From “Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness” by Liza J. Rankow
I sit in the gathering darkness, candle lit, offering prayers that I hope will somehow make a difference. I imagine them flying out my window like numinous birds, traveling through the streets of Oakland and out into the ethers where they join other prayers, join chants and spells and longings and wishes from every corner and continent, forming a murmuration of loving magic to enfold the planet. Prayers streaming ribbons of color, like the sunset now painted across the sky, or falling like tender rain to nourish parched ground. I send prayers on the wind to enter the nostrils of every breathing soul upon this Earth, to root themselves like stubborn seeds in every heart and mind. May they grow, these prayers-seeds, may they flourish and flower and bear healing fruit.
These are desperate times. Times of dying worlds and decaying empires. The fires of division fuel increasingly frequent acts of racist terrorism and state violence. Massive wealth is concentrated among a small group of elites, while poverty grows ever more widespread. Fascism is on the rise. And we are rapidly approaching the tipping point of climate catastrophe. It’s hard not to slip into despair, to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all…My prayers call me back to remembering there is a larger wholeness that breathes through all of Life. They help me believe that perhaps this turmoil – that seems so increasingly apocalyptic – can open the way for something better to emerge, if we meet it wisely.