God of all graces and of all the cultures and colors we call races, Holy God who from one blood formed the great masses of the human family, we come together in your presence as siblings, we come before you knowing in our minds, and feeling in our bodies the wrongness of white-body supremacy, of the beliefs and practices that make white bodies the standard of humanness and that cause violence, pain and death to those who are not white in this country. We also name the wrongness we know and feel about how the riches of this land have been despoiled, stolen, and allotted to a few, while the vast number of your beloved children of all hues and cultures go without, struggling to survive.
We come as family, God, yet we acknowledge we bring with us different experiences of our church, nation, and world. We are one body, yet as members of that body we come with multivalence. With our own individual cultures, traumas, insecurities. And so, as we begin a conversation about how we might be agents of your peace, as we speak together about how we want to heal the open wounds we see and know and feel with our whole beings, we need your grace and your help.
Give us your grace, Lord, to listen carefully and to really hear each other. As we share our stories, give us grace to be authentic and humble. And above all fill us with that Divine Love, without which any of our words, works, or revolutions will come to nothing.
Holy One, help us to see, know and feel your presence among us, guiding, guarding, loving and welcoming. All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ, who with you Creator of All and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.
Offered by Anthony Calzia, Nashville, TN
