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Thirty Days of Love, Day 22: Share the Love

Posted by Jeremie Bateman // February 6th 2012 // soundings, Stories and Voices // no comments

Date: Feb 6 – Write a prayer, mantra, or meditation for love.

Staff Member: Leadership Development Associate Jeremie Bateman

Description: Prayers can take different forms and be addressed to a deity, an idea, for guidance, or simply to express one’s thoughts or emotions.
To Do: Write a prayer expressing the challenges you face, or your hopes for a better world. For help with writing words of worship, visit:  http://www.uua.org/worship/words/meditations/index.shtml. Please click here to share your mantra, prayer, or meditation.

 

I offer this prayer for myself, and for anyone for whom it resonates.  It was not written to be a public, group prayer, but if it suits your needs in that way, you are most welcome to it.

Let us pray:

Make me an instrument of peace
Where there is hatred, let me plant seeds of love.
Where there is despair, let me plant seeds of hope.
Where there is sadness, let me plant seeds joy.*

Let my words and deeds,
my very day-to-day living,
speak to justice, compassion, equity and fairness.
May I be forgiven when they do not.

May I never think I can go it alone.
May I find roots in community.
May I honor the strength and resolve of those who have gone before.
May I honor the vision of those to come who will show a new way.
May we build, together, the world we dream of.
May it be so.

Amen.

*This stanza paraphrases portions of a prayer often attributed to Francis of Assisi (though it has only been traced to the early 1900s) that was central for me when I was a high school student.  You can read the whole prayer and its history on Wikipedia.

– Jeremie.

About the Author

Jeremie Bateman is the Leadership Development Associate in the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at the UUA. He can be reached at jbateman@uua.org.
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