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Images
from Boston September 11, 2002
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here to share in images from the UUA chapel service
and the Massachusetts State House (the UUA's next door
neighbor) ceremony. |
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Pastoral Prayer, One Year Later
from the Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association
Watch
Rev. Sinkford's prayer on RealVideo
(RealVideo instructions)
We encourage your congregation to incorporate the
following into its ingathering Sunday worship service, drawing strength
from the fact that Unitarian Universalists all over the world will
be united as a people at this time.
Please enter the space of silence and honesty, which is known by
many names.
Let us pray.*
Gracious spirit of creation, dear God.
A new church year begins. Life goes on.
Babies are born and we dedicate ourselves to them. People die and
we memorialize their lives, laughing and crying as we grieve our
loss. Marriages and partnerships are formed and blessed. Triumphs
and tragedies enter our sanctuaries with us as we gather.
Life goes on. And our ministry together tries to hold it all: the
joys and the sorrows, the pleasure and the pain, the fullness and
the emptiness. All enter here with us. Our coming together bears
witness to the power of love, and the possibility of community.
For what should we pray?
Twelve months ago, our illusions of security, our sense of safety
were shattered. How many times have we heard and said: "Since
September 11th…," as if by saying those words, we could
somehow control the reality of grief, loss, anger and fear; the
reality that there are those in our increasingly divided world who
see us differently from the way we see ourselves. We say those words-
"since September 11th"- as if we could gain dominion over
their meaning. Yet as we have grieved and feared, raged and anguished
through this last year, life has gone on.
For what should we pray, then, one year later?
Should we pray for peace?
Peace in our lives and peace in our world? Should we pray for an
end to grief, freedom from fear, an end to violence? But is it not
our own hands that must make it so?
Yes; despite our failures to achieve peace in our own hearts, still
we pray for peace. We pray for an end to grief for those who lost
loved ones on September 11th and since September 11th, for those
working in rescue and recovery efforts and for those members of
our nation's armed services who stand in harm's way. And we pray
for those, no less bereft, who have endured losses unrelated to
September 11th that have been overshadowed by that communal tragedy.
Should we pray for safety?
A sense of security, confidence, trust that the universe welcomes
our presence and offers a home for our spirit? But at whose expense
are we willing to seek safety for ourselves?
Yes, we pray for safety, but we also pray for those profiled, jailed
and deported since September 11th, and ask forgiveness from those
whose safety has been sacrificed in our attempt to guarantee our
own.
Should we pray for wholeness?
A world in which Muslim and Jew can live together, a world in which
gay and straight, men and women, Black and white and brown and red
and yellow encounter one another not in fear but in thanks? But
can we ourselves-do we-live with such integrity?
Yes, we pray for wholeness, in our world and in our own lives.
Should we pray for our nation?
Can we learn to define our national interest in a way that acknowledges
we share a single destiny with all our neighbors on this small blue
planet? Can our policies recognize at what cost in human suffering
American privilege has been purchased?
Yes, we pray for our nation.
We pray for all these things. And, gracious spirit, we pray for
ourselves. It is so hard to trust. Everywhere we look, reality contradicts
our yearning to hope. It seems that we must walk alone, even through
the valley of the shadow of death. We pray for the willingness to
walk with one another, for we know we will need to walk together
if we are ever to make justice and peace real.
For there are no hands on earth but ours. And our hands seem so
few and our abilities so small in the face of such great need for
healing.
There are no hands on earth but ours. So we pray for the strength
to try. We know how real the brokenness of this world is, but we
will not give brokenness the last word.
So we pray for an end to grief, for peace, and safety. We pray
for our nation. And we pray for ourselves, that we might feel the
spirit of life and the stirrings of compassion. Help us resist both
fear and complacency. Help us give life the shape of justice. Help
us know that we can collude with love. Help us live as if wholeness
can happen, and by our living, help us to make it so.
Amen.
*If this prayer is not being used
in a worship service, these two lines may be omitted.
The Rev. Kendyl Gibbons has adapted Rev. Sinkford's prayer
for a Humanist context. It may be used as a responsive reading
or meditation. Click here for the Humanist
version of "One Year Later".
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