Dear Brave Souls:
PRAYER FOR ALL THE INNOCENTS SHOT DOWN:
I ask for your peaceful prayers and helping comments. No rants. Most are well and painfully aware of the issues, as am I. Consider this space for now, a temenos made for you, what I write about to you many times, my “Little Red Chapel of the Heart.” It is right here, right now. Consider we are in that quiet place, being in calm bright heart… Together.
We Are A Brave and Decent People
We mourn
because we are a decent people.
We cleave to the priorities now.
First, without ‘sides,’ without
politicizing anything or anyone,
we mourn the dead.
First, without distractions,
we mourn the dead.
First without analyses,
we mourn the dead.
Sometimes easy to forget
the precise instructions
from the ancients:
Creator said
we are made in the
image of G-d. And,
didnt Creator say
even a sparrow
falling was noted
and grieved?
Thereby,
we do not choose
who to mourn
by color.
we do not choose
who to mourn by age.
we do not choose
who to mourn by heritage.
Not by gender.
Nor by religion.
Nor by any other division–
just that the dead belonged
to someone who loved them.
Just that they belonged
to the enormous wheel
of humanity…
We mourn the dead.
We mourn fathers,
mothers, brothers,
sisters, grandparents,
friends, wives,
husbands, lovers,
children. We mourn
the swaths
of Creator’s forest
cut down.
We mourn all
because we are a decent people.
We pray for the families,
the mates, the friends,
the colleagues, and the very
animals also,
who are so sad this night
and for nights yet to come.
We pray that whatever helps
can come,
will come–
and in ways
each person
can understand
and put to good use
immediately.
We pray for all
because we are a decent people.
We pray for fire to render
hatred to ash, but
not burn down
the living forest.
We pray for the unthinking
to recall that mere sparks
can cause conflagration.
We pray for the cool rain
for the too hot heart
and rain for the dry heart.
We pray for the soft winds
of the chinook to flow warmly
over the chilled heart
and over the heart frozen.
We pray for all
because we are a decent people.
We pray for all because many of us
have lost many and much.
We pray for ourselves, because
we still stand
and because we are
many and much ourselves.
We pray to be steady like
the many lodgepole pines
who withstand much
in high winds,
bending, limber,
hair flying
trunk creaking
but not breaking.
We mourn, we pray
because we are a decent people.
We pray
that whatever others say
that is not decent…
whatever others do
that is not decent …
can have no part of us,
seizes no part of us,
infects no part of us,
poisons no part of us.
That we remember–
the living forest
holds the mountain
to this earth,
the living forest
holds the waters
to their beds,
and most of all,
most of all my babies,
the living forest
transmutes poison
into
oxygen
for all.
We mourn,
we pray,
because we are
that living forest,
we are a living,
walking forest
in full force,
because we are
a decent,loving people.
This comes with love … and beyond sadness for all … that is, the majority of people on planet Earth, who are the decent loving people of this earth… for whom STILL, the loudest, shrillest voices in violence, cannot extinguish, the still small voice, born into the greater soul.
CODA
If you like, you could use the rhythm of this prayer to calm the body, for it was written and is set to the slow beat of a calm heart. To do so, say it aloud, and you will see the remedio of this.
Remember, Tribe of the Sacred Heart, many of us Scar Clan. I love you. Courage.
dr.e
photo credit: Turn my Darkness into Light via photopin (license)