Lector:  Beloved Creator:   Today we observe with grateful hearts the arrival of Christ into Jerusalem. We celebrate with palm leaves, symbols of healing and joy, in anticipation of the journey of this coming week. Our deepest prayer is that we will fully take Christ’s teachings into our Hearts, leaving sin and selfishness behind.

 People:  We give thanks for your boundless mercy and love.

Beloved Creator:  We thank you for our congregation at Emmanuel, and for our greater faith community, and ask that your guidance and wisdom flow freely into our listening hearts.  We are grateful for spiritual teachers and mentors throughout the world. Bless all who actively seek to create peace, and freedom from terror and devastating climate change. Thank you especially for Berto and Hugh, our priests, for Gregory, our Bishop, and for Michael, our presiding bishop. If we ever take them for granted, please forgive us.

 We give thanks for your boundless mercy and love. 

Beloved Creator:  Our nation and all in authority are beset with daunting responsibilities toward the world.  Let our leaders heed your guidance, no matter what their faith, that all the creation might benefit.  Forgive them their errors and help all to live your commandment that we love one another as you have loved us.

 We give thanks for your boundless mercy and love.

Beloved Creator:  We pray in your name, for our school children and their teachers, the farmers, and all those struggling to make a living within our own community as well as the larger world.  Protect them from false steps.  Please help those who need homes, those suffering  from addictions and other difficulties, and all whose well-being is in jeopardy.

 We give thanks for your boundless mercy and love.

Beloved Creator:  There are so many in special need of prayer.  In your name, Dear One, we do ask healing, help, and encouragement for all those on our Parish Prayer list: … Please feel free to add any other names, silently or aloud, at this time. (Pause…) We also ask comfort for all those  bereaved. 

 We give thanks for your boundless mercy and love.

Beloved Creator:  We thank you for the gift of a comfortable life. Your gifts in our community are so abundant:  clean water, fresh air, more than enough food.  As we move forward in this Holy Week let us be guided to greater simplicity and expanded ability to reach out to others less fortunate.    May we believe more deeply, becoming  ever more faithful to your love in all we do.

Presider: Oh Creator God, in joy and sorrow we join with you on the journey to the cross, to the tomb, and to the Great Mystery of your Resurrection and our own redemption. May we—unbroken colts that we are—submit gladly to the wonder and responsibility  of carrying you in our hearts, just as that colt carried you on its back. Amen.