Prayers

A Prayer on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels

Holy and loving God,
help us to see ourselves
as You see us—
these people we are
beneath our colored flesh.

Burn away
with a purifying fire
the cataracts of ignorance
and prejudice
Take from us
our small-mindedness,
our sometimes inbred need
to see with human eyes
and not with our true sight—
that vision you have set within us.

Replace the violence that grows within us
when we are frightened
and challenged
with the peacefulness
and the love you have shown to us
in Jesus, our brother and our friend.

Help us to embrace color—
to see, in our various tints,
the holiness of our flesh.

Love us in all the colors of our skin—
in our reds,
in our blackness,
in our yellows
in our browns
and in our whiteness.

Love us for the fire
of compassion and truth
that burns within us—
stronger than all flesh.

Love us for the life within us—
for the frail breath that is with us today
and gone, in an instant, tomorrow.
Love us for the blood that courses
through all our veins—
the same-colored blood
that was drained from Jesus’ veins.

We ask this of You—
most holy
and loving God—
whose very presence in our lives
is one of light
and life
and, yes, of color—
who, in Jesus, was one of us.

In the Spirit
You have given us,
make us, truly,
One.

Main

This prayer originally appeared in the anthology, Race and
Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams, edited by Malcolm Boyd
and Bishop Chester L. Talton. Published in March 2003 by
Morehouse Publishing.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (1939-1965) was an Episcopal
seminarian from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in
Cambridge, Mass. In the summer of 1965, he joined others who
were heeding the call of Dr. Martin Luther King for Civil Rights
in Alabama. On Aug. 20, 1965, he was shot and killed by a shop
owner while protecting a 17 year-old girl. He is commemorated
by the Episcopal Church in Lesser Feasts and Fasts on August 14th.

Prayers