Prayer To Allah Poem by Alla Bozarth

Yahweh/Elohim/Allah/God, intervene.
We three People of the Book
have abused and made it dangerous.
Meant to be a dramatic poem of inspiration,
we’ve used it as a text book for abuse.
Meant to guide the moral being toward the common good,
to comfort and deepen humanity’s soul with a sense of awe,
showing us ways toward intimacy with Mystery,
we’ve blasphemed the Bible and You, confusing the One for the Other.
Throughout our histories we’ve committed this idolatry
in Your Name. For all of us, I am sorry— especially
for past and current rationalizations we have made and do make,
to violate each other irrationally:

Misguided Followers of the Prince of Peace condemn and torture each other,
frustrated Children of Allah the Compassionate wage violent war,
suffering Children of Israel harden their hearts to others who suffer,
all of us presuming or pretending license to express human rage in Your name,
but in reality, our common motive has been the human greed for power.

Enfold us all with Your Love.
Illuminate us with Your purpose
for the good of all creation.
Shake us out of our immaturity.
Take us to Your Heart.
Let us listen to its rhythms.
Let us learn them.
Let us become them.



A Note on Our Million Names for the Divine:

There is a common human intuition for One Divine Source Being,
and each language has its own name for that Being, derived from
a meaningful source of origin within each one’s tribal culture.
The Arabic name for Divine Being, Allah, derives from the Semitic root,
El or Al, meaning Essence, Mystery, or the Great Mysterious, as in
Alleluia, Praise to the One Who Is. The Hebrew name for the Holy One
(YHWH/Yahweh, “I Am that I Am” or “I Am Becoming WhoI Am Becoming”)
is not spoken in common usage, but the earliest reference name for
Divine Being was El or Al, as the often used Elohim (feminine plural form)
in The Book of Genesis. The English name for Divine Mystery, God,
comes from the Germanic, from which we also derive the word Good.
Other Indo-European cultures have their names, such as Durga, Dieu, Dio,
Dios, God-dess, and there is the Lakota Wakan Tanka, and so on.

Yogananda said that “the Holy is revealed to us through the forms we hold dear.”
The Holy One perhaps enjoys these countless names, our highest human terms
of reverence or endearment for the Beloved Divine, Who alone fully knows
Who It/He/She Is... and perhaps, who we are as well.


Purgatory Papers by Alla Renée Bozarth, copyright 2011.
All rights reserved.