A New Year's Prayer

PRAYER FOR 2022

The old world is dying
and we who remain
are charged
with the blessed task
of lighting that sacred fire
which will consume
all imperfections
and impediments,
curses and diseases,
resentments and limitations,
sorrow and indifference,
callousness and greed
in one great conflagration
of purifying flames.

Let us burn away
all that keeps us
in the old dispensation,
all that holds us back
from responding to Life's call,
everything that keeps us small
and ineffectual
in a world that needs us
to know our own power
to be agents of change
instead of victims of fate.

Standing naked
at the threshold
of a new creation,
let us perform
the necessary libations,
turning our backs
on what was
and what has been
so as to embrace
the grace
of an untrodden year.

Let us step humbly, gently,
onto the soil of possibility,
still unspoiled, unsullied
by false-self narratives
which convince us
that the safest strategy
is to do nothing at all
since nothing
will make a difference
in light of all dire warnings
and Doomsday predictions.

Let us hope, let us pray
for a better day, a better year,
a time of mercy,
a season for sowing hope
and seeds of love.

And let us commend ourselves
to the One who, now and always,
cradles the Earth,
holding all Creation
in a single timeless thought.

AMEN