Dear One,
Teach us to care.

Teach us to care by teaching us to pray.

Teach us to care so that we do not co-sign on dysfunction, but rather become a companion towards Grace.

Teach us to be in wonder before the beauty of creation, especially the creation of your people who have come to think of themselves as less than.

Teach us to use each act of caring as an act of praying so that the person being cared for experiences dignity instead of condescension.

Dear One,
Teach us not to care.

Teach us to tread softly, aware that you were here long beforehand creating, loving, and wooing.

Teach us the humility of not jumping to solutions, so that we do not use anyone’s need as a workshop to cobble together makeshift, messianic work that inflates our own importance.

Teach us not to exhaust our resources so that we have the time and energy and space to realize that this work is done on holy ground and in your holy name, that people and communities in need are not a wasteland where we feverishly and faithlessly set up shop, but a garden, a rose garden, in which we work contemplatively.

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.
Teach us to care and not to care.
Teach us to sit still, even among these rocks. Amen.