Prayers for Peace

I wrote the Prayers for Peace between May and August of 2020. In that time of global uncertainly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded by unrest and upheaval in numerous political spheres, I began thinking of the primacy that prayers for peace holds in the faiths I have experienced and participated in. The four prayers, in Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and French, come from Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian traditions. They range from simple yet profound benedictions to meditative catalogs of the many ways peace makes itself known around us and within us. Their subtle contrasts and commonalities point toward the hope that we might someday more readily recognize that which unites us all.