Divine Artist,
Amazing Creator,
we thank you for ordinary miracles,
not magic
but simply your work,
the unexpectedness of creation
that sometimes stuns us into wakefulness
for a moment.
In an age when humans of African descent are still called apes,
we remember an ape of African descent
who pushed against the boundaries of the human,
a gorilla that loved and learned,
Koko with her kittens,
Koko weeping, mourning,
signing “frown, cry, frown, sad.â€
We remember Koko and wonder about that story we have told ourselves,
the apex predator so brutal to members of our own species,
with such disregard for other animals,
how we are so different than them,
how what we do to them does not matter,
how they do not count.
Frown, cry, frown, sad.
We wonder about souls,
about gorilla that had more love than some humans we know,
and are troubled.
Rub off, we pray, our layers of lies,
leaving us raw to the experience of life,
to life in every form,
to the interconnectedness of all things.
Trouble us.
Trouble our easy certainties.
Teach us to walk gently on the earth.
Teach us to walk gently with one another.
For you are the God of gorillas,
the God of Koko,
of children at the border,
of giant fish in the mighty deep,
and sometimes
just sometimes
of churches.
Trouble us. Teach us.
Amen.