The healing of nations

(Part 3 of a series on A Lenten journey of love)

Beyond one man’s destiny, there is the nation’s destiny. Just as there is a karmic repercussion to each man’s lifetime behavior so a whole nation can glory or suffer its own karma.

Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love concluded with a prayer in which she asked God to help us "find our way home from pain to peace, from fear to love, from hell to heaven." Now, with Illuminata, Marianne Williamson returns to prayer.

Illuminata brings prayer into our lives, helping us release anger, find forgiveness, and mind relationships.

The healing of nations

On August 1, 1994, the Polish nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, in which 200,000 Poles were killed by German Nazis, and 500,000 more were transported to concentration camps.

During this commemoration, German president Roman Herzog made an extraordinary apology to the Polish people. "Today, I bow down before the fighters of the Warsaw Uprising as before all Polish victims of the war," he said. "I ask for forgiveness for what has been done to you by Germans… It fills us Germans with shame that the name of our country and people will forever be associated with pain and suffering, which was inflicted on Poland a million times. We mourn the dead of the Warsaw Uprising and all people who lost their lives in World War II."

Polish president Lech Walesa had invited the German president to take part in commemorative ceremonies as an "act of healing." He said, "We do not give absolution to the murderers in Warsaw, but we do not pass those feelings upon the German nation… Blood and hatred are a curse of the 20th century; may they disappear in the past along with it."

A sincere amends releases God’s corrective energy within the giver as well as the receiver. The German nation will be as blessed by Herzog’s apology as will the Poles, who, as one Polish woman said, "had been waiting 50 years to hear this." The day after Herzog’s speech, I read an editorial in an American newspaper in which Herzog’s apology was lauded. "Now," said the American newspaper editor, "if only the Japanese would do the same toward the Chinese!"

Prayer for the leaders

We are experiencing a crisis of leadership now, not so much because people lack the qualities necessary for it, but because we systematically invalidate such qualities. It is hard in today’s world for a person to stand up in excellence and power within the public realm. There are myriad forces marshaled against doing so, causing a massive brain and spirit drain from the realms of worldly power.

Let us support the possibility of greatness, in anyone at any time. We must rethink our attitudes about leaders, or at the rate we’re going we will soon have none. We must create the fertile ground for leadership in order to prepare the way for great leaders. A politician listens to his or her constituents; a leader listens to whispers in the wind.

Dear Lord,

We pray for the leaders of this country and every other.

May they not be swayed by false politics but listen instead to the spirit of truth.

May they not hearken to the false and bitter voices of a frightened world, but instead hear the angels who minister unto them.

May the world make room for their leadership and resist no more their growth into greatness.

May their virtue shield them.

May their lack of virtue be forgiven and corrected.

May their words be true.

May their strength go before them, to cut like a sword through all illusion.

May they see the innocence and brotherhood in those who oppose them.

May they grow beyond a shallow fight.

And thus may we all be taken with them into new light, new peace, new politics, new hope for all the world.

Amen

Prayer for the higher self

of government leaders

Dear God,

In this one moment I recognize that there is within me a perfect Self;

A Self that is not dysfunctional;

A Self that is not weak but strong;

Not limited, but unlimited;

Not small, but huge;

Not in pain but in peace;

Not faithless and scared but all-knowing, all-loving, serene and calm and happy through the grace of God.

I have been playing with the toys of death and weakness.

I have been playing at sickness and playing at addiction.

I have been playing at dysfunction and limitation and war.

I have been playing at hunger and violation of myself and others.

I have been playing with toys that are dangerous.

But I desire to play the games of death no more.

In this moment, I ask You, dear God, to release me from my destructive thinking.

I take up now the mantle of Your magnificence.

Through Your grace, dear God, may I be good and innocent and strong and pure, for thus would You have me be.

The love that emanates from Your mind to me, and from my mind to the minds of others, is a power so great. Within its embrace all negativity shall turn to good, all pain to peace, all fear to love.

I invoke Your light.

I receive Your heaven, which replaces hell.

I do not look back.

I do not stop my eyes at the veil of horror that surrounds the world, but rather I extend my vision to the possibilities for love for myself and others.

I step out of my childhood, into my adulthood; out of weaknesses, into my strengths; out of my fear, into love, out of my small self, into You.

Dear God, please make me new.

Amen.

Prayer for the world

There is no world outside us. The world is, in fact, our collective projection of love and fear, hopes and conflicts. In taking responsibilities for our own thoughts and feelings, we play our part in the healing of the world.