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Prayer for Victims of New Zealand Terror Attack

There is no place that God is not / Even in the barrel of a gun

My heart is breaking for the violence and terror that continues to wreak such destruction on our people—Jew, Muslim—human beings who live and love and pray and spend their days as we all do: trying to get by, make a difference, tell their story. I cannot march; my wheelchair precludes that. I can raise my voice though, and write—those are my talents, those are the gifts I can offer. We are taught that any person’s death diminishes us. This tragedy, amid all the other tragedies, has decimated us, and we must act now, act once again, to work for a world where we can live and love and pray in peace. I wrote this poem after Squirrel Hill, but, sadly, it fits, I think, for today. I offer it to you, to all my brothers and sisters, in hope and love. 

Where God Is

There is no place that God is not
Even in the barrel of a gun
Bullets sing their own psalm
A deadly hymn to the true judge
The Creator of us all.

There is no place that God is not
Perhaps that is why God asks us
Pleads for us
To sing a new song
For all the Earth to hear
To drown out the ugly and
Sibilant crackle of bullets
Whose only benediction is
One of destruction and pain.

There is no place that God is not.

 

The Reconstructionist Network

Jewish tradition is a storehouse of wisdom and practical application on how to navigate the world of conflict and how we respond to it. In this Immersion, we will explore what conflict transformation might look like in our times. Six sessions starting April 4th.

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