All Life is Beautiful

Flanked by skyscrapers and marchers, and with rainbow flags waving, two people wear T-shirts saying "Por Nuestros Derechos" ("for our rights")

Spirit of Life, if you have a lesson for us, it is that all life is beautiful. We are each born into this world who we are, tall or short, with our own colour of skin, with our own sexual orientation. How can anyone ever tell us we are anything less that beautiful, anything less than whole?*

We pray that this nation and every nation will remember their duty to protect human life and particularly the lives of LGBTQ persons fleeing danger and death.

We pray for those who are forced from their homelands and their cultures and their religions not because of some fault or sin, but because of who they are; who are placed in grave danger simply for being the person they were born to be.

We pray also for the enlightening of governments here and around the world who, with casual disregard for life, would deport those refugees back to their unfeeling homelands and near certain death.

All human beings are born free—equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. May we all act towards one another in affirmation of our common humanity.

*This line is taken from Libby Roderick's hymn "How Could Anyone," #1053 in Singing the Journey.