Video Poem - Holy Balance

Today's project is a timely poem for 2022 written and dramatized by Fr. Michael. A Prayer for Holy Balance Seeking Security in a Post Pandemic World Gracious God, You who flung the stars to the far most corner of the night… You who formed and fashion all manner of living things… You Who hold our universe in holy balance… Today, in our hands, is power to protect all life on this planet. In our hands is the power to destroy all life on this planet. Life and death placed before us -- So, give us the grace to choose life, to protect life, to celebrate life! We come together this day seeking a deeper wisdom, a more secure future, to balance our power with our responsibility, To ourselves and to all manner of living things. We come to seek a higher wisdom that will help us hold in balance Our fear and our trust, Our responsibility and our freedom, Our hope and our ever-growing discouragement. We come together today to warm our hearts on this cold wintry day. We stand proud of our past accomplishments. We shrink ashamed of the sins of our past. May we awaken to the lessons of history, Yet not be frightened by what we must see. O Lord of all history, You alone know us as we truly are… A Divided Nation, Haves and Have Nots, Right and Left, Red and Blue, Purpled and perplexed from our persistent fights. We come seeking security in what can only be described as chaotic times. Isaiah prophesied long ago that without vision the people will perish. Help us to open our eyes to see what we have, To see who we are, And who we are becoming. — From whence we’ve come and to where we’re going… Vision, Lord, grant us vision, Night vision in these dark times, Vision to see a path forward, A way through the twisted woods. Teach us how to balance our fear and our trust, Our need to know and our inability to control. We come together today to listen, To support, To endeavor to learn more than is clever, A deeper wisdom and a holier grace, To see that we are all connected, That no one is an island. No nation however surrounded by the seas of turbulence is alone. All are one. All are connected. Teach us how. Show us why. Reveals to us the who of who we are, and the what of what we are becoming. For today we stand tottering on the brink, Playing a dangerous game of who will blink. Whether we’ll rise or whether we’ll sink Help us to think beyond our selves – To imagine a future of hope, To imagine days of harmony and nights of grace, To imagine what we might never live to see - walls of protection and bridges of peace. Teach us to listen to the deepest longing of our hearts, Seeing what can’t be seen with the eyes of our skulls, But only imagined into life with the pupils of our souls. O Gracious God, Free us from the narrow constraints in which we box ourselves. Give us the will power of grace, And the muscle to face the choices we must embrace to secure a future of hope. Help us to change our course, to redirect our path, To veer off the highway of paralyzing fear, To turn onto the road of courageous hope, Paved with our tears and smoothed by our prayers, Built brick by brick with lessons learned hard from our shared history. O may we pray our way into a new way of acting. May we act our way into a new way of praying, playing, becoming once again those little children who see more similarities than differences, more possibilities than problems, more hope than regret, more joy than sorrow, more faith than fear, more promise for what this new day will bring. Amen… Amen… Amen. © J. Michael Sparough, SJ , 2022