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It is possible to pray for peace

Prayer life does not need to know boundaries; it should extend to global conflict.

It is possible to pray for peace.

Our prayer life need not know our boundaries – no green lines, no dashes, no subtle demarcations.

Our longings can transcend political ideologies, cut across our keen analyses.

Earnestness, cast out of our public discourse, still has a place in the language of our hearts.

We have the capacity to pray for the old couple crouched in their stairwell in Ashkelon and the terrified child in his pajamas in Gaza.

We can spread our prayer like a tattered shawl, like a billowing canopy, like a sparkling firmament over the tired shoulders of these and across the narrow frames of those.

We are not naïve, not cowards nor traitors to pray for peace.

We are told to get in line, to stand with them or to stand with the other, but we pray to a Holy One who resides in the space between, diminished by their missiles, laid low by their rockets, exhausted, but still listening for our prayers.

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