October 2015
Last week I was preparing to speak at a Healthy Leaders Retreat for women of Luther Seminary. As I was organizing my thoughts for healthy leaders and Jesus’s ministry of healing in the church, my attention was drawn to a broadcast of the Ground Zero prayer service. The prayer service was planned as part of Pope Francis’s visit to the United States. All major world religions were represented and each in their own language ( interpreted in English as well) offered a mediation on peace. Following each meditation a novice priest would signal the amen by striking a gong. Jewish, B’ahi, Greek Orthodox, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and so on, each stepped to the podium and offered from their own faith a meditation on peace. When the Hindu priest stepped up to the microphone and greeted the crowd with Namaste then began with om shanti shanti om, a Sanskrit call for universal peace, tears ran down my face, I quietly said amen, let it be so. In a war torn world that uses religion to justify horrendous actions, sending thousands of refuge from their home. In a world of repeated gun violence in our schools, in a world of hunger and homelessness, in the midst of it all, there is a call for peace. A call for peace that has the potential to heal this wounded world down to its very core. The prayer service closed with a choir singing one of my favorite hymns, Let there BE peace on earth and let it begin with me. This month Yogadevotion’s devotions will be centered around the healing that peace brings and how we integrate that experience in our faith and yoga practices. Let peace begin with each of us, for that is the way of Jesus.
Namaste
Pastor Cindy
