Eyes to See, Ears to Hear Peace Prayer group is called to be a place of prayer and action for the myriad circumstances in the world that are in need of justice, peace and healing. The group’s name is taken from a sermon preached by Pat Conover at Seekers entitled “Seeing What You Don’t What to See.”
In that sermon, Pat said:
I want God to account to me for why such awfulness is allowed. I don’t find much comfort in Job’s message of humility. I want to rush past the cross to the resurrection. I want the Hollywood endings, the fairy tales corrupted to read, ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’
What I have, in this mean time, is you. Can we bear the Christ for each other? Can we share the suffering and agony? Can we accept each other without being perfect? Hell, can we accept each other before we are even average or ok? Can we share the little bits of hope and caring and faith that we can muster up, or give in to, or dimly see? Can we love before we understand? Can we trust despite the evidence of our hurts? Can we trust after we feel manipulated or humiliated; when we have been manipulated or humiliated?
We know that our hearts grow heavy and numb from the news of violence and injustice all around us. We seek to create space to pray, even when we don’t see any “way out,” any action step, even, perhaps, any hope. We seek to create a place to hold the suffering and agony. But we also seek to promote engagement in addition to prayer in those places where we see possibility for connection.
Each of our activities to date has arisen from the particular interest of one member of the group. We will continue to support each other in bringing such interests to Seekers and to the wider community. As a mission group, we will hold the coordination of the Sunday morning lighting of the Peace and Justice Candle.
Our shared practice is to pray into the silence together about a particular area of concern in the Quaker style, led each meeting by one member of the group. We anticipate spiritual reporting.