We don’t need more successful people!

In her book Essays of Undoing the writer Terry Tempest Williams, a conservationist and activist writes the following –

“…the plain fact is the planet does not need more successful people,
but it does desperately need more peacemakers,
healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind.”

Our neighborhoods and communities have yearned for healers during this pandemic. It has not been the successful ones as we often determine them, but it has been the others we have needed. The nurses and porters, doctors and janitors, first responders, fastidious researchers, and the many mask makers are the ones we have needed and trusted. We have witnessed unbelievable sacrifice and unending determination to care when so many of us have been less than careful. This pandemic season which is so much longer than a season of Lent will be remembered as one of incredible sorrow and loss and also a season when so many demonstrated a jubilant mix of all things human and all things holy. May we be driven by the desire to serve rather than the desire to be deemed successful.

Prayer:
Loving God
today I light a candle
for all the peacemakers,
for the healers and hand holders,
for all those who seek the best in others
for all who make the best possible.
Loving God,
remind me
how to be human
so I can be holy.
Amen.