Bless the Children

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Bless the children.

Those who know no place called home,

Those who believe each day is their last,

Those torn from their mother’s breast,
and their father’s arms.

...the unparented, under fed, 
     frightened, and hopeless,

...the little ones ravaged by disease,
     or deeply cut and burned by brutality.

Please bless…

The boy who didn’t have the ability
to say “no” when “No!” is what he
desperately needed to scream.

And, the precious little, blue-eyed girl laid
out in the tiny white casket whose last and
only word was “Hi!”

Bless the children.

Spirit of Life,

I implore you to grant me the capacity to see the
wounded child in all those who

violate the sanctity of body and soul –
the perpetrator, neglector, and self-loather.

May I come to acknowledge and meet their tending needs
more fully than I suckle my own fears and rage.

May I have the courage and compassion to embrace
the children within me when they call out from the
monster-ous darkness.

Let faith be my swaddling cloth.

Please bless the children.

May I receive their teachings with gracious humility.

I too, pledge to go outside the lines,

invite others to play, share, 

and be joyously enamored by color.

I pray for soft blessings upon their foreheads
when you draw them near.

Sisters and Brothers,

May we now rest wakefully,
taken up into the gentle arms
of our shared Mother’s
unconditional love,

And,

May our Great Father’s wisdom
foster humanity’s overdue initiation
into an authentic and enduring adulthood.

Let’s all bless the children.

Sisters and Brothers,

May we now rest wakefully,
taken up into the gentle arms
of our shared Mother’s
unconditional love,

And,

May our Great Father’s wisdom
foster humanity’s overdue initiation
into an authentic and enduring adulthood.

Let’s all bless the children.

©2006-2019/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in Note to Self: Poems for Changing the World from the Inside Out

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