When It Feels as if the World Is Ending*
Holy Ground of Love,
the world so often feels as if it is ending
with news of wars raging, children dying,
fires burning, floods rising—
so much suffering, so much cruelty.
My heart feels like a tree rotting away,
my throat is full of gravel,
my gut a boulder,
my eyes swollen with tears.
With the future tangled with so much loss,
it all feels impossible.
Bless all those who are suffering
because of injustice, loss, and greed.
Ease their pain
and grant them a vision of new life.
Bless me with clarity
to remember that your love is the foundation.
Bless me with guidance
to be a vessel of compassion and peace.
Connect me to kindred souls
laboring for a more beautiful world
so that I know I am not doing this alone.
Turn the hearts of those in power
toward compassion and generosity.
I don’t know if what I am called to do will solve anything.
All I know is I must try.
Bless me in the trying, in the grieving, in the hoping.
Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
Our featured book for our Lift Every Voice book club in March and April is Liturgies for Resisting Empire by Kat Armas and it is one of my favorite books I have read recently. (We had Kat on before talking about her beautiful book Abuelita Faith about the wisdom of her grandmother and the elders.)
Empire is how our modern western societies have been built, supported by all the ways those in power try to exploit others: colonialism, sexism, racism, ableism, and more. Empire relies on our exhaustion, on a sense of scarcity, and our loss of hope to continue its project serving the wealthy in power.
Kat describes it this way:
“This is how we learn power. It is generational, embedded in the ways we are taught to measure safety, success, and worth. A king offers security in the weight of his sword, the reach of his land, the force of his law. He gives the illusion of order and protection even as he builds his own name with the bodies of his people. Empire has always promised salvation through power. It is the nature of kings to offer belonging and purpose in exchange for obedience. It is the nature of people to believe them.”
It can be hard to even see all of the forces contributing to oppression and unjust systems because it is the air we breathe. Kat writes powerfully about how our systems are so embedded in our psyches it is hard to imagine a different world.
She asks some poignant questions:
“How do we pursue hope, joy, and liberation alongside our neighbors and the divine while living in systems designed to manufacture despair? How do we move toward justice when empire demands our exhaustion. When scarcity is woven into the fabric of our world? How do we resist oppression without becoming consumer by it? These are the sacred questions we carry on this journey—not for easy answers, but for the fullness of life itself.”
If we are rooted in the Christian faith, we have only to look at Jesus as a man who subverted the power systems of his day. He reached out to those on the edges of life, those who had been rejected and made more vulnerable by the powerful. He offers us a vision of a world where all are called to thriving. His radical solidarity with all of those struggling led the empire to execute him.
In her book, Kat invites us to reject things like ideology, hierarchy, dualism, and hustle and embrace reality, wisdom, kinship, paradox, and slowness.
The contemplative path calls us to a way of being that is slow, spacious, attentive, attuned, compassionate, and loving. It helps us to see all the ways we participate in this project of oppression. Contemplative prayer is never meant solely for our own personal journey, but to help us cultivate a vision of the liberation of all beings.
Join Simon and me for our contemplative prayer service tomorrow. We will be joined by guest musician Dena Jennings. We will be engaging our sacred imagination together and listening for new worlds being born in our midst.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
*Blessing is from Christine’s book A Book of Everyday Blessings: 100 Prayers for Dancing Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims (Ave Maria Press)
