Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
This is my daily prayer each day for the next month. Thirty days. I am going to play this music video each morning when I get up and hold it in my heart and mind as my prayer for myself because everything is possible.
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace,
You see, I believe that one of prayer’s primary aims is to change the one who prays. If I am changed by my prayers in a beneficial way, then the influences of my life will touch others in those beneficial ways, too. This is the interdependent web of all existence, and everything is possible.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Saturday, I sat with many from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Gwinnett in a mosque in our community listening to our beautiful Muslim Sisters and Brothers share with us their faith and their community. Everything is possible.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
I’ve lived a life where along the way I was told in so many words or gestures, even by silence, to be afraid of black people–and then I met them and heard their stories; to fear gay people–and then I came to love people who were gay; to fear people whose religions were different from mine, and then they became my friends; to fear whoever and whatever was different, until I came to embrace difference as just a portal through to adventure. Everything is possible, and I am not dreaming.
Bob Patrick
“Imagine” is one of the world’s most beautiful and treasured songs. It has touched so many, yet we live in a world now that has allowed fear to replace the positive message that it sends. Only when we let go of fearing “the others” will we truly find peace. I know we can do it.
“Imagine” has personal significance for me because I played it (the original) for my mother at her memorial service. She loved the Beatles, and this song just seemed to fit her; the way she responded to what was happening in the world in her lifetime. Her knowledge of such things was mostly through TV, but she had an uncanny ability to see and understand what was coming. Mom wanted a better world for me. I only wish she could have seen the day when we won the right to legally marry whom we truly love.
This song has been my heartfelt prayer ever since it was first written.