Some Lines on the Present Situation

Always, I want to run and hide,

To cover my eyes and my ears

To disengage

From the hopeless task of rebuilding the world in Love.

This is no time for silence

No time for averted eyes, walking past on the other side,

Caught in the moral vice, we must stand for truth.

And we must kneel and pray.

We must pray for our brothers

And sisters

Churned in the chaos of the times,

We must pray for them all,

For those who care, and those who can care no more,

And those who have never cared.

Seared to the heart by the flame of their own anger,

Calcified by fear,

Consumed, by themselves till nothing remains but pain,

We pray for them.

We pray for those who have never known justice,

The squeezed and the crushed, left bleeding by the side,

And no one stops to help,

The forgotten ones, embarrassing by existence,

Reminding us how shaky are our thrones.

We pray for them.

We pray for those whose skin or sex is wrong,

Forever despised for being who they are:

Broken like us, yet in God’s image made.

We pray for them.

We pray for those we will never understand,

Whose souls are set on an alien trajectory,

Whose words and actions confuse us,

Whose intentions make no sense.

We pray for them.

We pray for those who are vulnerable,

Who watch each story on the news

As the prey watches the predator

Hoping to stay unexposed.

We pray for them.

We pray for ourselves, that we will find fidelity

In a world that is wildly unfaithful,

That we will find that holy ground

Where Truth and Love are joined

And stand there while the waves of chaos swirl;

That we will find our voices

And speak out holy words,

Silencing our own fear to speak

The words that heal the world.

We pray, we pray …

And may God have mercy on us all.