PRAYER for our children

So let me just end with a prayer that I say a lot this year, to reaffirm what each of you knows, that we can remake this world, we must remake this world for our children. And I’m so grateful for all of your presence, because so many people are waiting for Gandhi to come back, or Dr. King to come back. They’re not. We’re it! And we have the capacity and the power to build a different world in a new era. Your presence here is a very important witness of that fact.

But I feel inadequate most hours and days, and say:

Lord, I can’t preach like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Jesse Jackson or turn a poetic phrase like Maya Angelou, but I care, and I’m willing to serve, and to use what talents I have to build a world of peace. I don’t have Fred Shuttlesworth’s and Harriet Tubman’s courage or Andy Young’s political skills, but I care, and I’m willing to serve. I can’t sing like Fannie Lou Hamer or organize like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, or John Dear, but I care, and I’m willing to serve. I’m not holy like Archbishop Tutu, forgiving like Mandela, or disciplined like Gandhi, but I care and I’m willing to serve and to fight in a nonviolent manner. I’m not brilliant like Dr. Du Bois or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or as eloquent as Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington, but I care, and I’m willing to serve. I don’t have Mother Teresa’s saintliness, Dorothy Day’s love or Cesar Chavez’s gentle, taught spirit, but I care and I’m willing to serve. God it’s not as easy as the Sixties to frame an issue and forge a solution, but I care, and I’m willing to serve. My mind and body are not as swift as in youth, and my energy comes in spurts but I care, and I’m willing to serve. I’m so young nobody will listen, I’m not sure what to say or do, but I care and am willing to serve. I can’t see or hear well, speak good English, stutter sometimes, and get real scared, and I really hate risking criticism, but I care, and I’m willing to serve. Use me as Thou wilt to save Thy children today and tomorrow, and to build a nation and a world where no child is left behind, and every child is loved, and every child is safe.

- Marian Wright Edelman (founder of Children’s Defense Fund), “Caring Enough to Build a World of Peace,” Fellowship. Jan-Feb. 2001: 4-5.