Prayer from the Belly

O LORD my God, creator of heaven and earth, speak tenderly to my troubled soul ... remind me of those who've gone before and bore the burdens of care ... and remind me, as well, of those who'll be here long after I'm gone, to bear the light of hope.

Though there may well come a time, O God, when humanity has run its course, when the experiment of melding dirt and divinity will have proved, once and for all, whether it was worth it or not.

Perhaps the flood should've done it, but you still had faith in the dream ... that flesh and spirit could work ... and to give us some image of that, you sent your divine love to take up the mantle of flesh, to be incarnate, showing up in a wee little cradle in a wee little town, in an outta the way place that just happened to be an intersection of the world ... to show that it was possible, that it was necessary.

And what did we do, dear God?

We nailed it to a cross.

And we'd do again.

And we do.

We nail one another to crosses of pain and sorrow, with our hammers and nails, our privilege and power ... humanity has its ways, O God, and mostly the ways of death. We know so well how to dispatch one another, and never shed a tear, or if a tear, then one of feigned sorrow, along with our thoughts and prayers.

Yet brightness shines in brilliant moments of peace and hope.

All around the world, women and men who call out for something more than destruction and death.

Who bear in their flesh the signs of the Spirit.

I pray, O God, for those who embody the love of Christ.

Whatever the Christ may be.

Wherever the energy of spirit and bone merge into something full of life, life-giving, life-sustaining, life-generating.

In this hour of crisis, I pray.

I weep.

I fret, and I fuss.

I'm weary to the bone, and in my spirit, I tremble.

I long for something more than belly of the whale.