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As a turbulent storm passes over our desert this early evening, we pray for the life or our world: especially with the people of Nice, France and all the places marked by violence. We pray the Kingdom of God will break like a calm over the restless sea:
“As long as one person on this earth suffers, you suffer too. It must be so or there is no validity to living in a place like this. A person does not go to a monastery to escape from the suffering of the world. We enter a monastery [or spiritual life] to discover that our own suffering is not (strictly speaking) our own. It does not belong to us. Rather, our individual suffering, is the suffering of the whole human family manifesting itself in and as our experience of it.” (Thomas Merton in a conversation with James Finley)
From The Center for Action and Contemplation: Today we mourn with Dallas, Falcon Heights, and Baton Rouge. Every life lost is a life created in the image of God and deeply loved by our Creator.
We pray for the safety of every police officer who seeks to serve and protect our communities. We pray for justice for any person who has ever been hurt or harmed unfairly by those who were meant to serve and protect.
And we pray for peace so that no man, woman or child, regardless of skin color or whether or not they wear a badge, will ever have to live in fear.
As the sun set over my world early this evening, I watched the shadows grow long and dissipate into night. My thoughts turned toward the families in Bangladesh and Baghdad: victims of terrorism. I also thought of the families in Oaxaca, Mexico: victims of their own government. As that stillness settles over the landscape and the summer heat begins to lift just a bit, I feel helpless in the face of the chaos and homicidal madness of our world. In my prayer, I am with the victims of violence in this moment; I am them. I pray for comfort to come as a miracle for those who mourn. I pray for the root causes of terrorism to become uprooted. I pray for “swords to be beaten into plowshares.” What else can I do in this moment? In this very moment when the cooing of the desert doves begins to quiet and they settle down with their young ones for the night.
Thank you, Elie Wiesel, for your courage, compassion, and voice of justice.
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