We learn war no more

Sunday, November 8, 2009, approximate time, 1112 hours, worship songs have been sung, and the worship leader begins to pray…

“…Father G-d, as we approach Veterans day, we ask that you bless our soldiers and their sacrifice for our freedoms that we enjoy. Bless them G-d, and protect them as they fight in distant lands, protecting us and the freedoms we enjoy…”

My heart is no longer in the prayer.
My mind is now engaged which is usually a bad thing for the person I’m focusing on, or institution which I’m in.
I’ve been having issues with many in Christianity today because of their rabid devotion to the secular issues of this world, but this prayer…yes, this prayer brought it home for me.
As I said, it’s a bad thing when I start thinking in the middle of a worship service, but there I was…thinking.
And these are my thoughts.

You…idiot.
Do you have any clue what you are praying?
You all are thanking these men and women for doing things they wish they had never done.
You are thanking them for seeing things they wish they had never seen.
You are blessing them with a hell they wish they had never been part of.
You are thanking them for slaughtering people.
You are thanking them for butchering men, women, and children.
You are thanking them for delivering wholesale destruction on someone else’s nation, someone else’s community, someone else’s places of worship, and more so, someone else’s homes.
You are asking the Lord G-d Almighty to bless the destructive capabilities of our nation which has no peer in this world.
And my one and only thought is this…have you lost your mind?

You want G-d to bless our soldiers, then be more specific with the blessing…bless our soldiers with peace.
Bless them with compassion so that they may show compassion.
Bless them with hope so that when they come back home they don’t turn on their own family, their own community, their own nation.
But most of all, bless our Nations leaders with a brain.
With common sense.
With an overall burden of knowledge that war only causes more problems, and that someone, somewhere has to have the balls, the courage, the compassion of the divine, and a concern for humanity that enough is enough.

Because the prayer you just prayed…is not a good prayer.
It is a bad prayer.
A very, very bad prayer…and I refuse, nay, I will not pray such a prayer.

So, as I have ponder that moment, I have come upon the prayer that I will pray.

So this is my prayer for Veterans and soldiers on Veterans Day.

May the sovereign G-d that you know or do not know watch over you.
May he bring you out of the maw of the dragon, and back to your home.
May the G-d of heaven and earth teach you peace of mind, peace of heart, and peace of soul.
May the Lord G-d Almighty caress you with compassion, may he cradle you in love, and may you be a living expression of that love.
To love without hesitation.
To care without concern.
To live a life without fear.
May G-d bring you the joys of life you have taken, or seen taken and may your only burden be concern as a teacher of caution for our future.
May you be the voice of history that we, who do not know the hunger of the dragon, heed your experience and learn from your life that you may willingly share.
And may G-d give us a spirit of discernment and a teachable heart to listen your wisdom.
So with all our love, may G-d give you all that you need, but most of all, may G-d give you the peace of the spirit that your soul may linger in the fields of life a moments time longer, and may we all walk in the paths of a quiet life.
May your knowledge, your experience be our knowledge, our experience so when we say “no more war,” it is not out of ignorance, but out of your knowledge that we understand the scripture, “and we will learn war no more.”

That is my Prayer, and may G-d make it so.

Amen.