Prayer

You can not reach all suffering humanity all the time.

You can hold all souls as whole in your heart, not just their horrors and losses.

This is the stronger prayer:

Wholeness despite holes through and through.

Hold all the injured as whole,

and on the torn red beribboned slingshot

of your heart...

aim, draw back hard, harder

and release all your holiest and  most healing thoughts 

to fly across all divides,

to fly across all big waters,

to vault across all insanities...

Bid the holy to fly - and to land at this moment

in exactly the places most needed.

Souls sense being fiercely prayed for,

on, over, with, daily.

Knowing that someone

who knows you not

is nonetheless praying,

pouring will and strength into you, 

for you, into and for those you pray for:

This is inestimable medicine for the soul.

Continue then and tend

to the poor in spirit,

the poor in soul,

the poor in health,

the poor in want,

right before you:

the ailing kin, the street man,

the road mother, the broken friend,

the innocent child, the torn,

the wondering, the wandering.

I tell you,

those who would care across the ocean only,

and not care for those they can wash

who are standing right before them,

are not fully caring yet.

I know you understand this:

That we desperately

want all humanity to not hurt...

and that this is one of the worthiest

prayers we know.

Thus, we bend to tend, 

in whatever ways we are called,

to those within our reach - 

wherever that reach reaches...

for there are times

when Creator has no hands,

only ours...

Thus, in this tending, we keep the greatest

blood contract with Creator,

with our Holy Mother, 

our souls have ever signed...

So may it be for thee

so may it be for me

And so may it be for us all.

Aymen

Aymen

Aymen

And with oceanic love...

Excerpt from: Untie the Strong Woman - "Remembering Our Billions" - by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Painting: "Ukrainian Praying Woman" by Fedir Krychevsky

The Child-Angel

They clamour and fight, they doubt and despair, they know no end to their wrangling.

Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child, unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.

They are cruel in their greed and their envy, their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood.

Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child, and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.

Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the meaning of all things; let them love you and thus love each other.

Come and take your seat in the bosom of the limitless, my child. At sunrise open and raise your heart like a blossoming flower, and at sunset bend your head and in silence complete the worship of the day.

Rabindranath Tagore

Art: "Hope" by J. Kirk Richards