Reflections on a Revolution In Tenderness and Kuan Yin's Prayer for the Abuser

Daily, in my work as a permanency caseworker with Child Welfare, I am faced with the pain and trauma of children and families. For ten years I also worked with abused and neglected preschool aged children. Woven through all this is my own healing path from the trauma I experienced as a child and as an adult. And there is the suffering of so many families, communities, nations, and around the world. We humans often also engage in harming rather than honoring our Sacred Earth Mother. And then there are the winged ones, the four leggeds and finned ones, and our other animal brothers and sisters who suffer greatly, many to the point of extinction...

In the midst of so much suffering are also moments pregnant with the possibility of deepening in our capacity for compassion, healing, and being the peace our world and our hearts yearn for. Faced with abuse we all make choices, conscious or otherwise, to harden our hearts and feed our judging and fearful minds, or to grow even more passionate and strong in our capacity for a fierce kind of tenderness and a refusal to return violence with more violence.

Kuan Yin is known by many as the One who hears the cries of the world. She is the Divine Mother, the Bodhisattva, the Goddess who offers soothing and tenderness, compassion and healing, courage and protection, wisdom and love, and the remembrance of our true nature.

May we all soften and open our hearts, little by little and more and more. As the Pope (said today) and Kuan Yin and the wise and Sacred within us deeply knows, we humans need a revolution in tenderness. We can break the cycle of violence. It is time. 

Bless us all ~ Molly
♥

Photo by Molly: Kuan Yin

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser*

To those who withhold refuge,
I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.
To those that cause a child to cry out,
I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony. 
To those that inflict terror,
I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.
To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,
I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.
To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,
I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.
To those who cling and grasp,
I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto. 
To those who vent their rage on small children,
I return to you your deepest innocence.
To those who must frighten into submission,
I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.
To those who cause agony to others,
I give the gift of free flowing tears.
To those that deny another's right to be,
I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your birth.
To those who see only division and separateness,
I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole. 
For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother's embrace,
I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.
To those who still feel somehow incomplete,
I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

- Author Unknown

 *Deep gratitude to Doug Pullin for gifting me with this prayer today.

Photos by Molly: Kuan Yin in our garden and lily in our pond