Holy One,
The Holy Land,
is ravaged.
Its scorched earth
is awash in
random massacres
and intentional carnage.
The War in Ukraine
has murdered, maimed,
and annihilated
families, homes,
and cities
for
1 year,
7 months,
2 weeks, and
6 days.
32 other lands,
just as holy,
slump under the burden of
terrorist insurgencies,
civil wars,
and drug wars
that we hardly have
the emotional stamina to
recognize.
It is as if the world
is vomiting,
retching from
a deep internal disease
that we can no longer
pretend is in remission.
So we turn to You
and beg You to intercede.
We send up a bat signal.
Attention God,
or Spirit, or Jesus,
or Yahweh, or Allah,
or the cosmos,
please, please, please
make all of this
go away!
But
The fault, dear Brutus,
Is not in our stars,
but in ourselves.
There’s the rub.
The fault lies with us,
and only us.
It’s not history,
or fate,
or genetics,
or bad luck,
or Mom and Dad,
it’s us and the choices we make.
Mother Teresa said
we have no peace,
because we have
forgotten that we
belong to each other.
Help us to know that
we belong to each other.
Help us breath in breaths
that are more than our own.
Help us have hearts that
beat in sync with one another.
Help us sink back into You,
into the source of everything.
You are always there,
but we have yet to learn to
see You in each other.
Help us experience You
in all,
through all,
and
with all.
AMEN