“Forget Your Perfect Offering”

– Leonard Cohen

There is some hubris needed, in sitting down to pen a creed, a prayer, an anthem, or other aspirational words, that is written for others to say, and yet sticks in your own throat when the same words come haltingly out.  Perhaps even more hubris to pause and reflect on the same.  Who the hell am I?  To be writing this, to be involved in this project, to be doing any of this?  And aren’t elders a bit beyond making another commitment, another pledge, another promise?  Isn’t the season of the Elder, (which I’m not in) the stage in which all such silliness is abandoned as being too small, perhaps a bit precious, as their horizon gives way to the wordless Mystery which cannot be contained?  

…And yet…even simple lyrics, sung in unison, somehow points us beyond ourselves, to the universal.  Music, poetry, psalms, hymns and the like,  open us to what flows between the words…and the words, crude though they may be, yet serve as a worthy enough container through which a larger chorus can break through….

Perhaps these “imperfect” words are not what Elders are to offer us, (if Elders were to come up with such a thing)…and indeed in the end, what we ultimately want is not words from Elders at all, but their flesh and blood, incarnate presence!  But if I, and I suspect the other younger brothers and sisters around me, were to dream of a concert sang to us by a chorus of elders all over this earth, these simple words might be one of the lyrics we would relish hearing sung.  Particularly if they were more heartfelt, than I can offer them as of yet…

~Ned Abenroth

A Prayerful Offering of Elders

We stand on common ground,
      Honoring the presence of the Wild One
           in all that is,

We join with all creation:
In grieving the wounds of this world,
In celebrating the beauty of all,
In welcoming all beings and their place in the world,
In yearning for the healing of all,
In loving all, especially the broken and marginalized,
In acting for the good of the world,

As elders, we commit:
All that we are,
       and
All that has been granted us:
our time,
our energy,
our money,
our talents,
our bodies,
our breath…
To be used as Spirit calls us.

We step into our call as elders to live on behalf of the whole

We step:
into death,
into life,
into growth,
into joy,
into beauty,
into relationship,
into leadership,
into holy folly,
into nothingness,
into everything

For the sake of our ancestors and descendants,
For the sake of the more than human world,
For the sake of each other,
For the sake of ourselves, and
For the sake of the Beloved Friend, in whose beauty, we pray.

~ Ekone Ranch September 2018