Equality through Equanimity
Prayers to Welcome the New Year
Sujata Naidu and Friends
December 31, 2007
A Vision of Hope
We pray that someday an arrow will be broken,
not in something or someone, but by each of humankind,
to indicate peace, not violence.
Someday, oneness with creation,
rather than domination over creation,
will be the goal to be respected.
Someday fearlessness to love and make a difference
will be experienced by all people.
Then the eagle will carry our prayer for peace and love,
and the people of the red, white, yellow, brown and black communities
can sit in the same circle together to communicate in love
and experience the presence of the Great Mystery in their midst.
Someday can be today for you and me. Amen.
Wanda Lawrence, Chippewa, 20th century
Prayer for All Women
ALL: Invisible God, we pray for all the invisible women of the world, for those
whose wise voices are missing from the ranks of political power, for those who
are ignored by their churches, governments, commerce, for those treated as
non-persons in their own homes. Change the hearts of those who teach and lead
our nations, so that the gifts of women to the world may be seen, recognized and
valued.
BK: Let us now remember aloud one woman whose work has gone unnoted and pray May
God cure our blindness.
[each person names one woman, and we all repeat the prayer May God cure our
blindness.]
ALL: Raise up every girl-child born a sense of her God-given responsibility to
be all that creation has enabled her to be. Raise up in us the will to repent
our sexism so that we may all become more whole. Fill us with your fire, to
speak our truths and thus heal the world. Amen.
Anonymous
Prayer to the Creator of Life
Creator of the East Wind: we give you thanks. In you is each day’s beginning,
the spring of our lives, when we plant for our tomorrows. In you are our dreams
for ourselves, our families and communities, and our sacred earth. In you are
the gifts of early flowers. In you are children are born.
Creator of the South Wind: we give you thanks. In you are the summers of our
lives, the long days of sunlight, and work where we build our homes and our
gardens, where we teach our children what they must know to grow strong and
secure. In you are gifts of warmth and giving, of growing into wholeness.
Creator of the West Wind: we give you thanks. In you are the days of harvest
and the peace of coming home after life’s journeys. In you are the lessons we
have learned, put together with all the gifts of your people, the closing of
days and the coming of night. In you are the glories of sunset and the songs
of evening around the fire that is our heart and our life.
Creator of the North Wind: we give you thanks. In you are the days of winter,
of closing down and coming into our homes, of snow that covers the earth with
sleep. In your keeping are all those who have gone before us, who wait for us
on the road ahead, who teach us through our dreams and visions. In you is our
end, our peace, our eternity.
Creator of the earth, our home: we give you thanks. From your heart comes that
which feeds your people, the gifts of plant and animals, our brothers and
sisters, who walk with us in this journey toward you. By your abundant life, we
are fed; by the living water that springs from deep within your being we drink.
Creator of the sky, the sun and moon of day and night, the stars that guide us
in darkness: we give you thanks. Beneath the broad blanket of your presence we
measure our days and our years. By the warmth of your sun we grow into our
promise and vision; by the darkness at day’s end we rest securely.
Creator of life, we give you thanks: you give us the gift of your people, our
families both of birth and of choice, human love that secures the edges of
life’s blanket, human hands to hold and to teach us, human voices to join ours
in prayer and song. In all life, both here and within your sacred eternal
homeland, we are held in your hands.
Abenaki Mothers’ Blessing (nation living in southern Quebec and northern Vermont)
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