A reading for today....

From Ted Loder, poet, spiritual guide, author.  In Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle

Sometimes It Just Seems to Be Too Much

Sometimes, Lord,
it just seems to be too much:
     too much violence, too much fear;
     too much of demands and problems;
     too much of broken dreams and broken lives;
     too much of war and slums and dying;
     too much of greed and squishy fatness
        and the sounds of people
            devouring each other
                and the earth;
     too much of stale routines and quarrels,
          unpaid bills and dead ends,
     too much of words lobbed in to explode
        and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;
     too much of turned away backs and yellow silence,
        red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.

Sometimes the very air seems scorched
     by threats and rejection and decay
        until there is nothing
            but to inhale pain
                and exhale confusion.
Too much of darkness, lord,
     too much of cruelty
           and selfishness
                and indifference....

Too much, Lord,
     too much,
         too bloody,
              bruising,
                  brain-washing much.

Or is it too little,
     too little of compassion,
too little of courage,
     of daring,
        of persistence,
             of sacrifice;
too little of music
     and laughter and celebration?

O God,
make of me some nourishment
     for these starved times,
some food for my brothers and sisters
     who are hungry for gladness and hope,
that, being bread for them,
     I may also be fed
          and be full.