[Oe List ...] Salmon on Gene Robinson's inauguration prayer

[William Salmon]

Colleagues: 
    So much has been shared on the closing inaugural prayer, but little or nothing has been said about the prayer, offered the night before, by Bishop Gene Robinson -- the first Anglican openly gay bishop. You'll remember it was   inadvertently left out of the national programming, but later reprised on the Washington Mall. Here it is:

    O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will . . . .
Bless us with tears -- for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria and AIDS.
Bless us with anger -- at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort -- at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with humility -- open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world. 
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance -- replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger. 
Bless us with compassion and generosity -- remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community , whether across town or across the world. 
    Now, can I have an, "Amen?" 
    Pastor Bill 
  
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