Opening Prayer:
      O Lord, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others, open my ears that I may hear their cries, open my heart so that they need not be without comfort. Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the rich. Show me where love and hope and faith are needed, and use me to bring them to these places. Open my eyes and ears that I may, this coming day, be able to do some work of peace for Thee. Amen  Alan Paton

Reading 1:
This morning I was awakened by the trilling of a single bird. It burst like sunlight into the lambent darkness, so sweet and pure as to seem to be the first sound ever heard in all creation.

I walked to the window to listen. The bird, unaware, continued its solitary anthem. The breeze had stilled; the night rustling had subsided. Peace lay over everything. It was as if I was present at the dawn of time.

Slowly, the day began to wake. Light limned the distant horizon, turning the edges of the sky to lavender. The trees began to move with the gentle breathing of the wind,. All around me life was stirring. But above it all, the single voice of the solitary bird sang out in celebration of the day.

As the light grew, other sounds began. The rustle of the branches, the bark of a dog, animals scurrying, people beginning their day. And as the sounds of daily life layered across the sunrise, the bird fell silent. It had played its part. Now it gave way to other, louder voices. Its song disappeared into the music of the morning.

Such a Franciscan vision, and how close to the first line of Francis’s gentle prayer, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." It was as if the bird was offering up its own canticle to the sun, and I alone was blessed to be present to hear.

I thought of an image a teacher had once offered me. God, he said, is like a great symphony in which we must all play our individual parts. None of us can hear the whole; none of us is suited to play all the parts. We must be willing to accept the limitations of the instrument we have been given and to offer up our voice as part of the great and unimaginable creation that is the voice of God.

This bird, from the fullness of its being, was offering up its voice into that creation. I felt humbled and awed to have been in its presence.

Francis, more than any other saint, understood the godliness of music. He sang constantly. His prayers are filled with entreaties to "sing to the Lord a new song" and petitions for the earth to sing out to the Lord in praise. He was even said to stop often in the middle of a road, pick up a stick, and mimic the playing of a violin while he sang. It is as if prayer itself was song for Francis, and life itself was prayer.

Imagine what music must have been in his time. In a world with no machines, none of the background noise of modern life, and no way to capture the elusive and ethereal tones of music other than to hear them when they were created, it must have been a miraculous thing indeed to hear a sound, sonorous and haunting, created by the breath or the plucking of strings. It would rise up, like birds in flight, and float above the dross of the days, like the very voice of God itself.

What more hallowed object could have existed in such a world than something crafted by the skilled hand that could create such sounds and turn breath or touch into melody? To play an instrument would have been a sacred thing indeed.

When Francis asks to be made an instrument of God’s peace, he is bowing down before God’s skill as maker, as musician, as composer of our days, and offering himself up to be shaped into a form through which the voice of God can be heard.

When we give ourselves to his prayer, we are asking the same.

Most of us do not live special lives. We are seldom called upon to make great pronouncements or to perform heroic deeds. We fall in love, raise children, have heartbreaks, help those in need when we can. We go to our beds at night uncertain whether our actions have had any effect.

But when Francis calls us to pray to be instruments of God’s peace, he is reminding us to honor our part in the music of creation, no matter how humble or great. He is reminding us that what we are asked to do may be no more than to offer a trill to the coming dawn or to play soft pure notes beneath the bright music of the violin. But if we humbly accept our art as a gift and play it well, we will have done our small part to help create the symphony of God’s voice.

Soon enough this beautiful prayer will ask us to turn our eyes toward our responsibilities as stewards of this earth. We will be called upon to become sowers–of love, of goodness, of consolation, of hope. But for this brief moment, Francis reminds us that we are the reed through which the breath of God is blown, the stings on which the music of God is played.

For this brief moment, he reminds us, our lives are music in the heart of God.  Kent Nerburn, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

Response: Sing the Prayer of St. Francis 

                              (Click here for music version)

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring your love.
Where there is injury your pardon, Lord,
And where there's doubt, true faith in you.

Make me a channel of your peace,
Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness only light,
And where there's sadness ever joy.

Oh Master, grant that I may never seek.
So much to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love, with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
in giving of ourselves that we receive,
and in dying that we're born to eternal life.

Reading 2
In the peace movement there is a lot of anger, frustrations, and misunderstanding. The peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter. We need to learn to write a letter to the Congress or to the President of the United States that they will want to read, and not just throw away. The way you speak, the kind of understanding, the kind of language you use should not turn people off. The President is a person like any of us.

Can the peace movement talk in loving speech, showing the way for peace? I think that will depend on whether the people in the peace movement can be peace. Because without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement.

I hope we can bring a new dimension to the peace movement. The peace movement is filled with anger and hatred. It cannot fulfill the path we expect from them. A fresh way of being peace, of doing peace is needed. That is why it is so important for us to practice meditation, to acquire the capacity to look, to see, and to understand. It would be wonderful if we could bring to the peace movement our contribution, our way of looking at things, that will diminish aggression and hatred. Peace work means, first of all, being peace. Meditation is meditation for all of us. We rely on each other. Our children are relying on us in order for them to have a future.

I am Peace
Surrounded by Peace
Secure in Peace.
Peace protects me
Peace supports me
Peace is in me
Peace is in me–All is well.
Peace to all beings
Peace among all beings
I am steeped in Peace
Absorbed in Peace
In the streets, at my work,
Having peaceful thoughts,
Peaceful words, peaceful acts.
                                                              Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

A Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to
                                John (20:19-23)
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

Closing Prayer
Eternal wellspring of peace–May we be drenched with the longing for peace that we may give ourselves over to peace until the earth overflows with peace as living waters overflow the seas. Amen
                                  A Hebrew Peace Prayer by Marcia Falk

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