Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

-St Francis

Practice of the Prayer of St. Francis

Memory and Repetition

Andrew Harvey suggests doing a practice of memorizing and repeating the Prayer of St. Francis. This is what he writes in Heal Your Life:

Memorize the Saint Francis Prayer. Then, sitting calmly in meditation, say it over and over again to yourself very slowly, bringing your mind home to its words whenever it begins to stray. Do this for about half an hour at a time and you will find that your mind and heart will be made joyful and peaceful and that, over time, your entire being will begin to fill with the strengths and virtues that the passage celebrates. All mystical systems know that we become what we think; this exercise is a wonderful way of saturating the heart and mind with holy truth and passion.

ANdrew Harvey in “Heal Your Life“

Meditation and Contemplation

Here is another suggestion for a practice to accompany this prayer:

1. Sit quietly in and meditate until your mind is calm.
2. Say the first line of the prayer. Take it fully into your heart.
3. Contemplate what that line means to you today.
4. Ask what actions you are called to take today to be in alignment with that line of the prayer.
5. Repeat with the next line. Continue until you have finished the prayer.

Approaching the prayer this way will help you integrate it into the ground of your daily life. Taking actions aligned with the prayer, however small, will begin the process of integrating your intention with your actions. Eventually, the prayer will become fully integrated into your life.

On Prayer and Action

Here’s the thing: prayer has gotten a bad rap. And for good reason. In an age in which politicians send their “thoughts and prayers” to victims of hate crimes and mass shootings, prayer has come to be synonymous with a cop-out. “Instead of praying, why don’t they actually do something about it?” This is a fair question with no easy answer.

Prayer without action is no more than a hollow repetition of words.

So, should we abandon prayer in favor of action?

Here’s the other thing: well-intentioned action that is not rooted in the qualities of deep wisdom and compassion is often fruitless. I would know. I spent several years of my life devoted to environmental activism. While we had some small successes, the movement eventually collapsed under the weight of internal bickering and external antagonism. What could have been a coming-together of diverse peoples to protect the sacredness of creation became a war zone of “who’s right and who’s wrong,” of “us vs them,” of unexamined projections.

However, I have seen what happens when prayer and action are combined.

I experienced this at Standing Rock, the Indigenous-led movement of resistance to the Dakota Access oil pipeline. I was moved by the centrality of prayer to the movement. Most of the nonviolent direct actions focused on praying in places that were under threat – often while being physically attacked with dogs, pepper spray, and batons.

The courage the people of Standing Rock showed in the face of this violence moved me. What moved me even more was their refusal to hate the people who were attacking them and desecrating their sacred lands.

I wrote about this experience in my piece, The Power of Prayer at Standing Rock, published in elephant journal.

When hundreds of people were injured on Sunday, we prayed. We prayed not only for the injured people, but for the police, as well. “They are our relatives too,” said an elder, “They hurt us because they are suffering. We pray for them because we love them, we pray that they wake up.”

“We invited you here to pray with us,” said an elder to a crowded dining hall one night. “Nothing more.” This is the same message I have heard many times each day at Standing Rock. “We did not ask you to come to get arrested. We did not ask you to come to fight. The most powerful thing you can do while you’re here is to pray. Live each moment in that prayer.”

And this is the way that the camp has been. While the media has largely favored reports of arrests and police violence, the overwhelming experience at Standing Rock is that of prayerfulness and ceremony.

Seeing the people of Standing Rock stand up to injustice without turning towards hatred and becoming like their oppressors moved me. It taught me about the power of prayer and action together. And the success of this combination is evident – Standing Rock became one of the largest and most defining movements of the century.

When our action is rooted in prayer, it is infused with the wisdom of the divine. It keeps our hearts open and allows the flow of compassion.

When our prayer is expressed in action, it grounds it. Our prayer ceases to be an idea and starts to become a reality.

When prayer is put into action and action is infused with prayer, we act from wholeness, in alignment with truth. We truly become “an instrument of peace.”

For more on the story of Standing Rock, check out the children’s book, We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom.