my offer for today’s multifaith prayer circle:

 

Grateful to be called into this circle, and to be a channel for these full moon in virgo prayers.

we pray that we are able to do many kinds of work right now, for Palestine, to transform the conditions of Palestine from occupation to equality, by transforming our own willingness to be complicit in genocide and injustice, knowing that if it is impossible in each of us it can become impossible in the world – this work can transform the world. 

we bless our organizing, legal, cultural, spiritual, personal and collective work. we bless our understanding that many kinds of pressure are needed to weaken forces as massive as superpower and empire and colonization. 

we pray that each of us sees ourselves as part of this movement for liberation with a front line that only we can work — we might need to free one family member from a worldview that accepts apartheid and genocide as necessary for someone’s safety. or we might have followers to guide, or an organization to lead, or a political stance to take, or funders to organize, or a legal path to uncover, or a song to write, or sing, or a soapbox from which to shout — may we all embody harriet tubman and lose no passengers, may we bring as many people to the freedom of justice and peace as we possibly can. 

we pray that we continue to escalate our actions every day until we end this reprehensible violence – that we continue to be creative and confrontational, brave and unwavering, and unified enough to have impact.

we pray that we continue to find every legal angle with which to break down the chokehold that the zionist worldview has on the humans who believe it is the only way to safety, who believe their fear of not belonging justifies apartheid and mass murder.

we pray that we can have more patience and space with each other, more space for different paths amongst people who are holding onto earth in all our ways. 

we pray that all of us who can pick up a shift of angel work for the souls we cannot save from death — that as we hear these stories, as we see these numbers, that we let our spirits go to be with each person, back through time, so that they are not alone.

i went to be with hind in that car full of death, i went to hold her and tell her she was loved, to be with her in her terror. i believe we can be with hind, with reem, with sidra. we can send our spirits to go be with the thousands of unnamed palestinians of all ages, alone in the rubble, alone on the street, those unreachable because of snipers, those left alone in incubators. we must go back and comfort them in these wrongful deaths. 

and we pray that our beloved ancestors come to take the hand of each new spirit in the realm of all spirit, with balm and comfort, with clearing and pure love. we thank our ancestors for all they are doing in collaboration and guidance for us. we love you all.

and we know that for each soul we lose in palestine, hundreds are awakening to the true plight of the palestinians and the true dangers of a project like israel, and like the u.s. we pray that our decisionmakers awaken to know that this is an unacceptable cost and we refuse to continue to pay it. 

we pray that we uncouple violent colonization from democracy, that we mend with both reparations and the breaking of patterns of harm. i pray that we find ways into the future that can offer democratic and socialist practices of being on earth together, that are decolonizing, that are indigenous-led, and that honor all who most deeply love and care for the earth. 

we pray that this struggle for palestinian liberation guides each of us to examine the contradictions in our own lives, and that we become a people committed to land and justice for all. we know that holy holy holy is the complexity — i pray that i, a descendant of enslaved peoples and slavemasters, stolen away to a stolen land, like so many other black and indigenous people here, can find the repair within my own lineage as we find the repair in all our relations. 

we pray that our moves against genocide in this moment lead to liberation and justice in the congo, the sudan, myanmar, for the armenian people, for all who suffer the great injustice that comes from tyranny and unchecked power.

and, not everyone can or will pray this next part with me, but i have been instructed to pray it and invite those who can to hold it with me, to remember that what we are fighting to stop lives in each of us, to pray in ways that heal the shadow in each of us:

we pray for total healing in the traumatized places in which hate festers. we pray for healing of the zionist heart, the islamaphobic heart, the antisemitic heart, the racist heart, the white supremacist heart, the colonizer heart, the capitalist heart, the complicit heart — we feel and smell and see the rotting wounds in these hearts spreading throughout the world, swallowing us into war and self extermination, keeping us from the unifying work of survival. 

we pour into these wounds a river of golden light, a river of the abundant love coursing through the universe. there is enough for you, for you, for you — easily.

i am sorry for everything that hurt you and your ancestors, i am sorry you were misled, i am sorry for your indoctrination, i am sorry you have been made into a weapon, i am sorry are so full of hatred, i am so sorry we have let this be the way for so many for so long. but you can return still, to your humanity, we can always return to our heartful humanity. you can come home to us. there is more than enough of everything in the world for you, for me, for each of us. come back home to the divine love that you long for, please, the safety you seek is here with us, come back home. 

and we pray for our movements and communities to stay open enough to grow, to include and engage and reorient and weave in those of us in the guiltiest nations who are just now awakening and resisting and changing and are late but we are open, we have room. 

we pray we understand that this is not a time for u.s. or israeli leadership, but u.s. and israeli humility and apology and learning and changing and accountability and relinquishing violent power and breaking the patterns that keep us bound to disaster. we pray we stay humble and let ourselves be led home to the one, the whole, the species, the interdependence, the earth. 

we transform ourselves to liberate and transform palestine, yes, and to liberate ourselves.

 

Lean on me

When you’re not strong 

And i’ll be your friend 

I’ll help you carry on

 

For it won’t be long

Till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on

 

Please swallow your pride

If I have things you need to borrow

For no one can fill

Those of your needs that you won’t let show

(bill withers, lean on me)