The Wild Reed: Prayer of the Week

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Prayer of the Week

. . . You invite us to be wholeness,
to be co-creators along Love's way.
You hear the cries of the afflicted,
and answer their prayer.

. . . Let all nations declare the beauty
of your Holy Names
and gather together in peace
to honor the Creator of All.

– Excerpted from Psalm 102
as translated by Nan C. Merrill
in Psalms for Praying:
An Invitation to Wholeness

The words of Psalm 102 have been in my heart lately as, once again, I find myself feeling despondent and overwhelmed by the terrible acts of violence we're witnessing in our world. In particular, I'm mindful this evening of the recent massacre of 49 Muslims worshipers by a white supremacist at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Desiring to respond in a prayerful and meaningful way to this and other situations of violence, upheaval, and injustice in the world, I found myself drawn to the Prayer Tree (above and right), where I spent time earlier today in quiet reflection and prayer.

Then later, back at my home, I revisited "Unfolding at Every Moment," one of the "prayers of questioning" in William Cleary's book Prayers to An Evolutionary God. It's a prayer I've shared previously at The Wild Reed. I share it again this evening, trusting that in doing so I am, in the words of Buffy Sainte-Marie, "planting good seeds" – thoughts, words, and/or actions grounded in hope, compassion, and openness to the transforming love of the Sacred Presence within and beyond all things. Furthermore, I trust that my sharing of this particular "good seed" will, in some mysterious way, help move humanity to embody the transformative qualities of hope, compassion and openness to the Sacred.

Holy Spirit of Evolution,
creator of the cosmos and its wonders,
how shall we deal with the insidious evil
– epidemic in world cultures and societies –
of human egotism,
cruel in its delusional ignorance
and destructive of human life and its environments?

Egotism produces war, crime, cruelty,
disappointment, isolation,
impoverishment, ignorance, illusion:
we are all too familiar with these.

In the end, along with all spiritualities of the world,
we must trust you, Silent Mystery,
and your evolutionary plan for us
unfolding at every moment.

We will come together in our pain,
to pool our wisdom and our energies of hope,
convinced that in the end, the very end,
all shall somehow be well.

May it be so.

I'll close by sharing William Cleary's commentary on his prayer "Unfolding at Every Moment."

Where evil comes from – with all its resulting failure and heartbreak – is not something we can understand. Some of it arises from human choice, some comes from the natural evolutionary way of things, but most seems beyond human comprehension. Our hearts cry out for reasons; we seldom find them. Some kind of surrender is called for in every spirituality. Theologian Diarmuid O'Murchú speaks of "God's mysterious but wise plan." There is certainly solid evidence of order beneath whatever chaos we may encounter. "God is subtle but not malicious," in Albert Einstein's memorable phrase. However, string theory and quantum mechanics now postulate a pervasive uncertainty beneath any orderliness. There seems to be mystery at every level of reality.

Ultimately, we have no choice but to trust in the world around us, in the marvelous processes of nature that we observe daily, in the forces of healing at work in our bodies and in the earth's apparent ability to govern itself and even heal its wounds, in the ingenuity and heroism of our own human companions. Mystics by and large have been optimists. They lead the way.