Dona Nobis Pacem

This is going to be a blatantly religious post. I can't help it. I tend to avoid the topic of religion because I feel that it divides us more than it unites us, but the subject of peace is a subject of the heart and not the mind. It's a seeming impossibility that we have to believe in and strive for because if we did not we could not be quite as human as we are.

So... I have a prayer for you. It was given to me during one of my RCIA classes. RCIA is the Right of Christian Initiation (it seems like the A ought to stand for something so I may have this wrong). That's the class I had to take to become Catholic. Unlike other Christian faiths, the Catholics seem to believe that religion is a buyers market and they make a person jump through all sorts of hoops before she is allowed to claim fellowship. Sometimes I think they'll throw me out one of these days when they learn how radical I really am.

Before I type in this very long prayer I want to point out something about the word vengeance. That was what almost led me to throw this little card away before I read it the first time. It says here, "...God who has told us 'vengeance is mine'...". Nobody likes to think of a vengeful God but before I was Christian I was Buddhist and what occurred to me and caused me to keep this little card was that the vengeance of God and Karma are the same thing. Us human beings have no business dealing out vengeance in our personal lives. That's the job of God, The Universe, The Great Spirit, or whatever you call it.

I keep this prayer pinned above a little table beside my my bed. The table has my candles and incense on it and I light them and pray and meditate before I go to sleep. From time to time I take this prayer down and read it.

Prayer for World Peace

by Joan D. Chittister, OSB

Great God, who has told us

"Vengeance is mine,"

save us from ourselves,

save us from the vengeance in our hearts

and the acid in our souls.

Save us from our desire to hurt as we have been hurt,

to punish as we have been punished,

to terrorize as we have been terrorized.

Give us the strength it takes

to listen rather than judge,

to trust rather than to fear,

to try again

to make peace even when peace eludes us.

We ask, O God, for the grace

to be our best selves.

We ask for the vision

to be builders or the human community

rather than its destroyers.

We ask for the humility as a people

to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.

We ask for the love it takes

to bequeath to the children of the world to become

more than the failures of our own making.

We ask for the heart it takes

to care for all the peoples

of Afghanistan and Iraq, of Palestine and Israel

as well as for ourselves.

Give us the depth of soul, O God,

to constrain our might,

to resist the temptation of power,

to refuse to attack the attackable,

to understand

that vengeance begets violence,

and to bring peace- not war -wherever we go.

For you, O God, have been merciful to us.

For you, O God, have been patient with us.

For you, O God, have been gracious to us.

And so may we be merciful

and patient

and gracious

and trusting

with these others whom you also love.

This we ask through Jesus,

the one without vengeance in his heart.

This we ask forever and ever. Amen.