A thanksgiving mindful of ALL children

Below you will find a remarkable Thanksgiving prayer-poem by child advocate Marian Wright Edelman. In its vision and compassion it reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Please call me by my true names” and Joanna Macy’s poem “Grace and the Great Turning”.

Reaching beyond, I wish to extend her powerful prayer to embrace, as well, all the children in the seventh and hundredth generations after us – asking that we have the vision and care “to love and respect and protect and welcome” all those yet-to-be-born beings into the decent, habitable, and life-serving future world that we here and now are so responsible for creating.

 

A Prayer of Thanksgiving to the God of all Children in America and the World

O God of the children of Syria, Nigeria and Liberia, of Sudan, South Africa and South Carolina,
Of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Myanmar, of Israel, Iran and Iraq
Of the Congo, Central America, Charleston, and Cleveland, of Darfur and Detroit, of Libya, Yemen and Ukraine, Nepal and New Orleans,
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all.

O God of Black and Brown and White and Albino children and those all mixed together
Of children who are rich and poor and in between
Of children who speak English and Russian and Hmong and Chinese and Spanish and Arabic and languages and dialects our ears cannot discern, of refugee children without a country
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all.

O God of the child prodigy and child prostitute, of the child of rapture and the child of rape,
Of run or thrown away and sexually trafficked children who struggle every day without parent or place or friend or future,
Of LGBT children struggling to be who they are and Dalit children roaming across nations in search of a place called home,
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all.

O God of children who can walk and talk and hear and see and sing and dance and jump and play and of children who wish they could but can’t
Of children who are loved and unloved, wanted and unwanted,
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all.

O God of incarcerated, beggar, beaten, abused, neglected, homeless, AIDS, drug, violence, and hunger-ravaged children,
Of children who are emotionally and physically and mentally fragile, and of children who rebel and ridicule, torment and taunt,
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all.

O God of children of destiny and of despair without hope for the future, ravaged by wars of adults
Of refugee children without a country to welcome them, at sea in flimsy boats, or caged in juvenile and adult prisons and holding pens as they seek asylum
Of disfigured, diseased, and dying children,
Of children without hope and of children with hope to spare and to share,
Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all on this day of Thanksgiving as we affirm the sacredness of every child in our own country and all around the world.

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Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.

Mrs. Edelman’s Child Watch Column appears each week on The Huffington Post.

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