Prayer

I turned in at the usual time, but couldn't sleep tonight. I thought I would sleep and then wake and that tomorrow would be just another day. But it's not.

It's times like these, I'm reminded of my humanness. My humanity. I'm made of flesh and blood and spirit, all these things. I love. I hunger. I hope.

I feel like for the last eight years, I've lived under a government that doesn't quite view me as fully human. That, in fact, views me, views my love, views my family as threats. That has treated me as a threat by trying to legislate a wall around us, to shut us out of the mainstream of life and love. And maybe that wall can start to come down tomorrow. Maybe I will wake up tomorrow and act and vote, and then begin the day after tomorrow with more hope that my life, my love, my family can have a place at the table along with everyone else. So I can't sleep. I'm too excited.

I didn't consciously make a decision to pray for the State of California tomorrow. Those prayers just began to well up from the depths of my soul a few days ago. Dear Heavenly Father, please forgive those who act out of ignorance, who act out of hate. Who don't understand and don't care to understand and don't even try to understand. Please forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Please let a spirit of kindness, a spirit of generosity, a spirit of good will toward others prevail. Please pour out Your Spirit so that, where there is darkness, there will be light; where there is pitilessness, there will be compassion; where there is scapegoating and calumny, there will be truth. Please, Father in Heaven, bless the State of California in this decision. Bless the leaders and the members of the Church. Bless all of us. Help us remember the pattern Jesus showed us. Please help us walk the way he walked, more concerned to bless than to curse, more concerned to uplift than to discourage, more concerned to include and embrace than to exclude and cast out. Please help us, Father, because that's not the pattern of the world we live in. And too often, we bring those worldly patterns into churches and sanctuaries where they really have no place.

That prayer, welling up almost instinctively from that deepest place in my heart, has helped me these last few days to nurture hope. Kneeling in the presence of God and speaking those words keeps me rooted in a vision of the kind of world I want to live in, regardless of the outcomes of the plebiscites and decisions of tomorrow. Something to keep working for, regardless. So I can face each day with the kind of courage and love that the healing of the world requires.

It's a calming vision, a grounding vision. And still, I'm too excited to sleep. So I accept that excitement as part of my human condition. As a natural consequence of being me, in this time and in this place. I accept that sometimes all I can do is wait, and hope.