Prayer Pod: Recent Episodes
Root + Branch Church
Prayer Pod takes you through a brief, guided time of prayer using poetry and the movement of music as guides. Each episode features original compositions and poems (often read by the poets themselves).
Prayer can take many forms. Words whispered before bed as you drift off to sleep or screamed out of sheer frustration while driving alone in your car. Prayer can be silence, or movement, or song. Sometimes we might not know how to pray at all.
At Root + Branch Church, we have found the words of poets to be helpful guides as we seek to speak the truths of lives in conversation with God.
www.rootandbranchchurch.org
Poems: Veni Creator by Czeslaw Milosz and The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Music: Tim Kim
*Optimized for headphone listening
Poems: For the Anniversary of My Death by W.S. Merwin, Selection from Ecclesiastes 9
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended
Prayer Pod is a guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Thanks by W. S. Merwin
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended
Prayer Pod is a guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Hymn to Time by Ursula K. Le Guin
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended
Ursula K. Le Guin was an award winning writer of science fiction and poetry. She lived a remarkable life, and you can learn about her here or all over the internet.
Prayer Pod is a guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended
Li-Young Lee is an award winning poet and the author of such collections as The City in Which I Love You and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance. For more about his life and work, check out the Poetry Foundation.
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Thank You Jesus by Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Music: Tim Kim & Jonathan Neidorf
*Headphones recommended
Find more of Teri’s work at www.poetsandparents.com. Twitter: @cross_davis
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: What I Carried by Maggie Smith
Music: Patrick Derdall
*Headphones recommended
"What I Carried" from Good Bones, Tupelo Press, copyright 2017 Maggie Smith. Used with permission.
Maggie Smith is the author of four books, most recently Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017) and the forthcoming Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster, 2020). Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Poetry, The Believer, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Paris Review. A freelance writer and editor, Smith is on the poetry faculty of Spalding University’s MFA program and serves as an Editor at Large for the Kenyon Review.
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Bread by Richard Levine
Music: Tim Kim
Find more of Richard Levine's work on his website.
*Headphones recommended
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi
Music: Tim Kim
Franny Choi audio used with permission from the Poetry Foundation.
*Headphones recommended
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Untitled by James Baldwin, A Memory by Saeed Jones
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended! (this episode in particular will sound weird without them)
As our country reckons with its deeply embedded history of racism and violence, this episode reflects on lament and confession.
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.
Poem: Elegy by Aracelis Girmay
Music: Tim Kim
*Headphones recommended
Prayer Pod is a short, guided prayer session of meditative practice, poetry, and music.