XAIROS PRAYER
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In A Critical Time, We Are Called
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I. This is a critical time
that comes once to every soul and nation—
the moment to decide.
The U.S. air attack on Tripoli, Libya,
and the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, USSR,
force us to face again the moral laws
by which the universe prospers or perishes:
those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7).
We live at the crossroads—
where God’s ways confront our ways:
our countdown that begins to launch the arms race
into space,
our Statue of Liberty that turns back refugees to a
land of death squads,
our federal deficits and cutbacks that inflict cas-
ualties no enemy could,
our writing off as lepers the victims of AIDS,
our response to terrorism that makes us more like
that which we fear,
our toxic wastes that invade the food chain,
our technical idolatry that explodes aboard
Space Shuttle Challenger.
Yet the future is open,
for the Spirit is moving in our time:
in sanctuaries of worship transfigured into sanc-
tuaries of refuge,
in a nonviolent revolution that freed the Philippine
nation,
in "We Are the World” and “Hands Across America,”
in more Americans traveling to the Soviet Union
and Nicaragua,
in the rise of Peace Studies across hundreds of
college campuses,
in the renaissance of national assemblies of students
by many denominations.
Our task is discernment,
to know where to sow the seeds,
how to lay the foundations,
as the Spirit moves us toward something promised:
a time of truth,
a place of love.
II. From college campuses to Capitol Hill,
from parishes to homes of small-town America,
we are called to join the incarnated God, Christ,
whose Spirit is on the wing.
We are called to be shalom-makers,
who are always out on the edge opposing the next war—
so that—perhaps, it may not come.
We are called to be fools,
who actually believe that nonviolence can bring down
tyrants, repel invaders,
and “overturn the tables” on unjust laws and institutions.
We are called to be witnesses,
who take our prayers and presence to the powers that be
to challenge oppression that is legal
and poverty that is “acceptable.”
We are called to be patriots,
who, in always practicing the highest form of
democracy—dissent-
are loving their country toward its aspiration.
We are called to be futurists,
who create the ideas whose time has come,
who visualize the structures needed to bring God’s
global village into being.
We are called to be advocates,
who stand with, are friends with, and see God’s
gifts in the Untouchables and outcasts of our age.
We are called to be artists,
who feed the human spirit
and give a foretaste of a world at one.
We are called to be sinners,
who learn in our activism that God brings triumph
from our failures,
who learn that the power to uproot and overthrow,
to build and to plant,
issues from a spirituality of humility.
We are called to be clowns,
who cry when others laugh ?_
because we see more suffering
and who laugh when others cry
because we see further ahead—to the hope.
Hope D. J. Harle-Mould, Ecumenical Campus Ministry, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Assistant to the Pastor,
Rockville Church, Rockville, Md. (Part of a larger statement, “Peacemaking and the University: A Campus Ministry Covenant, ”
written for a May 1986 conference in Washington, D. C., “Peacemaking and the University: New Issues and the Arts of Advocacy.”)
MONDAY MORNING, Pages 14-15, JULY 1987
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