The Wonderment

Prayer After Destruction

O Mercy where are you? Why so much danger and damage, so much devastation, so many deaths? Abiding Love, where do you abide now in the midst of all this fearful horror? One storm and bout of violent upheaval after another has brought us low, has hurt us terribly, has us weeping and wailing and wondering how we carry on, where we begin, what we can do for those who yet live and for those who have lost family, friends, work, home, school. In our anger and grief, Mercy, lead us not into blame and recrimination, but into helping one another any way we can. Lead us, Love Beyond Imagining, into what needs to be done, into generosity of spirit and of resources, of labor and of kindness, of healing and comfort and refuge. When we ask "where is Abiding Love?", when our neighbors ask where mercy is, let our actions be evidence of your presence through and within us. Let us be actors for grace, for goodness, for blessing those who hurt, and if we are in that number, to wash our grief with serving others hurting too. Out of disaster, let us rebuild with greater love and mercy than we have known before. May we be bearers of hope to all. Amen.

 

Prayer isn't all we can do. If you are moved to and able to give, here are some excellent organizations responding to devastation in various places around the world:

Red Cross: Tornadoes Across U.S. South

Unitarian Universalist Association & Unitarian Uuniversalist Service Committee Appeal for Japan

Medecins San Frontieres & Côte d’Ivoire

Thank you for being a person who cares enough to stop and pray and offer mercy and love!

 

 

Practices of Love

How well are you practicing love? Loving God? Loving your self? Loving your neighbor? What about loving your enemy? A new book sharing life stories of loving through promise and challenge, ideals and reality will be released from Civitas Press on Sunday, May 1: The Practices of Love.

 

I’ve struggled personally with all those practices, and I’m looking forward to reading the whole book. Personally, I wrote for the section on loving your enemy. I’ve been the enemy and I’ve had enemies and I’ve learned a lot about loving into difference and fear as a matter of faith from every encounter in both roles.  I was honored and delighted to be included in the collection and joining the company of so many great authors, including another Unitarian Universalist Christian, Anna Snoeyenbos.

 

Tuning into the news or traveling around the streets of my community, it seems to me like the world could use a lot more love. How will you practice living into love today?

 

Easter: Love Stronger Than Death

Love is more powerful than death. Compassion is more powerful than oppression. Justice is always in progress. Peacebuilding does not end. The work of ecological restoration and wholeness does not end. And we’re going to be terrified and angry and fail and fight and betray one another along the way. But our calling is stronger than that, more persistent, passing from heart to heart and generation to generation. Love is more powerful than death.

 

That’s what Easter means to me. Easter is an annual reminder, because someone somewhere in our communities, often enough me, needs reminding that no matter what horrors and trials and difficulties we endure, our calling continues. Jesus’ community awakens to that fearful reality when they meet the empty tomb, when they are tearfully afraid of what that emptiness means, when they meet visions, when they don’t believe each other. Their calling continues.

 

The work doesn’t end because one of us does. The ways we affect one another and this world doesn’t end because one of us dies, even when one of us might seem like the ultimate hope for us.

 

We carry on, because there is still work to do, because we don’t undo oppression in a single day, even if we do take control of governments. We carry on, because we don’t undo ecological ruin in a single year, even if we try really hard every day. We carry on, because the legacies of genocides and wars affect generations. We carry on, because new pain happens and old pain still needs healing.

 

We carry on, because we know and believe in the possibilities of love, in the work of building peace, in the way of making true justice with mercy. We carry on, because it is what the people who inspire us, the people who have loved us best, the people who have cared for the world in amazing sacrificial ways would do. We carry on, because that’s how we come more and more into a place of hope, each and every day. We carry on because of them, because of us, because of the ones not here yet.

 

No one left behind or forgotten: that is the message of Universalism. Love persists, no matter what: that’s the message of Easter. Our calling remains to us, the ones whose hearts still beat. And even after those hearts still beat, what will carry on best for the people who carry on after us will be how well we loved, how we answered this larger calling of compassion.

 

Today, on Easter, we rejoice in the truth of our journeys: what we do matters, the choices we make matter, not just now, but for the long haul. Shall we choose love? Shall we carry on for compassion? Journey with justice? Practice the way of peace? Restore ecological health?

 

Today, on Easter, we retell and remember one of the great stories of love more powerful than death. We recall each other and ourselves to the work yet to be done. And we cheer each other along this way of peace, justice, ecology and compassion. We live into that greater love, and we show it stronger than death.