A Prayer for Illumination

This past Sunday, the lectionary text spoke of a turning towards God's light in places of darkness and despair - of seeking others in positions of isolation. Following Iranian President Ahmadinejad's destructive (and unproductive) characterization of Israel as "racist" during the recent United Nations conference in Switzerland, I was all the more saddened to read the following this morning:

Israel's deputy prime minister has compared Iran to Nazi Germany, in response to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's criticism of the Jewish state at a United Nations conference..."What Iran is trying to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jewish people just 65 years ago," Shalom said at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, hours before a Holocaust memorial ceremony.

Standing, physically, in a space infected with opaque memories of genocidal cruelty, Silvan Shalom chose darkness over the healing power of God's light. "If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another" (1 John 1:6-7).

Oh God, illumine the path towards wholeness,
That we may achieve union with You -
And through You with the Beloved Community of all Persons and Things.
Amen.

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