Rabbi Weiner's 2/24/16 Invocation

We received requests from members to print Rabbi Weiner's invocation from the last meeting:

Eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu—Our God and the God of our ancestors…
We thank you for bringing us Julie Lewis and for news of the 30/30 project this day, not only for what it does, but for what it means.
Especially in this season of political choice and change, one that has pandered so cynically and callously to our basest fears of the Other and to our anger at the deficiencies of this nation, this message of righteous outreach to the most vulnerable and most marginalized—the sick, the poor, the female, the non-American and those of color—resounds in our thoughts as it must provoke our collective conscience to action.
To encounter the afflicted with anything less than unbounded compassion is to betray the fundamental values that infuse our faith and that forged our nation. To deny ongoing health care to any one of us is to abdicate our very capacity as human beings, and to neglect the essential human rights that are the entitlement of each one of us by virtue of our status as children of God.
Though these concerns are at issue in this campaign, they far transcend the merely political. They lie at the very heart of what it is to be a successful, prosperous and truly free nation.
May we see poisonous political pleas for what they are, and replace them with calls to trust, faith and healing…
May we come to appreciate the needs of this moment, and those who suffer in it…
And may we bind together as one people, rising above the slings and arrows of this fraught time,
To embrace the words of a local troubadour:
Let us put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us.
May this be Your will. May this be our way. Amen.