We were at an inter-faith event in Auckland and the master of ceremonies, an eloquent church minister evidently inspired by his own words, was invoking God’s blessings on those assembled for an interminably long time. I wondered to myself if God, too, ever suffered from impatience. Then our own group sang a few of Sri Chinmoy’s songs to the audience, a five minute performance, and then more speeches followed. Safely hidden in a third row pew, I began jotting down my own rather different invocations on the back of our printed program, listing those more deserving of divine intervention than ourselves and having a little foolish fun passing the time.

May God smile
Upon barefoot park bench sleepers,
Jaywalkers and iconoclasts,
Red light runners and misfits,
The brave and foolhardy,
On amputee buskers,
Pensioners devoid of purpose
Staring out from upstairs windows…
Smile on the cellphone-less-
Untextable unreachables-
On original thinkers,
The witless and the lost…
On polar explorers, renegades
The wrongly accused…
Smile upon Greenpeace workers
And those slow-dying on barstools
And the lonely and stupefied…
Look and smile too on those we loved
And never said so…
Smile too on great distances
Where only the wind blows.