Prayers for Peace
Rev. Diane Rollert
15 October 2023
I always say that my role as a Unitarian Universalist minister is not to tell you what to believe. I cannot tell you how to see or not see God, I can only act as a guide, as we navigate these challenging waters of faith.
I can tell you where my own faith leads me. I can tell you what holds and guides me, as I try to live according to my own principles, the principles that drew me to this tradition so long ago.
I am grieving. Grieving for my own people, who are my people and not my people. I am grieving for the children, who are my children and not my children.
The other night as I tucked my granddaughter into bed, I sang her all the songs that I have made up for each of my babies. The ones for my son and daughter, the ones for both of my grandchildren. As I sang in the quiet and the comfortable safety of my grandchildren’s room, my mind flashed on children in Israel and Gaza, their parents helplessly trying to shelter them and keep them safe. I wept, feeling helpless myself. I wept with guilty gratitude that I and my grandchildren are living in peace.
The other day I heard a podcast conversation with the Québécoise journalist Émilie Nicholas talking about the media’s response to the crisis. She and host Jesse Brown lamented the way that each camp quickly hardened into their positions, before we even had time to know what was happening.
Émilie said something that struck me profoundly. She said, “If you're having a hard time figuring out the right way to talk about this, you're the person we should be hearing from the most.”
I don’t know if I am the person you should be hearing from the most, but I do know that I am having a hard time figuring out the right way to talk about this.
I am Jewish and I am Unitarian Universalist. I hear from friends who find themselves on either side of this conflict and I feel their anger and grief. I know there is nothing I can say right now that can change how they feel. I have my own anger and despair to hold. None of us are experts. None of us have the whole story. But you don’t need to be an expert to know that killing civilians is never justified.
This is our challenge, here far across the world, here in this community. We have to find ways to talk with each other, to grieve together, while recognizing that the words we speak and the words we hear may hurt. We have to find our compassion for each other, because we are all trying to figure out how to respond to something that none of us can control.
I don’t want to go where this war is taking us. I don’t want to see the destruction of the interfaith bridges we have built. I want to cry out that we are all being manipulated. That the people of Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar, are being used as pawns in a game that has no winner. I pray for our relationships. I pray that we, the people of our separate diasporas, will stop arguing and start working together to save lives.
I have no answers, except to remind myself again and again that I affirm the inherent worthiness and dignity of every person, and that my faith calls me to struggle with this challenge every day of my life. My faith calls me to remember our shared humanity. My faith calls me to work for peace even when that peace is a fantasy or a distant dream, because the alternative is unthinkable.
There is this beautiful Israeli song that begins with the words Kol haolam kulo gesher tzar me'od, the world is a narrow bridge — and the main thing is to have no fear at all. I don’t know about ever living without fear, but I am grateful to you all for travelling on this narrow bridge with me. At times I feel as though I might fall off, but you are here to catch me.
I could not have faced this day alone.