Noonday Prayer - Brokenness

After lighting the candle with this gatha from Thich Nhat Hanh,

In the garbage, I see a rose.
In the rose, I see the garbage.
Everything is in transformation.
Even permanence is impermanent.

I shared the first reading.

Reading 1 (Deena Metzger, “Leavings” for Sister Cao ngor Phuong):
From Prayers for Healing, edited by Maggie Oman, 1997

I want what is left:
The tea leaves, the soiled images on cards,
The gasp of words as meaning slips away,
The rinds of the alphabet,
The chewed poems of prisoners,
The bones and the skeletons,
The secretions, …
The spilled blood,
…, the phlegm and the cough.

It has always been women’s work to prepare the corpse.

But, I will not make a corpse from these elements,
I will make a child.
I will make you such a rose of a child,
A rose of a child held in the crook
Of the dark hand of a dead branch,
I will make you a child shining
Like an angel from these elements of dark,
And the child will sing.

This is what we have
This is what we have to work with.

So give them to me,
First, your dead, moldering
In the dreadful heat of your deserted cities,
Then, give me the iron birds in the sky,
With their demented warbling,
Last, I want your radiant soil
With its eternal shimmer,
Give me everything mangled and bruised,
And I will make a light of it to make you weep,
And we will have rain,
And begin again.

***
Then I said that this reading raised questions for me, coming from a book of prayers for healing. How do we view the marginalized? What does it mean to be broken? What is broken that needs healing? What does brokenness – or healing – look like? What do we do with “what is left,” after the “good stuff” is gone?

There was quiet reflection and sharing, some of it quite poignant. Then, one of the participants asked to hear the reading again.

Then, we prayed.

“Spirit of Life, God of our many understandings, we ask to be lead toward healing and toward better understanding of brokenness. We ask to know how what is broken can be healed – and we lift up the following people and situations that need healing. (pause for a few to speak) For these spoken concerns and for those we hold in our hearts, we pray for healing and understanding. Amen.”

And I closed with the following reading:

Reading 2 (W.E.B. Du Bois):
From Prayers for Healing, edited by Maggie Oman, 1997

It is the wind and the rain, [O God,] the cold and the storm that make this earth [of Thine] to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world’s work to its highest perfection. Let us learn then in these growing years to respect the harder sterner aspects of life together with its joy and laughter, and to weave them all into the great sacred web [which hangs holy to the Lord.].

** Note: bracketed words were deleted; italicized word was added