Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

Deadline for Prayer Submissions for Lifting Women’s Voices Extended to October 15.

On September 25, the world-wide Anglican Communion will observe a day of “prayer, fasting and witness” as the United Nations meets to discuss progress towards the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Anglicans will be praying with special intention for the world’s extreme poor and for a renewed commitment, from national governments to every individual, to achieving the MDGs by 2015.

To augment the power of these prayers, the editors of Lifting Women’s Voices: Ending Poverty through Prayer and Action, are extending the deadline for submissions to October 15, 2008.

This new book will collect prayers from women and girls across the world-wide Anglican Communion in support of the MDGs. In Lifting Women’s Voices, Anglican women and girls will unite to make their voices heard on issues of poverty and women’s empowerment, reveal the depths of their faith, and reveal their connections even across cultural and economic divides.

This Q&A Will Tell You More about Submitting a Prayer

Lifting Women’s Voices: Ending Poverty through Prayer and Action

1. What is this new book?

Lifting Women’s Voices, to be published in May 2009 under the Morehouse imprint of Church Publishing, Inc., will be a book of prayers by Anglican women and girls addressing the themes of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

2. What are the Millennium Development Goals?

Agreed to by all member states of the United Nations in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), provide a blueprint for radically improving the lives of the world's poor. The prayers in Lifting Women’s Voices will focus specifically on each of the goals. The goals are to:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

3. What do the Millennium Development Goals have to do with me?

The MDGs have to do with every human being in the global community. For you personally, and for all people, a sustainable future of peace and human flourishing is possible, if there is real commitment to achieving the MDGs. Whether you are a woman, man, girl or boy, whether you come from a wealthy or poor country, and whether or not you have personally experienced extreme poverty, or hunger, or illiteracy, or disease, you can care about the MDGs.

4. Are prominent Anglican women leaders endorsing Lifting Women’s Voices?

Yes. The Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, is writing the preface for Lifting Women’s Voices. Helping to choose prayers for publication are Mrs. Jane Williams, a theologian and author who is the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury; Dr. Jenny Te Paa, Ahorangi, or Dean, of Te Rau Kahikatea, the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand; Mrs. Phoebe Griswold, a founding member of Anglican Women’s Empowerment; and the Rev. Margaret R. Rose, Director of The Episcopal Church’s Center for Mission Leadership.

5. How do I submit a prayer?

You may submit a prayer by email to prayers@cpg.org. Please write in the Subject line of your email the words “Submission for Lifting Women’s Voices”. Then, in the body of the email, please also provide the following information:

• Your full name
• Your email address
• Your complete mailing address
• The MDG to which your prayer most speaks.

6. What is the deadline for submissions?

The deadline for submitting a prayer is October 15, 2008.

7. What kinds of prayers are you seeking?

Lifting Women’s Voices will include many different kinds of prayers, both personal and corporate - collects, psalms, litanies, psalms, guided imageries, meditations, poems, rituals, table graces, blessings, and other creative forms. Topics for prayers might include your personal experiences of poverty, hunger, gender inequality, pregnancy and motherhood, or disease. You might pray for a creative realization of the MDGs or for the Spirit to inspire the world’s leaders. You could envision better neighborhoods, better schools, and a better world for women and girls.

8. I’ve never really written a prayer before. Can you offer any guidance?

Start where you are and just be yourself, in the power of God’s Spirit. When feeling encouraged and safe enough, every woman and girl will pray differently, expressing different situations, hurts, hopes, desires, and joys.

If you are accustomed to praying with your voice, and not a pen or computer, find a tape recorder or ask someone you trust to pray with you and write down your prayer.

To begin, you might find simply sit in a quiet place and read the MDGs slowly. Give some time to thinking about each one of them.

Then, you might:

• Remember something from your past, or a friend or family member’s past, that relates to an MDG.
• Pay attention to the news and respond in prayer.
• Jot down images you see during the day relating to an MDG.
• Ask for the Spirit for a spiritual grace in your prayer -- perhaps honesty, or attentiveness, or hope.

If you are able to do so easily, you might memorize the MDGs, so that they will shape your future prayer when you are out in the world.

Remember that a prayer may evolve over time. The first prayer you write may not be the one you submit. Allow God’s Spirit to work in you in the time you need.

9. May I write a prayer in my own language?

Yes. Because the prayers in Lifting Women’s Voices will be published in English, the editors will appreciate submissions in English. Nevertheless, if you pray in another language and do not have access to a translator, the editors will be able to arrange for a translation.

10. Who decides which prayers are published?

The senior editors of Lifting Women’s Voices, assisted by an Editorial Board of Anglican women and girls, will choose the prayers for publication. Together, they represent an impressive diversity within the Anglican Communion, including women and girls from Australia, Hong Kong, Kenya, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The senior editors of Lifting Women’s Voices are Jenny Te Paa, Ahorangi, or Dean, of Te Rau Kahikatea, the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand; Margaret R. Rose, Director of The Episcopal Church’s Center for Mission Leadership; Abagail Nelson, Vice President for Programs at Episcopal Relief and Development; and K. Jeanne Person, Co-author of Where You Go, I Shall: Gleanings from the Stories of Biblical Widows.

The members of the Editorial Board are Paige Blair, Marjorie A. Burke, Suzanne Watson Epting, Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Christina Hing, Phoebe Griswold, Vickie Ling, Faith Meitiaki, Karen Montagno, Liz Munoz, Kim Robey, Ann Skamp, and Jane Williams.

11. How will I know if my prayer has been selected for publication?

In early 2009, Morehouse will contact all of the writers whose prayers have been selected for inclusion in Lifting Women’s Voices and ask permission to publish the prayer.

12. Will the prayers be edited?

The senior editors of Lifting Women’s Voices reserve the right to edit a prayer for grammar, spelling, layout, clarity, and other publication needs. In addition, the senior editors may contact the writer of a prayer with suggestions for change. No prayer will be published, in either original or edited form, without the express consent of the author.

Believing a key step for women’s empowerment is gender-respectful language, the senior editors seek prayers that offer a balance of male and female images for God. Too often theological language sustains patriarchy and other forms of oppression against women. When God is consistently prayed to using male pronouns and images, such as Lord and Father, communities have less invitation to see women and girls as being made in God’s image.

Within the Anglican Communion, however, is a diversity of cultural contexts and approaches to the bible. Because the words Father and Lord appear throughout the bible, and Jesus himself used them in praying to God, such language is integral to the piety of many Anglican women and girls.

The senior editors will strive, therefore, to respect the spirituality of the Anglican women and girls who submit prayers from different contexts, while also working with the authors to shape Lifting Women’s Voices into a book that empowers all, both women and girls, men and boys.

13. Who receives the royalties?

All royalties from the sale of Lifting Women’s Voices will benefit the International Anglican Women’s Network (IAWN) and Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) in support of women’s prgrams. The IAWN, which is the official voice of Anglican women and girls advising the Anglican Consultative Council, affirms and encourages the leadership of women and girls in the Anglican Communion, creates real connections among Anglican women and girls, and speaks to current issues from a women’s perspective. Episcopal Relief and Development is the international relief and development agency of The Episcopal Church, guided by principles of compassion, dignity and generosity. Many of ERD’s development programs focus on the empowerment of women.

14. Who will hold the copyright to the prayers?

The copyright will be held by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of The Protestant Episcopal Church USA.

15. What is the history behind Lifting Women’s Voices?

The idea for Lifting Women’s Voices arose, at first, from the popularity and success of Women’s Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated, published in 2000 under the Morehouse imprint and edited by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Marjorie A. Burke, and Ann Smith. This collection included extraordinary prayers by women in the United States focusing on a women’s life cycle. The idea then came to create a book with a more global reach and addressing global concerns.

16. Will Lifting Women’s Voices Really Make a Difference?

Yes. Lifting Women’s Voices will serve as one creative means for the Anglican Communion to help meet the third Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and empowering women, simply through the publication of voices in prayer that otherwise might not be heard. The prayers will also reveal the needs of Anglican women and girls across all of the MDGs.

Furthermore, at a time when worldwide attention is focused on discord and divisions within the Anglican Communion, Lifting Women’s Voices will reveal how women and girls across the Anglican Communion are deeply connected by the global issues of poverty and women’s empowerment, even across cultural and economic divides. For example, the book might show the spiritual bond between a teenage girl in the United States struggling with self-image because of debasing popular culture and a teenage girl from the Global South who has disappeared into the slave trade. The book will show how nurturing an inner life of prayer can give women and girls the courage and power to care and advocate not just for themselves, but also for their sisters throughout the Anglican Communion.

17. Will Morehouse market the book effectively?

Believing Lifting Women’s Voices to be an important contribution to the church’s mission to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals, Morehouse plans to promote the book with its best effort. Morehouse will host, for example, a major book-signing party at The Episcopal Church’s General Convention in July 2009.

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Item from: Morehouse Publishing