May 2022

Beloved community;

I am in shock, as I know you are about the mass shooting in Uvalde.  So close on the heels of the Buffalo shooting that we have not even begun to heal our wounds, we are once again torn open.

We are hurting.  We are in pain.   We want to understand.  We want reassurance that things will get better.  We want our wounds to heal and we want to feel better.  In our humble humanness, we ask for all these things.

And…we acknowledge that we may or may not get them, at least in our lifetimes.  What can be understood?

What is “better”?  How can we heal?  What can we DO?

We cry out in our frustration and anger and fear.  Still, we are faced with this awful evidence of human cruelty we do not understand.  From our human perspective, we cannot and will not know why or how a human being can do the things we see humans do.

So, we rely on what we do know.

We know:  There is a Power greater than any human force.  That Power is limitless, infinite, omnipresent.  That Power is at work in our world, even now, when we struggle to see evidence of it.  We call that Power Love.

We invoke the God of Love—not just the word, but the vast, unknowable, actual Presence of Love. We hold the truth that Love, somehow, is here, even amongst the pain and anger and fear.

More, we know that love is in each of us, and so we call on it.  We pray—not to know the answers–but to be shown how to bring the love that we are into its full power.  We see a call for love and we respond with love, to the best of our ability.

Pray with me.

Dear God of Love;

 In our pain and confusion, we cry out to you today.  We ask that we may be filled with Love, that we may remember Love, that we may embrace every ounce of Love available to us, and that we may in turn use that Love for good in the world. 

We come to you in unutterable sadness as we grieve today with ALL who are in pain.  May we acknowledge that pain as our own, as we are all One in truth.  May we hold ourselves and one another with care and gentleness.  May we turn to the Source of Love as our only solace and guide as we search for what to do, how to be, in a world filled with so much pain. 

As we try to understand that which cannot be understood, we turn to the Master Teachers who have taught us that anything that looks unlike love is a clear call for love, and we ask for strength to recognize that call and to heed it; to give our love into all situations and people; to give love to ourselves, to the helpless, to the hopeless, and to those whose ideas and values we do not agree with or understand.  May we never give in to hopelessness, but remember that in Love lies our strength, our salvation and that of the world. 

We thank you, Holy Spirit, for the blessings of Love, seen and unseen, now and ever.

And so it is.

Amen