A Prayer for Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day

A prayer for Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day from Rev. Michael Livingston:

God of creation, saving God, God of the hovering spirit active now and always; here we are in this world, of this world, a slowly spinning wonder, awesome, verdant, abundant; yet it’s a ball of confusion, conflict, of perpetual war.  We think celebrating Memorial Day balances our addiction to perpetual war. We honor all who serve now, who have served, all those who have fallen in war.  We confess our failure of will to end this madness.

You could turn away from what we have done to each other and to our earth, you could leave us here alone, among only all the others, the enemies we have made of the one family into which we have all been born.  You could condemn us for what we have become, so far from where we began, from garden to groaning in every generation.

But you sent to us, you came among us, one of us, you remain with and within us in dreams and visions, in reconciling possibilities, in acts of courage and compassion to heal the broken circle of our humanity.

Help us to know you as father, mother, creator, and so to trust the earth and treat it as the precious home it is has been and could still be.

Help us to know you as son, daughter, sibling, and so to trust each other and treat each one, as kin in the broad reach of our humanity in every nation, culture, clan, faith,

Help us to know you as spirit, comforter, advocate, breath, essential as air, and so to trust the future we can share reconciled, a communion of saints in the promise of eternity, a beloved community here among us.

Thank you for loving the world so much.  Give us new birth, rebirth, birth from above, spirit birth, to work for justice, to live in peace, to love all others, all praise to you, three in one.

Amen.