A prayer for Shab-e Yalda

As a child of the “Middle East,” you learn early on that no country or community is immune to the atrocities that have gripped our region. Not a single one.

Our eyes are open to the many shapes and shades of darkness. We see how corrupt governments ravage our lands, cultures, and communities simply for the dinosaur bones beneath our feet. We see men hide behind religion time and time again to justify trading in their souls for profit. We see how this darkness travels and transmutes over centuries to remain hidden in plain sight.

However, we also learn resilience.

Our ancestors taught us that the greatest act of resistance is to live. To create art, to dance, to sing, to heal, to speak out, to fight back, to live. They remind us that fighting the darkness means making the light an embodied practice.

On this long dark night of the Winter Solstice, I pray that we awaken to the light.

I pray that we remember the truth of our single interconnected Nature. The divinity we have spent millennia clamoring to describe, clumsily attaching our language, social systems, and science that will always be lagging behind.

I pray that we look to our past not to romanticize something we can never return to, but to reach for our inheritance of culture, art, and wisdom and carry these heirlooms with us into a new dawn.

I pray that we continue to honor our humanity by bearing witness to the suffering of others and joining them as they fight for our collective liberation.

This Shab-e Yalda, I pray that we have the courage and wisdom to be of service to the light. May it grow brilliantly with our love and devotion.