“Remember”:
Our Prayer for Global Grace Day 2023
On November 9, we celebrate Global Grace Day. Since 2005 it has become an annual day of prayer and action for us here at Tamera and for friends around the world. We remember the horrors of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 (“The Night of Broken Glass”), a turning point in the Nazi persecution of Jews. But also the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In this context, we invoke practices of reconciliation and healing and the vision of a nonviolent world — and this year particularly, the urgent demand for an immediate ceasefire in Israel-Palestine (read our statement here). The following poem will be our prayer for this year’s Global Grace Day.
Sabine Lichtenfels & Martin Winiecki, November 6 2023
Remember…
Remember we are community, undeniably related with all beings visible and invisible
Remember the times when people inhabited this world in small tribal communities
Recall and honor the ones who came before you
Reach all the way back to remember the memory of your ancestors who still lived in cooperation with all beings
Remember how countless generations sat around fires, opening and sharing their hearts with each other
Remember that we belong to the land and not the other way round
That we have an obligation to nourish what nourishes us
That water wants to flow as freely as our own hearts
So that Life can continue to thrive
Remember who you really are
There is a deeper meaning
To being human
To belonging to Earth
To being a member of the universe
Remember your origin
The world needs you and calls out to you
To stand up for life, unambiguously
To say no to the day-to-day systematic devastation of countless beings and all its justifications
To say no to war, to any kind of violence.
No to domination and oppression, no matter against whom
To divest from all systems that rely on and profit from atrocities
Be it against other nations, groups, animals or Earth
The world calls out to you
To make your voice heard, clearly and strongly
This is the moment for courage
Your own healing begins by refusing to accept what is unacceptable
By awakening from the hypnosis suggesting that violence could make anyone more safe
Remember there is a different way to live
Remember there is an intact essence of all existence
Even now
There is a reality in which fear doesn’t exist
And war is unimaginable
Imagine
People would come together in communities of truth, trust and transparency
Liberating love from trauma and abuse
Celebrating the deep beauty of life
Imagine more and more people would follow the wisdom of flow and restore water cycles
Coming together in shared care for Earth
Building rooted livelihoods in relationship with the land and each other
Imagine
While the unstoppable collapse of the mega-societies accelerates
The seeds of a nonviolent world begin to sprout
In a growing confederation
Of autonomous bioregions around the world
Remember
Our future is ancestral
Water is life
And life is sacred