Say It Like a Prayer (Sacred Words for Liberation, Hope, and Healing)

A powerful anthology of prayers and poems for navigating crisis, sustaining resistance, and imagining a more just future. With contributions from major literary activist voices like adrienne maree brown, Joy Harjo, Chani Nicholas, Hala Alyan, and Prentis Hemphill, Say It Like a Prayer is to be carried and cherished—into the streets, into moments of celebration and grief, through uncertainty, crises, and the daily rhythms of our lives.

Say It Like a Prayer, edited by Dori Midnight, is a bold, soul-steadying anthology of over a hundred prayers and poems for a world full of transformation and uncertainty. Gathering invocations, blessings, meditations, spells, and counterspells from beloved community organizers, faith leaders, change makers, and poets, this collection speaks directly to the universal need to do the necessary work of imagining and believing in a more beautiful future and a thriving present.

These are “prayers that are also poems, blessings that are also spells”—written to be lived with, returned to, and shared. This is a book meant to be dog-eared and marked up; opened at protests and vigils, celebrations and memorials, rallies and rituals; passed hand to hand and given as a lifeline to those weathering hard times. Contained within these pages are prayers for protection before an action and for the end of a meeting, prayers for breaking up, falling in love, and cultivating more erotic aliveness. Blessings over children, seasons, and tactics of resistance. Prayers for breaking old patterns and becoming ever new, sacred intentions for letting go with grace and showing up with rigor, and poems that can infuse our lives with meaning and reverence.

Drawing from multiple traditions and lineages, Say It Like a Prayer is a call to practice and a companion for collective struggle. It meets that need, offering spiritual nourishment without dogma and reverence without retreat. These are words to help us endure collapse, navigate change, and stay tender and fierce in the face of uncertainty—words to carry us through personal and collective crisis, and toward the futures we are still brave enough to believe in.