Phoenix, Arizona, March 27, 2003-

We have entered a room where souls come on the way to going Home. We begin by chanting a prayer in the timeless language of Sanskrit to help prepare the soul for its final journey. Before us lays the body of a young woman covered in a hospital gown as it had been sent here from the city morgue where the autopsy had been performed. We have come to bathe her body and dress it for services and the journey through the consuming flames of the crematorium that will free her soul.

The soul is here. I can feel its heaviness, the pain and shock of sudden, untimely death. We pull the gown back. The punctures from the bullets are there, as well as the incisions from the autopsy crudely stitched back together. We brought the yogurt and water to the table to begin the bathing process. Lovingly, delicately, our hands pass the milk over her shoulders and arms, down toward her breasts where not so long ago her latest infant nursed the milk of life. Now the milk of the final bathing flows over her. She lived and died a Sikh and this is the way we prepare the body for the soul's last passage, as it has been done for centuries.

There are no words to describe the grief we all share here. Words on the police report would have summed it up simply, "Homicide of young mother, two young children asleep in nearby room unharmed."

Our country is at war halfway around the globe, but here in Phoenix this young mother was a casualty of another war - a war that has been growing on our streets, in our homes and our hearts. It is a war of rage, of people pitted against each other driven by desperation, need and greed. This young woman was not even in her own home. It was the middle of the day and she was visiting her sister. She had just put to sleep her two sweet young children, still used to taking an afternoon nap. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What war is this? How can it be growing and yet be so ignored? Only when it hits the sanctity of our homes and gains some mention on the evening news do we acknowledge it. But then it is quickly forgotten, thought of as an isolated incident. No, it couldn't happen here, not to us. Just to some other family.

Well, here today this family is sobbing, wailing with the grief of this war and the loss of this young mother. It is not just their war; it is the war of all of us. It is rage that kills, here in middle class America just as surely as it kills in Iraq or Israel. Be it a handgun, or an AK attack rifle, or a missile, what does it matter? The killing must stop, the rage must stop.

Each of us has to wake up and take some responsible role. Each of us must pray daily for all our leaders, and each of us also must pray for ourselves and our families and take some action. We must raise our awareness of our surroundings, and also raise our consciousness so that we can help and teach others to turn back the tide of rage within themselves. Or it will consume us all in its flames.

Stop fighting amongst ourselves. Having differences is fine, but bickering is turning into battling on our streets. "Peace!" has become a battle cry. How shocking, how sad. We call ourselves "one nation under God," but how often does each of us sit down and talk to God through prayer and meditation?

And what do you pray for - some thing you need? Well we need to pray for peace - peace in our hearts, peace that overrides differences. We need to pray for our President and all his advisors that we act righteously as a nation, that we serve the interests of our neighbors compassionately, whether those neighbors are down the street or across the world.

Why are we not also facing the war here and working to stop this one? Where are the billions being spent on this war? We have to take a stand, here, there, wherever we are. We have to live as people of compassion, consciousness and courage. Those who founded this country did so, and we are their heirs.

Don't hide behind your doors. You can't pretend you don't feel the rage. It is growing.

Stand with me and the family of this young woman here in Phoenix, share their grief and pray. Pray to release the souls of all those who have died. Pray to release the souls of the living from all their torment. Pray. And stand together in prayer as one family - Sikh, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist.

No one can be left out of the circle of prayer. Why not? Because isolation creates fear and fear festers into rage.

Now is the time to win this war. Because mothers and their children are dying everywhere. Pray in all the languages of all spiritual paths - God knows them all. Prayer is the power.

Bless you in all ways always,

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