This Week's Prayer

Ground on which we stand, air we breathe, and web of all life that makes each life possible:

Eagles bend wings in adoration, whales sing songs of praise, horses gallop in gratitude for all that is, and the lunar eclipse early Wednesday touched us with the wonder and majesty of the cosmos.

We stand in the midst of beauty, grandeur, and abundance, seeking to be people of compassion, feeling the wounds of the world:

• Devastation, famine and war in South Sudan.
• War in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Kashmiri border between Pakistan and India.
• Hatred, of which a symptom appeared at Atlanta’s Emory University when, on the day after Yom Kippur, swastikas were painted on the exterior of a Jewish fraternity house.
• Legislators proclaiming they will do anything to protect us from largely imaginary threats while doing nothing to address the real ones.

We seek to be people of gratitude and hope, attuned to signs of emergent justice, equality, and healing.

• Malala Yousafzai, once shot in the head by a Taliban militant for her work promoting girls education in Afghanistan, this week, at age 17, the youngest person ever to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
• The advance of equality and respect this week as 10 more states began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, bringing the total now to 29 states, likely to become 35 in the next week or so.
• All those courageous selfless people seeking to bring light, truth, hope and care where there is so little or none.

Ground on which we stand, air we breathe, and web of all life that makes each life possible, make of us more attentive lovers of thy stunning grace and more caring healers of thy pain and woe.