2015 Mass Shootings and a Prayer on the Declaration of Independence

More mass shooting in 2015 than there have been days. Impotent leadership. After so long, even the most ardent prayers only placate. Sadness. Anger. Grief. Fear.  I am coming to believe that as sharers in the sin-sick soul of this nation, we each more Helen Lovejoy than Sojourner Truth.

My prayers today and from now on are for the victims and the community of San Bernardino and far too many others, for the parents of special needs kids and those who are for them everywhere who are sleeping and living less easy in these days.

My prayers are no longer for our leaders, for they, again, have run from the call. My prayers are now for the American people, especially for the women in America, that we must now, as we have done in the past, lead a reluctant nation to recover its right mind and heart, to remind or leaders that the governed do not consent to life as we have come to know it in 2015. We now live in a land where the self-evident truths of the Constitution are not being upheld. If we are not safe from violence we perpetrate   against ourselves, pointing only fingers of blame scapegoated others rather than examining the conscience of our common life, no person or groups of persons in this land is equal. As we are slaughtering one another in the street, at seemingly random times and in disparate and random places, we are cannot live any common life that was worth the lives and sacrifices of our Founders. We are by no means a free nation if we carry arms against one another for our fear. Rather, we are slaves of ignorance and despair.  None among us can be happy if we cannot ever find new meaning and hope, renewed life and greater purpose on the other side of our grieving, for as yet, it has no end.

It is not our leaders who have wondered far from our Creator, is us. And it is only we, in prayer and repentance, action and dedication, who can begin the long slow of return. Amen.   

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.” 
― Sojourner Truth

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Pray Truth and Freedom

Library of Congress title:

A. Lincoln showing Sojourner Truth the Bible presented by colored people of Baltimore,

Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., Oct. 29, 1864.

“Truth is powerful and it prevails.”
Sojourner Truth (b. November 18 or 26, 1797)

According to Women in History: Sojourner Truth was born into slavery into in New York State, Truth suffered its inhumanity and degradations, including being sold at age 9 years with a herd of sheep, being sold numerous other times to violent owners; suffering beatings, rapes, being told who she could and could not marry, and separation from her children. In 1827 New York completed legislating the abolition of slaver. Shortly before 1829, Truth, whose given name was Isabella Baumfree—changed later to reflect her understanding of God’s calling in her life—had a religious experience she came to describe as becoming "overwhelmed with the greatness of the Divine presence" therein she was inspired to preach and quickly became known as an rousing and “miraculous” preacher.

Her preaching brought Truth into contact with influential abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. In the spirit of the times, she was eventually drawn to the utopian cooperative ideal, joining the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. There she met Olive Gilbert and began dictating her memoirs The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave was published privately by William Lloyd Garrison in 1850.

In 1854, Truth was invited to speak at the Ohio Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, she gave her most famous speech -- with the legendary phrase, “Ain’t I a Woman.”


In 1864 Truth worked among freed slaves in the Washington D.C. area meeting with President Abraham Lincoln. A famous painting, and subsequent photographs of the event, depicts President Lincoln showing Sojourner the 'Lincoln Bible,' given to him by the black people of Baltimore, Maryland.

After the Civil War ended, she continued working to help the newly freed slaves through the Freedman's Relief Association, then the Freedman's Hospital in Washington.

In the days ahead, let us pray for truth.

Let us pray for freedom.

Let us pray to be “overwhelmed with the greatness of the Divine presence.”

May we come in these days to experience the grace and mercy

of the truth of our own beings and of our lives.

May we begin to know the blessed freedom of living and being in truth toward

our selves and our sisters and brothers.

May we begin, in these, to know the limitless compassion of the presence of the Divine

in the living of our days.

Amen.