Yoga for a United States: An Incantation

May division humble us

into radical attention.

Confusion become curiosity,

Exasperation evolve into compassion,

Anger grow into wonder.

May difference become a mystery worth entering.

May our certainties be spacious enough

for doubts, questions, reformation,

Our identities be rooted in the love

by which, for which, through which we fight.

May we be brave enough to confess ignorance

of another’s experience of injustice

and to state our own;

to express, to embody, to sweat and play

within a vision of a more perfect union,

of justice for all,

of hope for the marginalized, oppressed, silenced —

to create from it, toward it.

May we become full-body, hot-blooded, kickass listeners.

May we refuse a zero-sum game.

May we recognize fear beneath all of its costumes, swagger, disguises.

May we learn every language of love by which it can be tamed.

May we risk the white flag of invitation,

radical acts of neighborhood.

May we become citizens of hope,

of the possibility

of a fascinatingly messy, mixed, contradictory

unity

in ourselves. In our countries. In our world.