Humanifesto

A poem by Gerard Kelly and a great prayer for 2010:

I want to be a grace guerilla,
no longer a chameleon of karma;
the time has come to stand out from the crowd.
I want to give forgiveness a fighting chance of freeing me,
I want to live in love
and live it out loud.

I want to drink deep of the foolishness of wisdom
instead of swallowing the wisdom of fools,
to find a source in the deeper mines of meaning
to search out the unsearchable,
to invoke the invisible,
to choose the truth the TV hypnotists aren't screening.

No camouflage,
no entourage,
no smoothly fitting-in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin.

I want to be untouched by my possessions
instead of being possessed by what I touch,
to test the taste of having nothing to call mine,
to hold consumption's cravings back,
to be content with luck or lack,
to live as well on water as on wine.

I want to spend myself on those I think might need me,
not spend all I think I need on myself.
I want my heart to be willing to make house calls.
Let those whose rope is at an end find in me a faithful friend.
Let me be known as one who rebuilds broken walls.

No camouflage,
no entourage,
no smoothly fitting-in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin.

I want to be centred outside the circle,
to be chiselled from a different seam.
I want to be seduced by another story
and drawn into a deeper dream,
I want to be anchored in an undiscovered ocean,
to revolve around an unfamiliar sun,
to be a boom box tuned to an alternate station,
a bullet fired from a different gun.

No camouflage,
no entourage,
no smoothly fitting-in.
I want a faith that goes further than face value
and a beauty that goes deeper than my skin.

Gerard Kelly: Spoken Worship 2007.