This is the text of a brief service hastily organized by the chaplaincy department at Alta Bates Medical Center (where I work) on the National Day of Prayer, 9/14/01.
PRAYER FOR AMERICA
Source of Life,
We join in prayer to celebrate this nation.
We give thanks in our hearts for this country.
We give thanks for and bless the souls of those who have nurtured this land.
We ask that Your spirit now fill our hearts with righteousness.
May we play our parts in the healing and the furtherance of our country.
May we be cleansed of all destructive thoughts.
May judgment of others, bigotry, racism, and intolerance be washed clean from our hearts.
May our minds be filled with thoughts of unconditional love and acceptance of all people.
May the greatness and the beauty of this land burst forth once more in the hearts of its people.
May we live in honesty and integrity and excellence with our neighbors.
May this country become a light unto the nations of hope and goodness and peace and freedom.
May violence and darkness be cast out of our midst.
May hatred no longer find fertile ground in which to grow here.
May all of us feel the spirit of grace upon us.
Re-ignite the spirit of truth in our hearts.
May our nation be bound together in healing from shore to shore.
May we be repaired.
May we be forgiven.
May our children be blessed.
May we be renewed.
Amen.
PRAYER FOR THE WORLD
Source of Life,
We pray for this our world.
We ask that the walls that separate us be dissolved.
Use us to create a new world on earth.
Now, in this moment we ask for new light.
Illumine our minds.
Use us as never before, as part of a great and mighty plan for the healing of this world.
Remove from our hearts the illusion that we are separate.
May every nation and every people and every color and every religion find at last the one heartbeat we share.
May we not hold on to yesterday.
May we not obscure the vision of tomorrow.
Flow through us, work through us, that in our lives, we might see the illuminated world.
May we help to sustain this world on earth, dear God, for ourselves and for others.
So may it be.
So may it be.
We thank you, Lord.
A MEDITATION FOR MOURNING
We rise now to proclaim our faith in the One who calls us to choose life out of, and despite, our anguish and our pain.
Look around us, search above us, below, behind. We stand in a great web of being joined together. Let us praise, let us love the life we are lent passing through our own bodies, let's say amen.
Time flows through us like water.
The past and the dead speak through us.
We breathe out our children's children, blessing.
Blessed is the earth from which we grow,
blessed the life we are lent,
blessed the ones who teach us,
blessed the ones who teach,
blessed is the word that cannot say the glory
that shines through us and remains to shine
flowing past distant suns on the way to forever.
Let's say amen.
Blessed is the light, blessed is the darkness,
but blessed above alleles is peace
which bears the fruits of knowledge
on strong branches, let's say amen.
Peace that bears joy into the world,
peace that enables love, peace everywhere
blessed and holy is peace, let's say amen.
(this section adapted from Marge Piercy)