail. Paradoxically the universal is conjured up through particularity, not through naming the universal. Newman does not use the word ‘death’, which may not have been as effective as drawing us into an image where we can bring our experience and yet know that we share that with others; it is universal.

Most liturgical prayers employ the same idea for spiritual ends: that is, we are pointed to Jesus so that the detail of Christ will open out to the universal and feel personal because we can fill in our own stories. This does not always work, though. For example, this is the Prayer over the Water in the baptism service:

We thank you, almighty God, for the gift of water

to sustain, refresh and cleanse all life.

Over water the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.

Through water you led the children of Israel

from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

In water your Son Jesus received the baptism of John

and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ,

to lead us from the death of sin to newness of life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of baptism.

In it we are buried with Christ in his death.

By it we share in his resurrection.

Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, in joyful obedience to your Son,

we baptize into his fellowship those who come to him in faith. 

Now sanctify this water that, by the power of your Holy Spirit,

they may be cleansed from sin and born again.

Renewed in your image, may they walk by the light of faith

and continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Lord;

to whom with you and the Holy Spirit

be all honour and glory, now and for ever.

(CWCI, p. 355)

This prayer is too long and is just at the climax of the service which everyone has been waiting for. I suspect nobody ‘hears’ these words. It employs natural imagery primarily around water and also light, and starts well – drawing our attention to the water in front of us and describing its properties. It became clear to me in parish ministry where I did many infant baptisms that whatever we thought we were doing when we baptized babies, the water was the star of the show. I always offered thanksgivings as an option, but the reply was often the same: ‘No, thank you, we’d like the water.’ I understand this and think we have such a sacred resource in baptism; an option would be to make more of the water and use less words. The rest of the prayer assumes knowledge of the story of creation, Moses and of Christ’s resurrection, as well as the doctrine that is woven throughout all of it. When we are most often working with unchurched people, this does not work because it is not a shared language that we point people to. There is not a universal experience there from which to colour in our personal detail and so give meaning.

The earth and her cycles can provide a shared point of reference around which to gather. This is why Jesus, the psalmist and many writers of the Bible used natural images. Because God