In this week when the young violinist and Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi
leapt to his death,
In this week when countless other children whose names we do not know fell
prey, our prayer begins with the words of Mary Oliver:
Just as truly as the earth is ours, we belong
to it. The tissue of our minds is made of it,
and the soles of our feet, as fully as
the tiger’s claw, the branch of the whitebark pine,
the voices of birds, the dog-tooth violet
and the tooth of the dog.
We belong to the earth, the poet writes, and thus when a boy leaps from a
bridge,
And when a boy even younger fashions a noose while others are laughing,
poking the pointy sticks of their cruelty into the soft flesh of young gay men,
the earth howls.
The whitebark pine knows everything of fierce winds, of gales that snap its
branches sharp as bone.
The dog-tooth violet crumbles underfoot and the teeth of dogs
sink hard but none of our earthly companions know anything of choosing death.
Help us oh wise world to school our children in the voices of birds, not
cyberspace tweets.
Help us to train our eyes in search of the tiger’s claw, the padding of our own
feet;
Help us as Mary Oliver writes, to “sing if [we] can sing, and if not
be musical inside [ourselves].”
Forgive us, oh steady and pulsing earth, for each moment we fail to hear the
music inside, forgive us the terrible sound of children chased to oblivion.
Prayer offered by Rev. Leaf Seligman on Oct. 3, 2010 at First Parish UU, Fitchburg, MA
