Meditation: Thanks to God
By Sylvia Knight | The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Burlington, VT
Thanks and praise be to you, Creating Spirit, Holy Mystery,
for your loving spirit infusing all Creation,
for our home, planet Earth, for life-giving water so precious, air to breathe,
for living soil bringing forth life and food,
for the wondrously intricate web of life and variety of people, beloved Earth Community.
Thanks and praise be to you, Lord of Creation,
for miracles of plant life gracing us with beauty, shade, food, clothing, shelter,
for farmers who love and care for your creation,
for farmworkers, our neighbors, near and far
laboring long hours in the sun, tending and harvesting our food,
laboring day after day in dairy barns with large animals and relentless machinery.
Thanks and praise be to you, Source of All Being,
for your gift of dignity in each person,
for your spirit crying out in farmworkers suffering abuse,
for leaders who rise up to help fellow workers,
for those who will not allow their dignity to be trampled,
for their courage in standing up together to peacefully resist oppression,
for those who risk cold-hearted arrest and detainment in crowded prisons
to bring human rights, dignity and compassion to our food systems.
Thanks and praise be to you, Disturbing and Liberating Lord,
for your profound affinity with the poor and oppressed,
for speaking to us through holy mother Mary,
for creatively disturbing us through your new prophets
Enrique, Zully, Abel, Victor, Miguel, Esau, Yesenia, Marita, Wilmar, Lucas, and Librada,
for your Spirit rising in the movement for food justice.
Disturb our hearts and minds to see how corporate food systems
grind the spirits and bodies of our brothers and sisters and violate Earth Community.
Shake us out of old habits to see their troubled faces as we buy our food.
Awaken us to the miracle of Your liberating spirit beckoning, urging us
into solidarity with others for God’s kin-dom of justice and compassion.
Thanks and praise be to you, Lord of Grief, Compassion, and Integrity
for bringing us together in our grief and anger when justice is violated,
for gathering us on behalf of Esau and Yesenia, arrested for working for human rights,
for their lives teaching us about love, dignity, courage, joy of life, resistance and suffering under empire.
Thanks to you, Jesus, for keeping hope alive in your reign of Love among us,
for the rain that fell upon our gathering as though Earth Community were weeping with us.
Thanks and praise be to you, Spirit of Justice, for speaking through hundreds of voices,
for moving those in power to respond to our outcries for justice, for our joy upon the
release of two courageous young people from prison to live and work again in our community
for Your kin-dom of compassion and justice. Amen.
For more insight, visit http://www.migrantjustice.net
and http://popularmovements.org/news/message-from-modesto/