What Is Your Prayer for Peace?

February 7, 2024 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

For the annual United Nations observance of World Interfaith Harmony Week, communities around the world have hosted events in person and online. Breakfasts, services, workshops, walks, symposia. Peace-making initiatives and calls to climate action. Events fostering unity and interfaith harmony through storytelling and environmental education. Art exhibitions, concerts, spaces of stillness and meditation. In mosques, synagogues, churches, temples, meeting houses, gurdwaras. Intersectionality of traditions, issues, and media. Watching the flow of events through this past week has felt like life-giving... Read more

A Simple Way to Celebrate World Interfaith Harmony Week

February 2, 2024 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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For the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, Alignment: Interfaith Contemplative Practices is hosting a virtual Prayer Wall for Peace. Add your own message to the wall and join a global community of people from a wide array of traditions. Individuals and communities are posting songs, prayers, images, words, poems, messages of all kinds with the intention of highlighting interfaith harmony and expanding the longing for peace in a world that is hurting. Take a few minutes to add your... Read more

Ordinary Rituals That Create Sacred Space

January 25, 2024 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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Heidi Barr, poet, wellness coach, author of creative nonfiction, and keen observer of the patterns of daily living, recently led a workshop for Alignment. She called us to take a moment to observe the unobserved. Those tasks that fill our lives, whether from necessity or habit, that carve paths of ritual throughout our waking moments. The ceremonies of the ordinary. A phrase she borrows from Kent Nerburn as she writes in her book, Collisions of Earth and Sky. To find... Read more

Don’t Know How to Pray? Here’s How.

January 18, 2024 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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Prepared or unprepared. If one were to break down prayer into two basic categories, there would be the prayers of the carefully crafted words and the prayers of the flowing thoughts. The prayers handed down through generations of faithful supplicants sometimes in languages not truly known to those using them. And the prayers that have been composed like poetry to be delivered during a service or at a special occasion. Versus the words that seem to be coming from a... Read more

Can a Muslim and a Jew Pray Together?

January 12, 2024 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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During times of immense loss in the world, times of conflict and violence, when grief abounds and anxiety soars, turning to prayer is a natural response for many. Sometimes it feels as if it is the only thing we can do as lives are shattered around us. But when the war involves people of different traditions, when one fears their tradition and people are threatened, can we pray for those of another faith? Can a Muslim pray with and for... Read more

Calendar of Light 2023

December 2, 2023 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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As we engage in the ongoing work of seeking peace in a world ravaged by war, pain, and loss, we look to the wisdom of our world’s traditions. The Calendar of Light is a collaboration in which all traditions are honored, all prayers uplifted, in the hope that this will pave the path to greater peace among all the peoples and nations of this world. And in finding this intersection, there may we find the road to justice. A new... Read more

Week of Prayer for World Peace (Day 6) Sikh Prayers

October 21, 2023 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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On the sixth day of the Week of Prayer for World Peace, we pray for those who hold to their beliefs in peace and justice. Dr. Nirinjan Kaur Khalsa Baker offers a prayer from the Sikh tradition which originated in medieval India during a time of invasion, forced conversion, oppression, and injustice. Nirinjan introduces the work of the Sikh gurus who were mystics, poets, musicians, and warriors and who taught of the same interconnectedness of all life that Rev. Qalvy... Read more

Week of Prayer for World Peace (Day 5) Buddhist Prayers

October 20, 2023 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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On this fifth day of the Week of Prayer for World Peace, we pray for families caught in conflict. Rev. Qalvy Grainzvolt offers a prayer from the Shinnyo-en Buddhist tradition. The mantra, the GOREIJU (mantra of benevolence and liberation) and one of the core chants in the Shinnyo tradition, the JOJUSAN is composed of two words Namu Shinnyo. These words call us to be in oneness with the ever-present nature of awakening and the embodiment of inner goodness. As we... Read more

Week of Prayer for World Peace (Day 4) Hindu Prayers

October 18, 2023 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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On this fourth day of the Week of Prayer for World Peace, we pray for those we perceive as enemies. Savita Singh offers a prayer from the Hindu tradition. The Week of Prayer coincides with the nine days of Navaratri in honor of the nine forms of Durga, the mother goddess. The universal mother is known by many names, and in today’s prayer, we pay homage to her as Shakti and to her power in overcoming the maya, the physical... Read more

Week of Prayer for World Peace (Day 3) Lebanese Maronite Prayers

October 17, 2023 By Rev. Dr. Margaret Somerville

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On this third day of the Week of Prayer for World Peace, we pray for those working with courage to improve our world. Serge El Helou from Beirut, Lebanon offers prayers from the Lebanese Maronite Christian tradition. As our hearts are heavy with the news of war, as we search for ways to be of support to those in our own communities whose every breath is gripped with the terror of violence and loss, we pour out our prayers in... Read more