A Prayer to No One


cartoon by Michael Leunig

May it be seen
that we fretful, fearful humans
are just lost, hurt, struggling, bewildered creatures
doing our best,
and that no one is ‘to blame’ for what has happened
on this damaged, desolated planet.

May it be seen
that we each construct
from our shame and guilt and grief and hopes and dreams
our own solitary prisons,
and in so doing make our lives
and the lives of those we claim to love
so much harder than they have to be.

May it be seen
that ‘what could be’
is just our brain’s invention,
and that ‘what should be’ — an even worse invention —
prevents us seeing what simply, astonishingly, already is.

May it be seen
that our beliefs are merely guesses, wishes, opinions
and not truths;
and that the hopelessness of this dis-ease
is nothing to be sad about.
Though we cannot be healed
we are all healing.

May we learn
to be conscious of our selves
not to make more of ourselves
but rather, to make less of them.

May we learn
to find the way
not to awakening, or enlightenment,
but to disillusionment, to acceptance of
this strange and unreal sense of separation,
this helplessness, this innocence, this tragedy
that nothing can be done about.

May we learn
to appreciate our a-part-hood
instead of our apart-hood.

May we learn
to forgive the fathers mothers lovers masters teachers gurus
who bewitched us with their false knowing
with the best of intentions.

May we discover again
the childhood wonder lost to fear,
and how to laugh
without our teeth clenched behind our masks —
to laugh so hard, and so without constraint,
that we fall down, and to our great surprise
we touch, and feel, the Earth
we had forgotten.

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2 Responses to A Prayer to No One

  1. Peter Webb says:

    Beautifully felt

  2. Shelly J. Greenstein says:

    Thank you. Beautifully written. This spoke to me but I do feel we are pretty much lost at this point in our evolution. Maybe we can turn it around, maybe not

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