Compline - End of Day Prayer

January 9, 2025

COMPLINE with +Bishop Durrell

[Compline is the end of day prayer as one prepares for sleep.

Tonight's Compline includes reflection and meditation as well as a closing prayer.]

California is on fire. Lives are being turned upside down. It will take months or years for some people to fully recover.

By the way, it’s fire. It’s not a divine tantrum or a curse or the fulfillment of some ancient prognostication. It’s fire. It happens. We don’t need superstition or conspiracy drama. What is needed is our concern and our compassion and our generosity.

While fires rage in one area, bitter cold attacks others.

And while the elements misbehave (and of course climate change is a factor and should be addressed), a country mourns the loss of a great humanitarian.

President Jimmy Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity, and the Carter Center’s work around the world, has touched innumerable lives. In addition to election oversight and diplomatic efforts, the Carter Center also employs about 200 people in Atlanta and thousands more throughout the world. The sort of leader who never stops trying to make the world a better place for everyone is too rare, and now there is one less. Of course we grieve.

BREATHE. Let’s spend one full minute in silence just noticing our breath. Let’s take a full minute respite from all the crazy and all the scary and all the unknown. Let’s have one perfect minute of relaxed breathing and calmness. We deserve it and we can have it. Right now.

Following the breath can be a prayer. A prayer for peace by embracing it and letting it then float into the atmosphere. Another word for breath is “spirit.” When we connect with Breath, we are touching something sacred and powerful and beautiful. Breathe.

We can also ask the Universe to help us, or the angels to guide us, or the ancestors to be with us, or the saints to pray for us, or for the God of our understanding to hold us throughout all the ups and downs of life. Breathe. Pray. Repeat as needed.

My close of day prayer:

Let showers of blessing heal California, and a warm breath of heaven minister to those facing dangerously cold temperatures.

Let peace seem more real than problems. And may we have the courage and the grace to hope, no matter how many times hope didn’t seem to change the outcomes. Still, hope banishes despair, at least for a while, and sometimes, what we hope for does come to pass. Oh, let us dare to hope, or at very least, let us hope to find hope.

May the legacy of Jimmy Carter continue to bless the world, and may we bless his memory even as his memory inspires us. And may humanitarians and peacemakers and justice workers and lovers of humankind rise among us, and may we be willing to count ourselves among them in some measure.

It is in peace and with faith that I pray. Amen.

Bless you and Good night.

+Bishop Durrell

Memorial Day and Summoning our Better Angels

Memorial Day Weekend: a time to remember & honor those who gave their lives defending a nation that promises life, liberty & pursuit of happiness, that pledges justice for all, that guarantees freedoms of peaceful assembly, of press and political speech, of (& from) religion. To honor their sacrifices let’s not allow the values and hopes they died defending be trampled on. It’s so truly time to summon those better angels that Lincoln mentioned.

October Calls Us to be Angels in our World

Holy October

             October has become a month that encourages us to celebrate human potential. October challenges us to remember heroes so that we might discover heroic qualities in ourselves. October even calls us to work for justice where justice has been denied. October is a very special month!

            There is a national holiday in October: Columbus Day. However, we now know that it is problematic to celebrate Christopher Columbus as the “discoverer” of North America, since Leif Ericson reached our continent 500 years before Columbus did, and the continent had been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years. So, Johnny-Come-Lately Columbus was the second European to visit a long inhabited continent. Worse than the inaccuracy of calling Columbus the discoverer of North America, is Columbus’ own brutality. When Columbus landed in the Bahamas he and his crew were treated well by the native residents. Columbus rewarded their decency by seizing their land and enslaving them.

Now many of us call what has been known as Columbus Day, “Indigenous Peoples Day” to honor the peaceful people Columbus first encountered and soon betrayed and tormented. Indigenous Peoples Day reminds us to honor the peace lovers, to value kindness and generosity, and to speak out against injustice.

October is also LBGT History Month where we celebrate heroes from our beautiful and diverse Queer community. We honor such luminaries as lesbian Jane Addams (co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and first American woman Nobel Peace Prize winner), Miriam Ben-Shalom (discharged from the Army in the 1970s for being gay but she won a long court battle which resulted in her being reinstated in the 1980s), bisexual Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall-of-Famer Clive Davis (who helped the careers of such superstars as Aretha Franklin, Jennifer Hudson, and Carlos Santana), Arthur Dong (Academy Award nominee, Peabody Award winner, gay film-maker who features gay and Asian themes in his work), Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox (transgender actress, producer, and activist), and Richard Blanco (the youngest, first Latino, and first openly gay U.S. presidential inauguration poet – Blanco read one of his poems at President Obama’s second inauguration). We should be very proud of the many achievements that members of our community have shared with the world!

October also gives us National Coming Out Day which encourages us to leave behind closets of fear and shame and to live out loud as the gifted, wonderful members of the human family we are. October 6, 1968 is the founding date of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC). October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, reminding us to honor those who battle cancer, to remember those who lost their battle, and to wish and work for a cure. And sadly, October is the month in 1998 when Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard died from being attacked simply because he was gay.

October gives us a lot to think about, and opportunities to renew our commitment to make a difference. So, I call October holy, because in many ways it reminds us that we can be and ought to be angels of healing in our world.

Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins is the Senior Minister of Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale.

written for the Florida Agenda

Wednesday's Prayer

Angels are holding me, watching over me, smiling on me, wishing me well, seeing the best in me, sharing my sorrows and celebrating my joys. Whether angels are the better parts of my human nature, my highest ideals, my fondest imaginings, the ancestors, spirit guides, loving friends, or kind strangers, I give thanks for their presence in my life. I depend on and am grateful for the ministry of angels. I know that I am never really alone. Amen.

Rev. Durrell Watkins, DMin