2023-01-04 A Prayer: Our Own Strength
O Lord, we can hurt. With loving gestures we can hurt, because we don’t know our own strength. Somehow each is given their homely zone and their strong zone; help us to respect where we are near to someone’s soul and their living person, not to summon the hounds nor to do things that might be insensitive; we vibe off of each other, and casual joking or dismissal or judging of others, can be hurtful, even if it wasn’t our intention. See us pugnacious and jumpy, eager and assertive, but let us adjust the temperature for those we don’t yet know.
Thank You for art and for humor; grant us gratitude that what is up on display is not literal nor cause to make false conclusions, insinuations; see us safely through, not to make simple prophetic jokes or insights into anything tangible or accusatory in any material sense. Help us not to take offense, nor to up the ante in any jumpy way, when only jokes are the crime. Grant us to let the blows glance off us, as we remember an ideal audience—not, perhaps, these wild animals—an audience of the meek and the unproud.
We believe Your prophecies will take on living form; Your Word is living and active; Your person is truly offended against and Your body is crucified; all this so that we can see in bright lights agents of Your same Cross, as healing takes place, as You in Sonship form are crucified yet again, yet more art, more sympathetic humor, more levity, more insight into how we hurt each other, is on display. All that we chalk up to deeper residences than our own; to deeper future-orientation than the lives where we, in the light of day, return to, knowing one day it will be real, the poor fed and the living spirit of Man resurrected from dearth and despair.
We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.