This Week's Prayer

Dear Ground of Being,

We pray to remember, to grow in gratitude for the voices of insight among us. We remember Marcus Borg, who died this week. The liberal Christian theologian was a leader in the Jesus Seminar, and helped thousands of thoughtful people see a way to bring careful intelligence together with moving faith.

We pray to reconnect with our selves, the self that is all things; to accept ourselves exactly as we are, and at the same time to encourage ourselves to spiritual growth. In disconnection, we have often ignored the oppressed and brokenhearted, and so we pray. May righteous anger give us energy for lives of compassion and justice. There are some things to which, as Martin Luther King put it, we ought to be maladjusted.

Raif Badawi, sentenced last May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes by a Saudi court for “insulting Islam.” Ill after the first 50 lashes, he waits to heal so that he can be lashed again and again. May we be maladjusted to cruelty in the name of religion.

122 men are still held at the United States’ military prison in Guantánamo, Cuba. May we be maladjusted to this imprisonment.

The leader of Boko Haram claims his group killed hundreds of women and girls in the Nigerian town of Baga and threatens to attack Niger, Chad and Cameroon. May we be maladjusted to misogynist violence.

Texas has no state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, so the Houston City Council approved an ordinance to do that. A petition drive for a repeal referendum has ended up in court. May we be maladjusted to discrimination against LGBT folk.

Russian troops have been pouring into eastern Ukraine, and combat has broken out on a half-dozen fronts. May we be maladjusted to imperialist war.

We are given this brief life, not to make peace with war, but to make peace instead of war. May it be so.