2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayer

Week 47--in which we ask ourselves what we have become 

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

I write a fresh newsletter for you every week. Usually on Saturday afternoon, just in time to land in your inbox on Sunday. Fifty-two Sundays of the year. Typically, I look back at what has happened all week, so that what I have to say reflects our shared experience.

Right now our shared experiences are painful. Our hearts hurt. Our ears are overwhelmed by endless cascade of lies. Our eyes cannot bear to look at one more picture of what remains after another bomb falls. Another child dies. Another mother clutches her child’s cold body.

We are numb. I am numb. But I’ve made this commitment to send a Notes from the Field newsletter every week. Even when the field appears to be in shambles.

So I sat down today to write something. Because this is when it really matters. This is when a note bubbling up the field might comfort someone. Or offer an insight or wee bit of energy to keep going.

This is when it counts. This is when everyone needs to speak. That everyone is you. Is me. Is us.

But I didn’t know what to say. What could I possibly say that would be helpful right now?

To answer that question, I opened a large file of prayers I’ve written since prayer artist arrived in February of 2018. And I stumbled upon this Lament for America prayer that I had completely forgotten. I don’t think I’ve ever read it to anyone. I know I’ve never put it in a newsletter.

For starters, it too long. And too heartbreaking.

But also, too true.

I wrote this in 2018 when I was incensed by the brutal separation of children from their families at the border by the administration then in charge. The same administration that will soon be in charge again.

It’s called A Lament for America, but I think it’s a lament for our whole world.

Because it’s not just an American story anymore. The United States is simply the last in a long line of countries surrendering to autocracy and the brutality that autocracy loves.

Be forewarned, this prayer will disturb you. As well it should. But maybe it will also remind you that you are not alone. And that everyone of us must speak.

I Am—A Lament for America

©Janet Conner, July 17, 2018

Martin Niemoller wrote in 1946:

“Whenever I chance to meet a Jew…I cannot but tell him: “I have sinned and my people has sinned against thy people and against thyself.”

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out
because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out
because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out
because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out
because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out
because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Niemöller’s famous quote, which feels like a prayer, returned to me this morning shredding my heart to see that nothing has changed.

First, they came for brown boys with a dollop of crack, ignoring hedge fund parties with platters of cocaine but I said nothing because crack is a crime, isn’t it.

They began to shoot black boys playing in parks,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t the mother of a black boy.

They came for the kneeling football players,
but I didn’t speak out because I don’t care about football.

They torched mosques,
but I stayed silent because I wasn’t Muslim.

They slapped swastikas on synagogues
and I said nothing because I’m not Jewish.

They bombed black churches, and I stayed silent because I’m not a black Christian.

They rounded up refugees fleeing unspeakable horrors but I said nothing because I’m not a refugee.

They caged brown children and told them not to cry
and I stayed silent because those are not my children.

They came for gay men seeking wedding cakes
and I said nothing because my son isn’t gay.

They refused to pay a decent wage but I said nothing even as I used those services every day.

They closed state hospitals and tossed the mentally ill in jail and I said nothing because I’m not one of those.

More black men are in prison today than were enslaved in 1850, but I said nothing because I never enslaved anyone.

They drained money from public schools to create profitable businesses for their friends and I said nothing because my children are no longer in school.

They turned prisons into private businesses and I said nothing because I knew no one in prison.

They made healthcare so expensive only the wealthiest could afford to see a doctor and I said nothing because, well, I don’t know what to say.

I watched school children get slaughtered by angry white men with guns as the country continued to elect politicians in thrall to the gun lobby.

I watched food turn into chemicals, and family farms into agribusinesses, but I kept shopping at mega markets because they had cheap food.

Now, I look at the prisons, the schools,
the churches, and the parks
I look at what we have become
and I must speak

I must speak now
because they are coming for me.
They are coming for all of us.

And before they do,
before they cut out all our tongues,
there is something I have to say:

I am the football player on one knee
I am the black boy bleeding in the street
I am the brown man behind bars

I am the Muslim at prayer
I am the Jew afraid to enter the synagogue
I am the black child blown to pieces in her pew

I am the Guatemalan mother desperate to bring her child to safety
I am the caged child too afraid to cry
I am the African refugee drowning at sea

I am the gay couple looking forward to a ceremony forbidden for so very very long
I am the child in a crumbling school turning pages in an out-of-date text book

I am the elderly woman who will die before she sees a doctor
I am the young mother working three jobs and still unable to pay the rent
I am the delusional man waking up in a jail cell

I am the prisoner with no money to call home
I am the high school kid running from bullets
I am the farmer who couldn’t keep his land, his home, his life

I am all of these
And they are me

They are me
because we share One Mother

And I must speak
I must speak until they come for me

______________________________________________

to having our peace disturbed
because the peace is being disturbed
and will stay disturbed
until we speak

Janet
PS: This is the last week you can join The Lotus and the Lily prayer intensive to look back at all that has happened, so you can seed a sacred future.

Everything has been recorded and will be available through next fall.

The Lotus and the Lily
Harvest 2024 Seed 2025

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