Liberty and Justice:
Invocation on Election Day
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Liberty, I too will lift my lamp,
the hope of my vote,
to make good on the words
they spoke and wrote,
before they even meant them
to belong to all of us.
And Justice, carrying the weight
of all our stories on your golden scales,
you too were meant for all of us.
For, all men, they said, which word
they claim includes the women, too,
both rich and poor, and those
with roots here in this native soil,
and Africa and Europe, Asia
and the islands. although
perhaps they never really meant it.
We do now.
We base our hopes upon those words,
like sacred text. We hold the truths,
self-evident, of course, that humans
here have hope of that equality.
I cast my vote for that lamp,
that book, that scales
which weighs us all equal
in the eyes of Lady Liberty
and Justice For All.
Starhawk has begun calling her LAJFA, Liberty And Justice For All, a goddess of this place–a deliberate syncretism of Lady Liberty and Lady Justice, a manifestation of the intent spoken and written by the founders, whether they truly believed it or not. Her robes are rainbows, and her emblems are the lamp and the sword and the book and the scales. Her face is perhaps indigenous, perhaps an amalgam of all the races that now call home this place which she protects. All. Not just wealthy white male Christian landowners. And this vote, this thing we do today? It’s our sacred pledge to LAJFA, to Democracy, to make it so.
Gratitude List:
1. These brilliant and playful and thoughtful young people
2. A glorious fall day
3. Voting. Getting to choose. Having a say.
4. Breathing and centering and grounding–how the Earth holds my roots
5. Chocolate-covered coffee beans
May we walk in Beauty!
“Safety is not the absence of threat.
It is the presence of connection.” —Gabor Maté
“Mercy is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another.” —James Keenan
Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, you are free.” —Jim Morrison
“You need not wade through the mists and bogs to reach the moon.
You need not climb a ladder of cobweb.
You need not ride the stallions that wicker in the sea’s pounding surf.
Draw back the curtain and open the window.
Breathe the bracing air and listen:
The whinny of an owl, the click of the bat,
The grunt of a buck and the distant roar of the train.
The full moon will spill a milky road before you.
That is all the pathway you will need.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider
“The word is the making of the world.” —Wallace Stevens
“Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“The leaves of the tree become as pages of the Sacred Book to one who is awake.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan
“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” —Albert Einstein
“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.” —Coretta Scott King
“When you feel the suffering of every living thing in your own heart, that is consciousness.” —Bhagavad Gita
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you…”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
―Naomi Shihab Nye
Mockingbird Chronicles 