Update: Lights for Liberty Vigil –
Reverend Rita Capezzi

You may have seen in The Free Press that over 100 members of local communities rallied in solidarity with those detained at the border, especially with the children—those who lost their lives and their families suffering and traumatized. Several from our UUFM community were able to attend. The rally was organized by Indivisible St. Peter/Mankato. You may have also learned that Representative Hagedorn will no longer meet with members of Indivisible because they are taking up too much time with their issues.

 

Here is the prayer I offered last Friday evening. I offer it here in hopes that we may remain steadfast in efforts to bring more compassion and justice into the world. Let us bend the arc together:

Good people of Southern Minnesota, we gather together this evening to acknowledge injustice at and within our borders.

We gather together in outrage and in pain, in sorrow and in the need for companionship. We gather to repel the cruelty and brutality practiced by our government, encouraged, I say with shame, by government officials and employees. We gather to bear witness to the suffering of desperate families and of terrified children.

Hear our prayers, God of many names and of no name at all. Hear our cries, oh Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love. Be with us tonight as we gather with gratitude for the earth and all who journey upon it, for all who we love and all who we might yet love.

In Warsan Shire’s words “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark.” No one leaves home, the mouth of the shark, and deserves to enter the belly of despair. No one runs for the light of justice and liberty, and desires to languish in dank and cold cells, in the misery of neglect and indifference.

We are here to grieve for lives lost in the camps at our United States border, here to bear witness for the children—to witness for the suffering and the horror and irrevocable wounds. We are here to witness for the children and to witness for their terrified, suffering parents. We are here to rage that some are profiting on the bodies of children.

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love, Universe that holds us all, give us the strength to confront the prejudice and intolerance of those who fear these children, teens and adults; those who respond by building walls, slamming shut borders with words of condemnation and denunciation.

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love, Universe that holds us all, may we find within ourselves the ability to hold with compassion those who harm themselves by harming these desperate families and helpless children. Let us pray for those with moral injuries, sustained from carrying within them and from spewing suspicion and hatred. Let us pray that we do not lose hope after tonight and risk moral injury on ourselves, through neglect, through turning away from this vicious reality.

We bear with us light, to shine in the dark corners of misinformation and lies. We bear light to raise together as a sign to the powerful that we move together in great numbers, fearless of malicious authority. May we be the light that seeks inclusion and compassion, that seeks justice, the light that seeks an end to violence and hatred, of suspicion and fear of difference.

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love, Universe that holds us all, move through us, move with us, move us, good people of Southern Minnesota, move us ever on the path of compassion and justice, the food for loving spirits and the bread of life itself. May it be so.

Blessings, Rev. Rita