A Settler Prayer for Peace

Creator God, hear our prayer for settlers everywhere;
for people living on land stolen
and traded unfairly from Indigenous peoples.
You know our cruelties, our disregard for cultures and histories,
our cavalier dismissal of treaty rights,
our personal prejudices, our institutional racism.
The colonial system is so insidious, we who benefit
often don’t even see it, even when it’s in front of our faces.
You are a God who names, and a God who hears.
You know the name of every missing and murdered indigenous woman.
You heard the cries of every child in every residential school.
You know the original names of every landmark,
in languages that no one living knows.
You hear the earth groaning as it is torn and broken,
its holy balance polluted and poisoned.
Send us a chinook peace to melt our permafrosted hearts,
a Great Spirit of hope that blows through our land,
rearranging landscapes, upsetting tables where money is counted.
A wind that changes our hearts and gives us courage
to seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly together,
settler and First Nations, Inuit and Metis,
for we are all God’s children.