I delivered this prayer was offered as part of daily chapel held today at Myanmar Institute of Theology in Yangon, Myanmar, where our study group from Andover Newton Theological School, has been their guest this week.

Spirit of Life,
God of Many Names and None,
Imminent and Deeply Personal,
Full and Empty,
Within and Without,
Be Our Guide.

Hold dearly all of us creatures,
the large and small,
the weak and strong,
those in the light and those in the dark.

It is our holy work,
we who cross borders —
borders of nations, of faiths and denominations,
of ethnicity and race —
to witness the paradox of this life:
we must hold the precious truth our tradition offers,
hold it both tightly as we would carry an infant,
and loosely as if holding a growing and breathing thing.

May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts,
the actions of our bodies, the choices of our communities
be one with this truth:
there are no special blessings belonging to only one of us,
there is no separation.

Let peoples from lands far apart in geography
be joined together in love, in common purpose,
in sacred, worth effort to bring both peace and justice
to this beautiful, aching world.

Amen.