Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership

ASHES, STONES, & FLOWERS:
A LITANY ON MILITARISM, RACISM, & MATERIALISM
IN HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING

By Rev. Patricia Pearce, Tabernacle United Church, Philadelphia

Militarism

For each vibrant life and hopeful dream that is annihilated by war and written off as necessary collateral damage,
We lift up the ashes of our pain, O God.

For the millions who go hungry or suffer sickness because bombs are more lucrative than bread and missiles are deemed more important than medicine,
We lift up the ashes of our remorse, O God.

For each mind that is forever haunted and each body that is left broken by war,
We lift up the ashes of our grief, O God.

For wars in which soldiers become pawns and veterans become burdens,
We lift up the ashes of our shame, O God.

As we cast these ashes into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that by Your power they will make fertile the soil of our future and by Your mercy nourish the seeds of peace.

For homes that are reduced to rubble, and citizens who are cast out as refugees,
We lift up the stones of our anger, O God.

For our thirst for revenge and our captivity to a narrative of violence,
We lift up the stones of our hardness, O God.

For a nation in which money is readily available for warfare but never available for health care,
We lift up the stones of our arrogance, O God.

For hiding our terror of vulnerability behind a bravado of military might,
We lift up the stones of our fear, O God.

As we cast these stones into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as water wears away the hardest of stones, so too may the power of Your compassion soften the hardness of our hearts and draw us into a future of justice and peace.

For the growing awareness that war achieves no lasting ends and that a viable future demands peace,
We lift up the flower of our hope, O God.

For the capacity within the human spirit to imagine another’s grief as our own,
We lift up the flower of our compassion, O God.

For the brave warriors of peace who stare down tanks and place their bodies before bulldozers to call us to a vision of the world that could be,
We lift up the flower of our resolve, O God.

For the millions of people across the planet who are activating their imaginations and joining their hands to prepare the way of peace,
We lift up the flower of our strength, O God.

As we cast these flowers into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as the water nourishes the delicate petals, so too may the power of Your possibilities nourish our hearts, and through us blossom into a future of beauty, justice and peace.

Racism

For a nation that stood idle when its Black citizens were purged from voting lists and their homes were swept away by hurricanes
We lift up the ashes of our remorse, O God.

For abandoned inner cities in which the only living wage is the drug trade and the only assurance of protection is the handgun.
We lift up the ashes of our pain, O God.

For a nation that would rather incarcerate its citizens of color than educate them,
We lift up the ashes of our grief, O God.

For a nation in which one of the most important factors in deciding on the death sentence is the color of the defendant’s skin,
We lift up the ashes of our shame, O God.

As we cast these ashes into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that by Your power they will make fertile the soil of our future and by Your mercy nourish the seeds of peace.

For our nation’s refusal to acknowledge the brutal history of the Middle Passage and of auction blocks, of brandings and burning crosses, of back country lynchings and inner city redlining,
We lift up the stones of our anger, O God.

For a nation in which affirmative action is attacked but white privilege is condoned.
We lift up the stones of our hardness, O God.

For a nation that recruits racial minorities to fight on its battlefields but keeps them out of its boardrooms,
We lift up the stones of our arrogance, O God.

For a nation that expects immigrants of color to clean its houses and sweat in its fields in exchange for poverty pay and living with the daily fear of deportation,
We lift up the stones of our self-righteousness, O God.

As we cast these stones into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as water wears away the hardest of stones, so too may the power of Your compassion soften the hardness of our hearts and draw us into a future of justice and peace.

For a country that has elected an African American to sit in the Oval Office of a White House that was once built by slaves,
We lift up the flower of our hope, O God.

For the ability of the human heart to repent when it recognizes itself in another,
We lift up the flower of our compassion, O God.

For the brave warriors of justice who have been threatened at lunch counters, faced snarling police dogs and crushing fire hoses, and given up their lives in order to set freedom free,
We lift up the flower of our strength, O God.

For the fierce vision of our oneness that refuses to let us go,
We lift up the flower of our resolve, O God.

As we cast these flowers into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as the water nourishes the delicate petals, so too may the power of Your possibilities nourish our hearts, and through us blossom into a future of beauty, justice and peace.

Materialism/Poverty

For uprooted forests, poisoned rivers, scarred hillsides and melting icecaps that have been sacrificed to the gods of profit and progress.
We lift up the ashes of our pain, O God.

For a nation in which the welfare of corporations is deemed more important than the welfare of people.
We lift up the ashes of our remorse, O God.

For a nation that builds prisons for profit and turns medical research into a stock option,
We lift up the ashes of our grief, O God.

For impoverished neighborhoods that become the dumping grounds for our toxic refuse,
We lift up the ashes of our shame, O God.

As we cast these ashes into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that by Your power they will make fertile the soil of our future and by Your mercy nourish the seeds of peace.

For a nation of unrivaled wealth which refuses to require a living wage,
We lift up the stones of our hardness, O God.

For a nation in which the average CEO makes 400 times the earnings of the average worker,
We lift up the stones of our anger, O God.

For a nation that insists on a standard of living that would require seven planets if all the world lived as we do,
We lift up the stones of our arrogance, O God.

For a nation that offers bootstraps to the impoverished but bailouts to the wealthy,
We lift up the stones of our hypocrisy, O God.

As we cast these stones into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as water wears away the hardest of stones, so too may the power of Your compassion soften the hardness of our hearts and draw us into a future of justice and peace.

For new visions of trade that is fair, of jobs that are green and of energy that is clean,
We lift up the flower of our hope, O God.

For the emerging awareness that the human family must join together to save a planet in peril,
We lift up the flower of our compassion, O God.

For grassroots globalization that is turning back the corporate plunder of the Earth,
We lift up the flower of our strength, O God.

For the growing commitment to a spiritual maturity that is attained through material simplicity,
We lift up the flower of our resolve, O God.

As we cast these flowers into the troubled water of our times, Transforming One, hear our plea that just as the water nourishes the delicate petals, so too may the power of Your possibilities nourish our hearts, and through us blossom into a future of beauty, justice and peace.