Prayer for Highland Park by Maren Tirabassi
Prayer for Highland Park, Illinois
God, we pray for Highland Park,
asking your tenderness
with those who mourn family and friends,
suddenly and terribly lost,
your care for all those wounded,
and your gentle peace
with those who may hear fireworks
as automatic rifle fire
all the days of their lives.
For this small local palm sunday
turned into a via dolorosa,
a “sorrowful way,”
independence-day become day-of-fear,
celebration of beautiful America
become mourning
of broken America,
we weep, even for ourselves,
but mostly for this town,
these people, who will remember
a terrible rain on their parade.
amen.
Where They Would Have Been: Home — A Meditation by Rev Gail Doktor (caveat: all mistakes in this reflection are my own)
Last weekend, my daughter Sarah and son-in-law Nirajan honored the covenant of marriage with the blessings and bindings offered by a Hindu priest. It was their third wedding ceremony: two earlier mid-COVID occasions were officiated by Christian ministers. Over the weekend, we joined together two families and nationalities: one with long roots traceable backward across centuries of Judeo-Christian heritage as early settlers and builders of this nation, and the other recently-minted residents who arrived as Nepali immigrants seeking political asylum and then earned US citizenship. We observed hours of prayer, ritual, and symbolism. We reveled with joy, laughter, tears, spicy Nepali food, drinking, singing, and dancing to Nepali music in an (ironically) American-Irish Hall in Malden, MA. Together our joined families embody the possibility of this democracy: what love and peace can accomplish within the frameworks of liberty.
On the July 4th holiday following the family weekend, we wandered Boston, MA with Doktor and Fitzsimons family members visiting from out-of-town. They had been part of the wedding celebration. The Fitzsimons’ missed their own Independence Day traditions, usually focused in Highland Park, IL, to share Sarah and Nirajan’s marital moment with us.
On July 4th, we watched a magician on the steps of Faneuil Hall, untethering himself from impossible bindings. Held our breath for an athlete balanced high on a pogo stick in Quincy Market. Wandered the waterfront, the harbor. Stood on tiptoe to peek at dancers performing for the crowd, their rhetoric creatively challenging racism among onlookers and bystanders, until we laughed at ourselves and became part of their willing audience. Found public restrooms. Chugged water. Ate Irish pub food.
We walked through the haunting remembrance of the Holocaust memorial with the numbers of millions of prisoners imprinted on glass, hot steam rising under our feet, the taut words of survivors incised onto stones. Remember. Remember what can happen when oppressive regimes make others less than human. Remember when violence is given reign. Remember the lives taken. Men, women, and children. Remember. (for the rest of the article, scroll down after the poem…) https://jacksoncommunitychurch.org/prayer-for-highland-park-by-maren-tirabassi/
