May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
Everything is true.
Everything is false.
Everything is simultaneously false and true... and yet, not so much.
Everything is neither false nor true... but maybe a little bit at twilight.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
Everything is permitted, but much is unwise and unkind.
From sameness comes more of the same
Yet from difference is complexity created.
Thus all gifts are necessary.
Meaning does not arise from our simply signifying "I exist, I am,"
So we honor you with our daily payment of attention
To all the worlds within our senses and our scope of curiosity.
Grant us understanding for our open eyes, with our mindfulness,
To avoid the burdens of collusion with maleficent intent,
For all it may parade as goodness.
Protect us from the tentacles of networked destructiveness,
- Explicit and impicit, visible and invisible, interesting and banal -
And deliver us from those who would use even the best within us,
To destroy us.
Insofar as we can discern domination,
Even so, and as much as we can and are able,
To courageously combat it with love and humor,
And to withdraw our support,
- Implicit, explicit, and complicit -
To avoid the stories and rationalizations
With which we deceive ourselves and others,
Let us do so.
Grant us the imagination to create new stories,
Yes, even as the jester.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
Faith without imagination - is dead.
Faith without laughter and joy - is dead.
Faith only in the traditions of men - is dead.
Faith used as a weapon - is dead.
Faith used to deny thinking - is dead.
Faith afraid of questioning and discussion - is dead.
Faith without compassion, without kindness,
without forgiveness, without peace, without love - is dead.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
As are one body in love, of female and male and transgender,
So you are its Board of Directors, hear us today.
Benevolent Deities, take heavily (and yet lightly)
Our reactions to evil and to misfortune, to pain and to loss.
Benevolent Deities, take heavily (and yet lightly)
Our laughter, whose grain of truth yet brings wisdom.
These, as well as love, are our unique gifts back to you.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
Help us remember that our civilizations are only as great
As the care we take with the least of these, our cousins.
Yea, even the downsized ones and domicile-challenged,
The ones with no bootstraps upon which to tug,
The fatherless children, the orphaned youth,
The widows, and the abandoned ones,
The children of abuse, those tormented,
Those oppressed by unfairness,
Those bereft of prescriptions and insurance,
Those whose lives are touched by tragedy,
The deficient in saleable skills,
The change-resistent, the non-web ones,
Those left behind by the gods of greed,
And even to the hopelessly damaged and hurt.
The state of the forgotten ones are the measure of our success.
Help us to be kind and generous,
Help us to treat one another better than we might treat ourselves,
Help our leaders to remember, and to honor,
The well-being of the people, all the people,
Lest they be replaced.
Let us not be misled, and protect us from false witness,
And let all intentional hypocrites be brilliantly satirized,
For all to see.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
Benevolent Deities...a multiplicity incorporated.
Benevolent Deities...the kindest portion.
Benevolent Deities...guide our multiple paths.
Although you are not the only gods, you are the only gods who care for us.
May you be invulnerable, and safe from takeover, for ever and ever.
May we incorporate peace, kindness, love and compassion. May we incorporate laughter, satire, joy and wisdom.
