We offer this prayer as a practice of mourning and an invitation to action. We offer this prayer as a multi-faith, reproductive justice-centered organization working in the U.S, reflecting on the relationships and reactions that are alive as we all wade through these days. This prayer is inspired by a collect, a brief prayer that brings together, or collects, several concerns at once. It is not a full or final word, but it is an offering among the many that will be shared.
God of many names, be with all your children. The destruction is overwhelming and we cannot make sense of it. Today is a violent anniversary, over 1100 people were killed, and 200 people were taken hostage in Israel on this day one year ago; igniting fear in Israelis and Jews the world over.
For this we mourn.
That day of violence has been followed by a year of violence in Gaza, in the West Bank, and now in Lebanon. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, injured, and are missing. Countless more are without shelter and food. These realities are an intensification of the hardships Palestinians face from a decades-long occupation.
For this we mourn.
Violence seethes across our globe. Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and countless others. The worship and justification of death seems to be everywhere.
For this we mourn.
There is not a limit to our grief. We can grieve for all of God’s children who suffer.
For this we are called to action.
We know that the world that you call us to is one of life and thriving. A new world is possible.
God of sacred possibility, grant us the courage and vision to co-create a world where Reproductive Justice is the lived reality. Help us find ways to move into deeper solidarity and community, no matter where we are starting.
Some of us cry out for justice & deliverance, knowing that there is no justification for the bombing, torturing, caging of humans. Knowing that no one deserves to be held hostage, have a pager explode in their hands, to be gunned down, to be sexually violated. To face starvation and polio, to be targeted for providing medical care & food. To indefinitely be made a refugee, to have homes stolen, destroyed, to live under constant threat of violence. To fear never knowing peace or a sense of safety. It shouldn’t be this hard to understand.
God of plenitude, ease our sense of isolation and exhaustion, amplify our voices by adding to our number who call and work for justice.
Some of us are just learning to understand the whole picture, just starting to see that all of your people, all of the people of this globe, all of your creation can live. That there is enough for all of us when we live in community. When, with your guiding Spirit, we seek power and possibility together rather than control and dominance over.
Activating God, move us to act through word, risk, relationship, action, and funds.
Some of us are still convinced that dominance over is the only way to survive. That greed, violence, demonizing & dehumanizing so-called enemies, can justify anything, particularly when cloaking political power in a desecrated robe of religiosity. Those among us cannot see that mass destruction is always mutual destruction in the long-term.
God of compassion, humble and crack open our hardened hearts that cannot see the dignity & humanity of those we target. Grant us opportunities to understand that bombs sold, given, dropped, do not steward a world of justice & safety. That tenuous “safety” bought with bombs, guns, and commandeered land is a false idol.
Some of us distance and distract ourselves from the shared communal pain. The distractions of capitalism & colonialism have taught us that we are disconnected from what is happening to our neighbor “over there,” whether it is one mile or 7,000 miles away.
God of divine mercy, give us hearts to feel, that may we hear the cries of your people in all corners of the earth.
Spirit of Life, remind us, make it clear, that you are not served through worshiping death, through the demolition of any people, any families, any children, any land, any culture. You call us to a thriving, living faithfulness, to co-creating a world for all of creation’s living and thriving.
Accompanying Spirit, be with us, grant us strength and courage to act boldly, to join you as co-conspirators, and do our part to steward a world where dignity and justice are woven into the fabric of our being.
Ameen. Amein. Amen. Asé. And may it be so.