presented at the chapel service of Harris Manchester College, January 21, 2026
There are many kinds of prayer. The petitionary requests of the divine intercession. Some times such words are offered imploringly, desperately, longing for the impossible. We beg of God—or however we conceptualize that which is greater than all yet resides within each—with words similar to those of Jesus, “Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”
Other times we petition fearfully, believing change is necessary but terrified of what a shift might bring. “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet,” wrote Augustine.
We offer grateful praise: “i thank You God for most this amazing day,” e. e. cummings. We declaim the unutterable experience of mystic unity: “My eyes are no longer my eyes. / A sweetness has entered through them,” sang Mirabai. We bless each other, wishing each other well: “May you be blessed with the glitter of joy, dances of liberation … and the nourishment of radical love,” says my colleague Cathy Rion Starr. We uplift the goodness that surrounds: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” taught Julian of Norwich.
Tonight, I offer you a prayer of intention setting as we honor the man the great high priestess of soul herself, Nina Simone, once named the King of Love. He told us what we must inscribe upon our hearts if we are to ever experience what he called the beloved community, that moment when we uncover the human family whole and reconciled.
He taught us: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
For the wisdom to name injustice, I invite you to say with me, we pray.
He counseled us: “There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.”
For the discomfort of maladjustment that all seekers of justice must have, I invite you to say with me, we pray.
He warned us: “We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.”
For the creativity that must come if we are to transcend the horrors of the hour, I invite you to say with me, we pray.
He implored: “we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
For the strength of heart to be, as Dr. King modeled himself, an “extremist for love” and take, in his words, “the more excellent way of love” as a guide so that we might be dreamers of the dream, and builders of peace where there is hate and discord, I invite you to say with me, we pray.
With these lessons he promised: “We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”
That we each might be the ones who carve hope from despair and bring more joy, beauty, peace, and love into the world, I invite you to carry Dr. King’s words in your hearts, even as I try to carry them in mine, and say with me Amen.
