Although the United States is not yet formally at war with Iran, this may be a difference without a distinction following the U.S. assassination of Iran’s highest ranking general while he was visiting Iraq.
The following prayer, written on the first day of the Iraq War in 2003, has become timely again. I found the original in my files yesterday and have printed a copy to carry with me so I can pray it throughout the day. I invite you to do the same and to share it with others. In whatever ways you are able, embody your prayers with action. God and the world need both.
Prayer at the Beginning of War
Almighty and Loving God of the Whole World,
Our hearts are heavy.
We had hoped for peace but are now in the midst of war.
We pray for soldiers of all nations who also long for peace
But are now called into conflict.
We pray for families whose brothers and sisters,
Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters
Are now in harm’s way.
Give them comfort, courage and your peace
As they await word about their loved ones.
We pray for the people of Iraq.
For the parents and children, for the ordinary citizens
Who want war no more than we
And who did nothing to bring this upon themselves.
Give them courage and safety
As terror drops from the sky upon their cities.
Be with all the people of the Middle East this day
And with people around the world.
Help us to see each other as your own children
No matter by what name we call you
Nor what land we call our home.
God of Wisdom,
Be with the leaders of nations.
Give them your wisdom which is far beyond our own,
Grant courage when theirs fails,
And in your providence, grant us peace
For all your children and for your world.
Barbara A. Anderson
Ash Wednesday
March 19, 2003
The Beginning of the Iraq War
Sometimes poetry is the only way to snapshot emotion, especially about something so frightening. At least I have found it so. Here is the poem I wrote at Christmastime, in 2001. It is disturbing to find it to have been potentially apt only this past month as well.
CHRISTMAS IN A TIME OF WAR (2001)
Mountains explode in retribution.
In Bethlehem victims bleed
in a parking lot where the stable
may have been, if indeed
there was a stable.
Everywhere people bent by conflict,
swathed in desperation, search
the skies for an eastern star.
Yet, though the darkness whistles
past his ears, a babe is born
this night, again, insisting
On care-filled hope, love
past all measure.
Trouble is his rough-mangered
resting place, offering, as always
(if one listens past the hoarse cry
of Mars) hosts of ethereals
in lofty spaces praising
the blessings of peace
and against all reason
Christmas is once more.
I still have a poem tacked on myh bulletin board that Frances Nicholson wrote, in anticipation of the Afghanistan war. It says, in short, that a mother feels differently about war when she looks at her almost-grown son.