A Prayer More in Keeping with Our Great Pre-COVID-19 Progress (so rudely interrupted)

We thank thee, O Lord, that this same glorious Beijing, which once was moved to create an unprecedentedly harsh, exacting and uncompromising, anti-social and even anti-human socialism (even as all things social and human must needs be subject to periodic revolutionary upheaval), has been pleased in the fulness of time, and in the abundance of its wisdom, to create a Maoist capitalism equivalent to, and fulfilment of, that same glorious Maoist socialist experiment.

We thank thee that this truly unprecedented capitalism, solely by its own strength, brilliance and dogged determination, has lifted so many unworthy multitudes out of poverty, both within its own borders and far beyond them, even unto Africa and Europe and America - even as our own want of faith in Beijing, and undue harshness towards its legitimate mistakes, have begun to plunge us back into a conceivably still worse poverty.

We humbly beseech thee to grant us true repentance, and Beijing's holy spirit, that we may once again strive to be some small part, however unworthy, of that glorious, inevitable and impregnable post-human Future which the People's Republic has so kindly undertaken to build alike for us, and for all humankind, unto all ages. Amen.

(Edited.)

A Kind of Prayer for Easter

As the title suggests (make sure you're sitting down), I'm really not very good at this sort of thing. Which means that "getting it better" is not going to be just a matter of trying harder. Also, please excuse what may seem like the unnecessary length - these are trying times, and I'm learning by fits and starts, if at all. Anyhow, here goes:


Divine Father, we who were hardly expecting this interruption have been hardly prepared for it. We who were so unstoppable have become all but immobilized. We strong ones who once loomed so large and competent over the whole earth have shrunk back to our familiar spaces, so that now we seem small and helpless even to ourselves. Please don't let us forget this passing moment - and this abiding reality - of our smallness and helplessness. And all the more so as we prepare to resume one day our "normal"  routines. Let us not again become so big and overwhelming, so fast and furious, as to be daunted by nothing else in this world that is, after all, of Your creation, not ours. Let us remember who we are, and who You are (verse 3). 

Console the suffering and the dying with that stillness of Your presence that searches, convicts, loves and nurtures all things. Prepare them for Your bosom. Likewise those who care for and minister to them. Deliver us all from this self-inflicted morass into which we slid so quickly, and from which now we seem to be emerging so very slowly. Those of us who will live on, may we thank You for allowing us some small share in Your Passion during this strangest of all Lents. Make our own rising from this ordeal one with Your Resurrection, and thus utterly free - even as Your Resurrection was free - from all boasting, violence, vengeance and triumphalism. Give us the humble joy and gratitude of Your Resurrected Life, not because, but in spite of our eventual return to "full" normality, and because we are undeceived by its seeming triumph.

Let our confidence in ourselves be so much the less, even as we know our only Confidence is in Your Son our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns even now, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

(Edited.)