The Service Leaflet is here
Of course when the congregation sang the hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness. I immediately thought of my mother and realized how much she would have loved the outcome of this election. Mother was always “dreaming of the day….” It is certainly a hopeful trait, the idea of looking forward. But mother often forgot how to live in the moment. But I forget that she didn’t know how.
Wait a minute is this post about the Prayer Service or my mother? Maybe both, I get a warm and poignant feeling from thinking about both. How I miss her and wish she were here to talk about this with me.
I recall the day the President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963. After I got home from school, that evening mother and I went down to Temple Beth Jacob on Park Boulevard in Oakland to join in a Prayer Service. Unlike Wednesday morning’s service, the service in 1963 was not pre planned. It was just a place where the outpouring of national grief could find a home, regardless of religion.
Monday night Stephen and I and a friend went over to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for an Inter Faith Prayer Vigil for the Country and the President.
That too was a beautiful time of reflection on what is ahead for us as a Nation. This time there is an outpouring of national hope, regardless of religion.
Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America
and Director of Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary prayed this:
On this day of new beginnings, with hearts lifted high in hope, may we be a people at peace among ourselves and
a blessing to other nations. We pray to you, O God, saying
Keep this nation under your care,
And guide us in the way of justice and truth.
