MOLLY MONTGOMERY PHOTO
Crowd gathered Sunday for a communal prayer event on the Green.
Pastor Todd Foster.
Father, we hear the terms ‘One Nation Indivisible,’ and sadly acknowledge how torn and divided we as a nation are becoming. We sense the widening divide between red and blue, between black and white, between haves and have-nots …
Rabbi Mendy Hecht.
… One small flickering shining candle/ that is all it takes to penetrate the dark …
… Together, everyone together, we will become a great spectacle of light, illuminating our communities, illuminating our city. …
Imam Omer Bajwa.
… When the people of God gather together, the angels surround the gathering with their wings, and from the heavens, the mercy descends down. …
Maria Hermosillo, of the New Haven Bahá’í community
… There’s only one God, whether you call him Allah, Mohammed, or Jehovah, it’s all the same God. And we believe in all the religions, in all divine messengers, so that for us, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, is all part of our faith. …
… Gather all people beneath the shadow of thy body, and cause them to unite in harmony, so that they may become as the rays of one sun, as the waves of one ocean, and as the fruit of one tree …
Such was the communal prayer heard on the New Haven Green Sunday afternoon, a prayer for healing amid harsh and divisive times, offered up by representatives of different faiths (their photos appear above by their words) at an event organized by City Hall.
Totally beautiful! I am grateful to all who participated and who included in their thoughts all of us who did not.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.