Prayers for Our Being Blessing in 2021
In understandably seeking a greater sense of peace in this year, many of us are asking that the human concept of time be kind to us.
This unfortunately deflects from the reality that humanity is our greatest harm to ourselves.
It is humanity who must agree to heal and change as we are called and able in this next year—not the simple passage of time.
Beloveds who believe in genuine healing and transformation, we offer this meditation prayer for us to better live as blessing in 2021, rather than to seek blessing that is already all around us.
We best receive blessing by learning to live it ourselves.
We are invited to use this regularly, and pray a part or the whole—whatever suits our soul in each encounter.
photo of beautifully glowing candles in dim lighting by Marcus Spiske
We’re prayerful that we don’t make our celebration how many people survived what so many need not have to suffer in the first place.
We’re prayerful that we stop confusing how we personally want things to work with how they actually do—
to remember that we’re human beings and fellow creation, and in control of no laws of nature, or one another.
We’re prayerful to be mindful going forward as to how we proactively care and love with one another
to lay the groundwork for long-term care and recovery, and to prevent the harm and death we’re lovingly able.
We’re prayerful to not praise one another’s strength and “heroism,” while being part of the one the reason that one another must be strong and heroic.
We’re prayerful to better become carers, and not to rely on one another to do our caring for us.
We’re prayerful that we don’t pat ourselves on the back for showing up for the march or the hashtag, while still refusing to show up for the daily work.
We’re prayerful that everyone who is taking their first steps commits the courage and bravery to discover and take our next. And our next. And our next.
We’re prayerful to stop conflating invitation to the journey—the recognition that “we have work to do”— with the journey itself.
We are prayerful to acknowledge that while the distance of the journey may seem great, our belief and commitment with true love, peace, and justice are greater.
We’re prayerful to stop worrying as much about what one another is doing that we can’t control (and so are our molars).
We’re prayerful to receive who and where we are called to care and exhibit concern, and to do so faithfully.
We’re prayerful to bless one another to do the best that we know and are able to care for ourselves and with one another, and to continue to learn to deepen in compassion and love.
We’re prayerful to stop focusing so much on all of the harm and carelessness available for witness—though conveniently, we rarely see our own.
We’re prayerful to focus more on “looking to the helpers,”—the people who love deeply while they do our truth-telling, healing, and strengthening work—and to learn to better become one. To become one.
We are prayerful to be genuine in how we are impacted by what’s happening around us—to be honest about our loss, our grief, our hurt.
We are prayerful to remember that we are not the only ones experiencing loss, grief, and hurt.
We are prayerful to be with and encourage one another in believing that hurt does not inherently mean abandonment, devastation, or the end.
We are prayerful to be with and encourage one another in believing:
Even when hurt is signaling abandonment or devastation, that we are alive to feel the pain means…it is not the end.
We are prayerful to recognize that someone else somewhere else may have gone through this, and
if we look and receive beyond ourselves, we can learn from and with them how to heal, rather than dwell in agony or denial. The agony of denial.
We are prayerful to learn to recognize what we do have, and what we are receiving—
and how we can be blessed and be blessing with one another even in our pain.
We are prayerful to stop believing that we are the only ones who see, and become angry and overwhelmed in “going it alone.”
We are prayerful to see those who have entered in before us, and are awaiting our comraderie, companionship, and support.
We are prayerful to learn with them, to learn from them, and to rise and also live our place as Elder.
We are prayerful to live example for those entering in behind and seeking us as they begin their journey.
We are prayerful to be prayerful. To not use God’s name in vain, but to invoke Their Spirit—
to not just agree,
but also believe and live that They are acting, inspiring, and working to facilitate us all in love,
even as we too often insist upon harm, enmity, and evil.
We are prayerful to consistently live as someone through whom They work.
To be the hands and feet of comforting love in lament, loving comfort in grief, and merciful justice in harm.
To continually turn ourselves away from causing one another to lament, grieve, or experience the pain of injustice, and back into the heart and being of God.
We are prayerful to know, believe, and live that, while nothing that we do is everything,
everything we are called to do is something powerful with one another in God.
We are prayerful to remain prayerful, to remain hopeful,
to continue to live and do what we can in joy and love—
to not allow the circumstances to demoralize us, or dictate to us how to be.
We are prayerful to be and become the kind, loving persons we believe ourselves to be.
Amen and axè.
photo by binti malu of a precious child to whom we owe the world fervently praying.