I am pulled in two directions when I see someone suffering. My empathy wants to rush in and render aid. My fear wants to close its eyes and back away; the pain of another might jostle my own piercing grief, held so carefully in check. I usually manage my grief in spoonfuls until something cracks the cup and my weeping tumbles out. The footage I see of a flooded city, or a bombed-out building, or the bodies of children, remind me there is no safe refuge from loss.
Like it or not, the world’s pain is my pain. We all participate in grief, and we are all deathly afraid of it. We think we can walk around it, sizing it up until we are ready, and yet, when we are honest, we know there is no alternative but to walk straight through and feel the heat of it. To refuse to feel withers our humanity, which is far worse. So I take it in, by the spoon or by the bucket, opening as best I can. My wisdom knows that grief and pain can move through me if I let it, more like a river than a cup. To hold it does no good. And though some wounds never close completely, the taking in and moving through allow healing to begin.
Something else happens, too, when I open – in my communion with all who suffer (which is everyone), I remember we also participate in gladness. I have my health, a mind that still serves me well, friends and family who care about me, a dear beloved who meets the vagaries of each day at my side. I am grateful for this life, with all its griefs and gifts.
Why a prayer, then? Do I need to pray in order to meet life as it is, to leave my cup and enter the river? For me, prayer is my reflection on our common mission, this bizarre experiment of consciousness in human form, testing whether we can mature through our mistakes and replace petty self-interest with mutual care and concern, and so find our way home. Søren Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” That fits. In the praying, I voice my longings and my questions; in the listening, I hear something in my voice that changes how I answer.
Prayer for 2026
Spirit, I invite you here. Be with me now.
Let me open to you and feel the power of your presence.
I see a world on fire and it frightens me. I want to set it right,
but my efforts seem so small, the momentum against us so great.
Remind me that these times cannot last because nothing does,
that life is always nudging to the good.
Let this year be one of new beginnings, a return to things that matter, to what is essential. Help me know that if changes are to come, I must be the process and the instrument of change.
Let this be a year of clearing away. Reveal the obstacles in me that no longer serve; let me drop the stories I have recited to myself about myself, the old patterns that were molded long ago and now constrain me. Help me realize that I can live from my essence and know this is enough.
Let this be a year of planting seeds. Help me understand how the birth of change starts underground, unseen, blooming in its own time. Give me the patience to keep walking, even when things look barren at the surface.
Let this be a year of finding and uniting. Help me see that I am not alone, that although my candle is small, its light will gather others who are also clearing, planting, changing, growing.
Help me remember that hope does not require knowing;
that when I am still, I can feel the currents working underneath,
and sensing their direction, move with what is wanting to emerge.
And most of all, help me keep faith. Not a faith that evil will end – for evil is the forgetting of love, and there will always be forgetting – but faith that we can allow the old to die, in me and in the world, so both can start anew.
In service to our common good,
In surrender to what comes,
By the grace of all that is,
Amen
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
