" I will ask you to stand and  all join hands in a little while. But first,  we realize we are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  And this new language of prayer comes out of something which transcends all our traditions and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of our differences, real emotional friction.... The things that are on the surface are nothing, what is deep is the Real.  We are creatures of love.  Let us therefore join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts.  I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all.   I have no idea what I am going to say, I am going to be silent a minute and then I will say something...

Oh God, we are one with You.  You have made us one with You.   You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us.  Help us to preserve this openness and to fight with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.  Oh  God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You , and w e love You with our whole being,because our being is in Your being, our spirits is rooted in Your spirit.

Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present  in the world, and which makes You witness  to the ultimate  reality that is love.  Love has  overcome. Love is victorious.  Amen.. The Asian Journal, Thomas Merton