A Prayer on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels

50 years ago, Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was shot in killed was shot and killed in Hayneville, Alabama, while saving the life of another civil rights worker. The Episcopal Church commemorates him on this day. Here is a prayer I wrote over ten years that appeared in the anthology, Race and Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams.
   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.
 
 
 
“A Prayer on the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels” 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.