America grieves with you, Boston

America grieves with you, Boston. For your heart is her heart, and her heart yours. All life is precious, in America and everywhere. The tears drop. The heart rises to meet the needs of the wounded lives, bodies, and spirits of the people. Our hearts are with you, O Boston, and with all those in America and across the world who cherish one another, and who cherish the freedom and the gift to come together in peace.

May compassion for all grow out of the depths of this tragedy. May the identification with others – and the suffering of others – be as it has historically been in Boston: a place from which new ways of being and living emerge on the stage of human awareness. For Boston has been a place from which new ideas have been born that have changed the world – including resistance to colonial rule, and opposition to slavery.

May we come to know that by acting in peace, by peace, and through peace, the roots and seeds and soil in which violence in any form comes to be, can be uprooted, changed, and healed. May we come to understand that we will not be able to solve the problems of terrorism through violence or revenge… but only truly through commitment to peace, and to creating the conditions of society whereby violence in any from cannot flourish. May our knowing of the preciousness of life, and our identification with the suffering of others at the hands of violence - in our streets, in war zones around the world, and in the quiet violence of poverty and neglect in America and in so many places on the earth - be central to the legacy of what emerges from this tragedy. May we learn to care for All. Let that be what emerges out of this tragedy.

My deep prayers to out to all who suffer in this time, in Boston.
And all who suffer from violence anywhere in the world.

Amen.