“Open Heart Prayer”

01.12.2025

I learned the human brain
has not evolved
to process
these magnitudes of grief.

Can the human body handle
these interminable strings of loss?

Will the soul survive
these numbers of avoidable desolation?

Will our race
scale that hell down…
to balanced points…
back to pre-Eden harmony…
post-capitalist collapse?

Loss after loss…
after ruin…
after loss…
after catastrophe…
after loss…
after chaos…
after loss…
after death.

Are these pearls
cast before swine?

Are these grains
that in dying
gives us
the bread of life?

May we hold on
to the preciousness
which survives
raging fires.

May we
continue to learn
how to transcend
the daily deaths of
right here and
over there.

May we continue
to reach for
the roots of our ancestors
and remain the healthy seeds
of the ones
yet to be fed…
the ones yet
to be born.

The Sacred Earth sustains
us through
and through.

The Living Water already
flows within.

The Holy Breath
still here
still here
still here…
still…
still…
still…
here…

~rev [Alexandre da Silva Souto]

This prayer was offered in solidarity and lovingkindness with our siblings in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Congo, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and all the other places devastated by colonial-settler greed, hatred, and delusional dominance, and the First Nation Peoples of the Americas and every ethnic group pushed out of their ancestral land.

[photos by rev]