Prayer: Lent 1944

Lord God of hosts, I am for peace, but if there must be strife, teach Thou my hands to war and my fingers to fight.

Let me not learn from my adversaries to overcome my brother men with the barbed entanglements of deceit, and poison stench of calumny. Let me not taste of their dainties: their feast of avengings, sweet-coated with reason and malice-spiced. Nor let me sit surveying with lofty looks and mockery, in the seat of the scornful.

But teach me to encompass those that hate with a larger measure of compassion than I have yet wrung from my grief alone. And to this end give me true meekness to resist not evil, and courage never to retreat before its threat.

For only here within its glaring eyes can I detect what causes hate, and understand my adversaries' fears, (that may be kin to mine); and here know the dark places where they take refuge from the light of truth.

Here must I stand, reproaches raining on my head in line of fire, until I know and understand what authority sustains them, what ambitions drive, wherein lies their sense of guilt and failure, what good they long for and disguise with pride and sullen anger. (How the dark angels must laugh at this absurdity: that evil should divide us who need each others' good.)

Now let me pray until my hands are washed in innocency that I do no harm, stifle no man's chance to grow in spirit with harsh finality of judgement, and take no mean advantage with my perception of his frailty.

So may I meet my enemy who takes my coat with strict legality, and let him also have my cloak (due process of Thy spiritual law), and stand in my simplicity. O, let him have no fear of me.

Even in this miry place strewn with the traps that he has laid for me, show me how to walk the second mile with unfaltering generosity as I see him stumble in confusion and in panic before our common enemy, the hells of hate.

Then place within my waiting hands the weapon of Thy choosing that can dispel his fears, disarm, and leave no scars of condemnation: the steel of sharp discriminating thought? the soaring wings of fearless words? the shattering of falsity with blast of truth?

Or is it in Thy will for me to use the sunny laughter of the heart and mind that, clear-eyed but never hostile, sees men plot dementedly, at variance with their own professions, but holds in happy balance judgement and mercy, kindness and penetrating thought?

Release my spirit with gentle wings of laughter, this dove of peace, from tragic brooding on my personal injury, and let me escape to a mountain, to a wide vision of new life where we can work and laugh and pray together, my brother men and I.

Is this fit blessing to bestow when they curse, hating me? Is this the turning of the cheek, as Thou hast taught to men of peace?

Lord God of hosts, I am at peace within myself thus praying, but do not know the way to final victory. Is it in failing that I gain, in losing find? Let me wait patiently for thee, not fretting, until I feel thy guiding hand and know Thy blessing.

(the enemy may be Churchmen, not simply the Germans and Japanese)