“For we are God’s handiwork [trans. poiema, poem],
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God has prepared in advance for us to do.”
– New International Version
“We are God’s works of art, created in Christ Jesus
to live the good life as from the beginning he meant us to live.”
– The Jerusalem Bible
“For we are the product of God’s hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives,
created in the Anointed, Jesus,
to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago.”
– The Voice
Poet God,
We are your Poem. What a gift that is. For a poem can hold everything: contradictions, unanswered questions, raw wounds and beautiful scars—all with spaciousness.
When a poet begins a poem they do not know what the end will be, rather they follow each image given, each metaphor and line trusting the leap, trusting what flows from the pen, marveling at what emerges.
I picture you marveling, Poet God, observing with curiosity what has flowed after you first put your pen to paper entrusting us with the unfolding Poem of our lives.
You cry with us, your tears, salt-roses blooming on the page of the collective Poem, because the Poem writes the bare truth of the pain.
We know you are with us, reading every agony.
May the people of Cuba, who have been experiencing some of the biggest anti-government protests in decades, feel Your presence with them in their exhaustion, rage and longing for the Poem of their lives transform to become one of freedom, equality, and economy of justice and enough for all.
May the people of Haiti feel your presence in their distress over the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. May the global community have wisdom in what help is truly needed. May the Poem become one of peace.
May the people of South Africa sense your steadying presence amidst violent deadly protests, riots and looting following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.
The Poem of planet Earth is hurting. We pray for the communities, human and non-human, that are intensely experiencing the way we have negatively impacted our home with our resource-affecting choices. In the Western United States as oppressive heat and fires rage on for a third week. In India where monsoon season lighting strikes, killed dozens and injured many this weekend. In the United States where Florida manatees are dying of starvation in record numbers due to polluted waters killing off their food source of seagrass.
May we feel your presence in our grief, in our longing, in our fear. You weep with us. We have the collective creativity to rewrite a way of living upon the Earth as healers. May we have the courage to live into the creativity you have given us, to make real the Poem we want to see. We give thanks for conservation efforts in Kazakhstan where there has been restoration of the population of the once critically endangered Saigia Antelope. We give thanks for the European Union’s sweeping raft of climate change proposals aimed at carbon neutrality by 2050.
All through the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen the disparity between nations and within nations in access to healthcare, we see so clearly which communities are most impacted and now who has access to the vaccine. We are not meant to live in a Poem that is so out of balance. We pray for vaccine access where needed, especially for the 11 eleven countries that only have 1% percent of the population vaccinated including; Chad, Burkina Faso and Papua New Guinea. We pray for places around the world experiencing second, third, fourth and fifth waves.
We pray for Iraq where a fire caused by faulty wiring on an oxygen tank in the COVID isolation ward killed 92 and injured many. In this anguish on top of anguish we do not have words, but know you are with us in our speechlessness.
We are daily invited to pick up the pen of our lives and co-create with You, Poet God. How do we live as the Poem we are created to be?
Maybe it looks a little like the thousands of entries submitted from around the world as people shared a photograph and some words about what item is giving them joy during the pandemic. From a foster dog in Mexico City, Mexico, a traditional cooking pot in Tokyo, Japan, to a morning light on the back porch in Brazil, and a weaving loom of an ER doctor in the United States. We write the Poem by living fully in love, in curiosity, in compassion, in connection, and in creativity allowing all that is to be felt, expressed and honored.
We thank you Poet God for writing us into being and continuing to co-create with us. May we see that we are given all we need in your Love for the composition of our lives.
Amen.
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