National Coming Out Day prayer emphasizes gratitude for our ancestors and saints

​While National Coming Out Day was October 11, we are revisiting a powerful prayer from enfleshed. We give thanks for our ancestors and the saints who have made way for us. Gratitude for our ancestors was the theme for opening worship at the recent Colors of Hope Retreat.

In the introduction to the devotional journal, Colors of Hope Co-Creator August Laperche writes, “The hope of our ancestors in the LGBTQ+ community carries us into the present moment. If it weren’t for those who came before us–their struggles, their witness, their hope–we would not be where we are today…”

Retreat participants shared about ancestors who have brought them hope. Author DeShay Jackson led the community in a song titled “Breaths” and the words echoed throughout the entire retreat: “The dead are not gone forever. / They are in the paling shadows, / And in the darkening shadows. / The dead are not beneath the ground, / They are in the rustling tree, / In the murmuring wood, / In the flowing water, / In the still water, / In the lonely place, / in the crowd: / The dead are not dead. / Listen more often to things rather than beings.”

Read the full National Coming Out Day prayer here. Pictured below, left to right: Raphael Guillen, Marc Alvarado and Chrissy Stonebraker-Martinez leading retreat worshipers in the prayer.