2022-12-29 A Prayer: For Leaders

O Lord, so guard our spirits, in tune with every one of our neighbors, not dismissive or wishing ill on an adversary; see images of the Common Man, the Common Woman, and see them as whole beings, possessed of souls near to our own, near to our own soul for which we today pray:

Help us sense the vitality, the longing to Live, the expressiveness and the timidity, near to boon and near to caution. See that we never dismiss the individual, be they Common Man, Common Woman, or be they Exalted Man, Exalted Woman. So grant a Picture of Man, of Woman, to reign in our hearts: You, as the fundamental Person to whom our souls are knit and our minds parrying with, our hearts entertained, kept busy loving and busy serving.

Ameliorate differences; see that we never rule in brash ignorance, with a cudgel against the living souls of an adversary; grant leaders wisdom, for their decisions and prognoses do discern and form society. O God, what a mystery, how some model it after stuff trickling down, and others see Everyman in the drivers’ seat. Help us gesture in service to these leaders, who are creatures of Decisive Act, Formative Policy, Decree, Authority and Acquittal, to act in ways flourishing, value-added, effective, prudent, gainful.

So grant simply mournful but responsibly attuned perspective, to live in that Common Soul, never to dismiss insensitively the plight of anyone. Grant us peace only to worry about what comes our way, insofar as we are praying for Living Beings, always to respect the common person as a whole being, never wishing ill on our adversary. Help our leaders, who adjudicate disputes, not to rule too harshly, but to see opportunity for up-and-coming lives to flourish. Help us be such eagerness, in our day’s wild claims, in our spiritual assertiveness. Help us be useful. See that when asked for a hard day’s work, we indulge the request; but grant us to be recipients of copacetic decisions, of peaceful gardening work, of mutual thriving and lack of waste. For our leaders have such within their power. Theirs is the insanity of bad leadership, and the heaven-sent gift of good.

Where there are dueling authorities, grant plainness of flag borne to each and every one servant, and leaders kept in touch with what suffering accompanies an exalted dispute, though suffering beneath the radar of the greedy ones dueling. Grant simple study and taxonomy of the Common Spirit, the soul for whom we pray.

We pray all this in Your Name, Amen.