[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 119 (Thursday, September 19, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H6375]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page H6375]]

House of Representatives

  The House met at 10 a.m.
  The Reverend Dr. Paul Smith, Senior Minister, First Presbyterian 
Church, Brooklyn, New York, offered the following prayer:
  In preparation for our prayer this morning, I would ask that you 
would just close your eyes and reflect as we listen to the silence for 
a moment.
  O Divine Creator: Listen to the beating of our hearts and the 
stirrings deep within us, as each of us, in our own way, acknowledges 
the silent moment.
  May this peripheral moment, almost mystical, become a moment which 
touches us where we are most ourselves. And we pray, O God, for 
strength, that You give each one of these men and women standing before 
You the courage to be genuine, that their yeas and nays be genuine. All 
else obscures the truth, tempting them to betray the eternal.
  We ask that You help them and us to face the fears residing deep in 
our souls as we hear in the distance the cries for war, the cries for 
peace, the cries for justice and the cries for freedom. And, God, we 
would petition You to quench our deep-seeded need to be right. We know 
that Democrats being right does not make Republicans wrong. We know 
that conservatives being right does not make liberals wrong. Rather, 
teach us how to listen for the sounds of the genuine in ourselves, so 
we may hear the sounds of the genuine of our colleagues and friends.
  O Divine Creator, help this Congress to practice deep listening, for 
it is in our deep listening that we hear the silence, where we hear the 
cries of our people, where we see the shadows which frighten us, and 
where we find the center and core of our being. So as we practice this 
deep listening, grant that we may also practice arrogance reduction, 
for by doing so, we lift up those things which glorify the Creator. 
Amen.

                          ____________________