a prayer
I’m not sure who to pray too
To ask for forgiveness
That we got this far
Where bombing a country
While the planet is burning
Is possible
I’m not sure with whom I should pray
When insanity is paid
Not another
Whose pathology is intertwined with systemic ideology
Grabbing land like it’s pussy on the podium of their legislator
Remember trump
And stalin
And hitler
Not another
As a minister, I don’t know if praying works
I try to listen to what the air would say if it could speak through suffocated lungs
If money was quieter
If conquering wasn’t in our vocabulary
If war, a past to get us to present
If sovereignty meant something
What would the child hiding in the basement say
Why did we practice a “shelter-in” at our elementary school in Brooklyn today
Why did the principal get on the microphone to declare we had failed
“Lights off, door locked!”
Where is the clinical and climate community between every political leader and every decision
Where is the leadership who knows the natural laws of limits
To assess when the light of empathy turns off
I dreamt of Ukraines yellow and blue bleeding into a beautiful array of colors
Resilience replacing the colonizing of mind
How we come together
Sun and water kissing the moon
It makes me think of Joe
In Tijuana, when the refugees were being blocked from asylum at the border
There was a man swimming in the cold pacific while I was greeting the sun at dawn amazed that the wall tries to divide even the ocean
We walked the length of the beach
Deported, addicted and estranged, he was Human neglected by a government that threw him away
Together, we didn’t exactly pray
We talked
Wampum from our land gifted by my hand to his palm on the edge of the shore and his gratitude gifted me
World Central Kitchen gifted hot meals for thousands every day they were needed in Tijuana
World Central Kitchen gifts hot meals for thousands five days in counting along the border of Ukraine while it snows
Countries protest in solidarity
Strangers open their homes
I’m not sure how to pray
But I know in my bones
For every single act of egos cruelty that ripples through our veins no matter the nationality
There are some 7 billion more moments of the bright capability in human’s love
Each one a prayer
Name them
Fund them
Feed them
And
When your tired soul is filled with grief
Lean on poetry to rest your feet
From one of Ukraine’s finest,
“At Kiev, in the low countrie,
Things happened once that you'll never see.
For evermore, 'twas done;
Nevermore, 'twill come.
Yet I, my brother,
Will with hope foregather,
That this again I'll see,
Though grief it brings to me.
To Kiev in the low countrie
Came our brotherhood so free.
Nor slave nor lord have they,
But all in noble garb so gay
Came splashing forth in mood full glad —
With velvet coats the streets are clad.
They swagger in silken garments pride
And they for no one turn aside.”
амінь
The beginning of “The Monk”, poem by Taras Shevchenko, known as Kobzar translated by Alexander Jardine Hunter (1814 - 1861)
Painting: Acrylic on canvas, thread, trimmings and button from my grandmother Shirlee’s sewing kit