Images Source: Google images
Capital District Prayer Pilgrimage: July 19-25
Following the lead of the Holy Spirit, Rev. Hector Burgos, Capital District Superintendant, invites Capital congregations to join in a seven-week prayer pilgrimage.
WEEK 1 (July 19-25) Pray for clergy, congregational leaders and members to take full responsibility for their faith journey. Followers of Christ that fully embrace the reality of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20), the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:35-40) and Jesus New Commandment (John 13:31-35) for their lives, will shape congregations that don’t just survive and live but instead thrive and grow.
For complete information on the vigil, click here.
Recommended Reading: A Blessing with Roots
Jan Richardson wrote the blessing that Pastor Jenny Smith Walz spoke, as a benediction, on Sunday July 12
Here is how the blessing begins:
Tug at this blessing
and you will find
it is a thing
with roots.
This is a blessing
that has gone deep
into good soil,
into the sacred dark,
into the luminous hidden.
It has been months
since the ground
gathered the seed
of this blessing
into itself,
years since the earth
enfolded it.
Sometimes
that’s how long
a blessing takes.
Recommended Reading: Gregg Louis Taylor
Meet Gregg Louis Taylor, author of Here, Now, with You, subtitled ‘Six Movements of Compassion for Life and Leadership.‘
Taylor’s book is described by the publisher, Abingdon Press.
Grounded in the real-life context of experience and the encouragement of relatable stories, plus providing an interactive process for meaningful conversations, reflection, and application, two questions shape the book’s content:
1. What every day experiences open the door to compassion’s movement in our lives?
2. How do we recognize and embrace such encounters to cultivate rich expressions of “compassionating” lives and leadership?
By learning to be compassionate just as God is, we become more authentically connected to one another and expand our awareness of the God who is always here.
Music Appreciation: “Come Home”
During the farewell service for Pastor Ginny Samuel Cetuk, Hyosang Park led the Chancel Choir (virtually) in “Come Home” by Craig Courtney, engineered by Stephen Offer.
Kevin Carroll: Belong to Yourself!
Meet Kevin Carroll,
At a TEDx event, he preaches how play is important.
Pastors Jenny and Ginny read his book, A Kid’s Book About Belonging, on June 28 during Children’s Time.
Here, Kevin reads the book.
His message: Belong to yourself! Find the people, places, and groups that you can belong to, just by being you!
#praywithusPUMC to End Racism Prayer Guide 5
DAILY PRAYER TO END RACISM
DAY FIVE
DAY OF MATURITY – HANDS & FEET 
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God’s Word for Today
John 4:15
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
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Reflection
At the end of the healing process, if we don’t want to get ill again, we need to make the change that we want to see in our life. In this scripture passage, we can see that it is important to ask for what we need. The Samaritan woman is asking Jesus to give her the living water and only once she is asking Him, He can give it to her. In this day of Prayer Vigil, we are focusing on our needs, to understand exactly what we are requesting in our lives and for the world. God is hearing us. God will embrace all our needs and requests. By understanding what we really need in order to end racism and to create the real community of all living creatures together, we will be able to receive the right guidance for our Hands and Feet to make it happen.
Recall that Jews and Samaritans were two ethnic-cultural groups who did not mingle with one another. And yet here, they come together through service. Jesus asks, “will you give me a drink?” And African-Americans are asking, “will you let me breathe?” It is through compassionate service for each other that the two communities can become family.
Let’s take this day to put the light on what is going on in our country as much as what is going on in ourselves from the action perspective.
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Prayer and contemplation
What do you really need and how can you ask for it to benefit all involved?
What do you/we need to do in order to end racism, racial tensions, and racial inequalities?
What new direction can you/we decide to follow and how can we make it happen?
How can you/we make sure to commit to the new resolutions taken?
How do you hold yourself accountable in the long run?
We invite you to light a candle, take a cross or a bible, and go simply in a calm space and start breathing for a few seconds.
Shine the light on the things that you need, on the things that you want to change or to be changed. Shine the light on the action you want to take and sustain.
Ask God to support you in your pain and towards happiness.
Ask the Holy Spirit to heal you and everyone.
Ask the Son, Christ, to be with us and in us so we can not only believe, not only follow but abide.
Together we pray.
We believe there is a way to put the human first and not his/her appearance. There is a way to see love, God, and Jesus in each of us and all around us. We pray for not falling into the trap of division, of nurturing separation amongst humans, of playing the game of destruction that darkness wants us to play by forcing us to choose one side of the battlefield whereas Jesus taught us that there is a way out of the battlefield, a third way, a universal solution, which is the one of reconciliation with God and with one another, the one of the Living Church that is the one human family, where the Holy Spirit is always dwelling, nurturing and bringing us out of the division, towards reconciliation and unity, above and beyond all forms. We believe that today is a day when all of humanity will come together, be reconciled, and love each other in one universal community of humans and of all living creatures, under the banner of unconditional love and altruism.
Let’s end racism, once and for all. 
One human family, in God.
Click here for the Prayer Guide Introduction
Posted by Isabella Dougan
#praywithusPUMC to End Racism Prayer Guide 4
DAILY PRAYER TO END RACISM
DAY FOUR
DAY OF FORGIVENESS – SOUL. 
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God’s Word for Today
John 4:13-14
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
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Reflection
Jesus shows us clearly that there is a way not to be thirsty again. There is a way to end racism and all sorts of separateness amongst us humans. The way out is to drink the water of eternal life.
Every healing process brings us to a point where we have to reconcile. We reconcile with the energy of life, of God. For that, we need forgiveness; forgiving ourselves and forgiving others, and everyone we still have to ask for forgiveness or that we have to forgive. Loving ourselves and loving others can’t happen without forgiveness. This is the day of the soul, where we can access the living water of eternal life. Let’s take this day to put the light on what is going on in our country as much as what is going on in ourselves through the lens of our Soul.
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Prayer and Contemplation
How can I reach forgiveness and pardon today?
Is there something I can forgive myself about?
Is there someone I can ask for forgiveness or forgive today?
In which areas can I reconcile with myself – body, emotions, thoughts, spirit?
With whom and what can I reconcile around me and in my daily life?
We invite you to light a candle, take a cross or a bible, and go simply in a calm space and start breathing for a few seconds.
Shine the light on a historical wrong regarding racial injustice that causes all of our pain, give it a voice and an ear, and then pray for reconciliation.
Ask God to support you in your pain and towards happiness.
Ask the Holy Spirit to heal you and everyone.
Ask the Son, Christ, to be with us and in us so we can not only believe, not only follow but abide.
Together we pray. 
Let’s end racism, once and for all.
One human family, in God.
Click here for the Prayer Guide Introduction
Posted by Isabella Dougan
#praywithusPUMC to End Racism Prayer Guide 3
DAILY PRAYER TO END RACISM
DAY THREE
DAY OF EXPRESSION
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God’s Word for Today
John 1:1-18
The Word Became Flesh
In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness, we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
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Reflection
Every healing process needs us to let the emotions we are feeling to be expressed; to be expressed in a non-violent way, in a constructive way, without judgment on what we feel. Sadness, anger, and all other expressions of frustrations are not bad or good. They are just a vehicle of transformation. They show us there is something to move on from and to go to. They are indicators of change. Let’s embrace our feelings and use them as a power of transformation. How do we feel in our body? How do we feel in our heart? How do we feel in our head, the ideas, the thoughts we are having right now? How do we feel in our connection with our soul, with our highest purposes and ideals in life? Let’s take this day to put the light on what is going on in our country as much as what is going on in ourselves through the lens of our Heart.
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Prayer and contemplation
How have you experienced Christ’s “moving in” toward you?
How have you come to know Christ as you’ve “moved in” toward others?
Reflect on a time when you were surprised or changed by getting to know more of what life is like for someone else?
We invite you to light a candle, take a cross or a bible, and start breathing for a few seconds.
Shine the light on the distances of all sorts that exist between you and some other person or group.
Ask God to support you in your pain and towards happiness.
Ask the Holy Spirit to heal you and everyone.
Ask the Son, Christ, to be with us and in us so we can not only believe, not only follow but abide.
Together we pray. 
Let’s end racism, once and for all.
One human family, in God.
Click here for the Prayer Guide Introduction
#praywithusPUMC to End Racism Prayer Guide 1
DAILY PRAYER TO END RACISM
DAY ONE
DAY OF RECOGNITION – HEAD
● God’s Word for Today
John 4:1-15
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[ a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 1 2 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 1 4 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
● Reflection
This passage of scriptures starts with the RECOGNITION that there is division. There is pain in the separation of the communities (here Jews and Samaritans). There is an apparent impossibility of cohesion and synergy and communication between them. Jesus shows us that it’s because we are not seeking the right water. We are seeking the dead water instead of the living water.
Every healing process starts always with a recognition of what is happening. In our endeavor to end racism, let’s first get out of denial, observe and accept the reality of the pain we are in. Let’s take this day to put the light on what is going on in our country as much as what is going on in ourselves through the lens of our Head.
● Prayer and contemplation
How does racism make me feel?
Where do I see judgment around me?
In which part of my life and with whom do I hold judgment? Do I judge myself and others?
We invite you to light a candle, take a cross or a bible, and go simply in a calm space and start breathing for a few seconds.
Shine the light on a particular issue that you recognize.
Ask God to support you in your pain and towards happiness.
Ask the Holy Spirit to heal you and everyone.
Ask the Son, Christ, to be with us and in us so we can not only believe, not only follow but abide.
Together we pray.
Let’s end racism, once and for all. One human family, in God.
Here is the link to the Prayer Guide Introduction