Holy God whose names are beyond our knowing of names and whose sight is long
we pray beyond our power to pray with longing and indifference in equal measures
for those we know and those who are beyond our knowing
for a peace that none of us deserves or works for except in intentions

We loathe our enemies and mostly in your name we curse them but know in our way
that we should love them and occasionally in your name we leave our pews
and do something to restore the world we have only recently burnt down
with our equal measures and unequal retaliations

We offer our guns to you and our hearts and wait to see which you will pick this time
(please choose our guns for our hearts are weary from the rumors we hear and
take for fact despite all your scriptures we also hear but take for advice from distant
lands and hands that must have been very different from ours

or else they would understand the righteousness of our cause
for our enemies are greater than all other enemies and our times more wicked
than all other times and indicative of what we already knew) and while we are here
let us remember the poor and the homeless and dispossessed who look like us

Let your Spirit descend upon us and give us the guise of holiness we believe in
But keep your Word to yourself for we have a side we want to win. Amen.