The Morning I Pray For My Enemies

Greeting Stewards,

For our 2022 forum series, the theme is “Uncertain Together.” We’ll explore the uncertainty that the current COVID-19 pandemic has brought upon us. Registration is open now, so please check our Forum page for further details and to register.

Our interest in exploring uncertainty as the overarching theme for our shared pandemic experience rests in an acknowledgment that even as everything else about our pandemic world is in constant state of change, uncertainty remains a constant. Meanwhile, extended uncertainty presents one of the greatest challenges to the human psyche, which is wired to seek safety, stability, and the illusion of predictability. We hope that in exploring this time-honored theme together, we can discover new ways of befriending uncertainty, or, at least, growing more comfortable with this inevitable human experience. We also hope we’ll discover new ways to support ourselves and each other in doing the same.

In that spirit, we’d love to share this poem by Joy Harjo, which captures some of what it means to invite questions, rather than resist them. We found it at Book Riot’s Five Poems for These Days of Uncertainty.

THIS MORNING I PRAY FOR MY ENEMIES

And whom do I call my enemy?

An enemy must be worthy of engagement.

I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.

It’s the heart that asks the questions, and not my furious mind.

The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.

It sees and knows everything.

It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.

The door to the mind should only open from the heart.

An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

To directly register for the forums, please click the button down below. We hope you join us!

On behalf of PAHS,

Jeannine