Man Writes A Prayer For Humanity To End Extreme Poverty

from the Hartford Couriant

A unique way to help out, and all you have to do is talk. - Kale

by Susan Campbell

Life feels like we're perched on some kind of weird bubble. Prices (and tempers) are high. Public discourse has descended to name-calling. Drivers seem to be more aggressive.

This kind of thing happens when it looks like resources are shrinking. The string pulls tighter and social niceties go by the wayside.

What we need, says Jonathan Denn, co-director of Trinity Conference Center in West Cornwall, is a little prayer.

Several months ago, Denn was thinking about a place far tougher than Connecticut — Darfur — and trying to find a way to start conversation about that country's plight. He thought about writing a play, but how would one stage that?

Instead, he wrote a seven-second prayer: The world now has the means to end extreme poverty, we pray we will have the will.

He asked some clergy friends if the prayer made sense. They responded overwhelmingly that it did, and Denn offered it publicly for the first time last year at St. Paul's Chapel, the miraculous and historic church just across the street from Ground Zero in New York.

St. Paul's has stood since 1766. George Washington worshiped there. So did Lord Charles Cornwallis. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, the chapel became a haven for thousands of rescue workers and volunteers who slept and wept there for months. Some of the cards and letters left by people who wandered through are on display at the church in a show, "Unwavering Spirit: Hope and Healing at Ground Zero." The affiliation is Episcopalian, but it's really more of a people's chapel.

Because St. Paul's has become something of a part of a pilgrimage, the prayer's inauguration was heavily attended.

And now, Denn is asking faith groups and individuals to say his prayer, more than once and outdoors, if possible, where others will see them and ask questions. One prayer for every billion people living in extreme poverty — that's $1 or less per day — is going to take a lot of prayers. People can pray in person or online at www.countingprayers.org.

In 2000, 189 countries — including the United States — agreed to a list of United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which includes things like eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, and reducing child mortality. We are far from reaching those goals, or even halfway.

Denn has attended several social justice workshops lately, including one charmingly called Righteous Indignation in May in New York.

He said the general feeling among people who are paying attention is that we're in a kairos moment, a time when something special happens, something like the end of apartheid, or the civil rights movement, when it was cooking. That bubble could pop any time.

We have the means. We lack the will. Perhaps repetition of a simple prayer will move our feet, and a full-on effort would certainly get the attention of decision-makers.

"If you are a person of faith, those things have to be important," said Denn. "If they are important, then we have to act on it now. Acting on it now really is demanding that our representatives do the right thing."

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