For those Canadians who are concerned with the increased violent rhetoric in our country, we need to get ahead of whatever demons (figurative or literal!) are coming at us this year from world politics. If you’ve open a local newspaper or gone online recently, you know that Canada needs your meditation and prayer. Christians know that God answers prayer, and meditators know that meditation not only lowers blood pressure, but also lowers the crime rates in areas where it’s being practiced. We are such a big, beautiful country and our body politic is calling out for extra care this year to heal our fractures- within our families, our provinces, and national and international relations.
With increasingly fractured politics, 2026 is an all-hands on deck year for anyone is Canada who believes in love and cares for national peace.
- Christian intercessory prayer warriors, we need you.
- Buddhist meditators, we need you.
- Indigenous people with a spiritual practice, we need you.
- Hindus and Sikhs who meditate and/or pray, we need you.
- les Québécois.es, les Acadien.nes et autres francophones qui prient, ou qui ont un pratique spirituel- ou même just un volonté pour la paix provincial et national- on a besoin de vous et vos intentions.
- Catholics and Jesuits- cloistered, in monasteries, and in lay life- we need you.
- Muslims and Jews- we know you’re already going through it right now. Please remember Canada in your prayers and meditation time, as we join you in prayers and meditation for peace in the Middle East.
- Hutterites, Mennonites, and the Amish- we see you. Please pray for peace in our country.
- Atheists, pagans, and agnostics, if you have some kind of centering or holy practice, we need you too.
- Confucians, Daoists, and Asian Buddhists who have a spiritual practice, we need you.
- Quakers, Baha’is, Spiritualists, and Reiki, Chi Gong and Kung Fu practitioners we need your healing energy, prayers and meditations.
Why Canada needs prayer and meditation right now
Young people can’t find jobs, people of all ages are struggling to afford a home or to pay rent, violent rhetoric is at an all-time high online, and provincial politics are painful to watch. Kids are either drowning under social media pressures, or are being pressured through social media or online games to do harm to themselves or others. Hate groups are proliferating before our eyes. Our country needs an intervention of divine love and peace now, and we can’t wait until it gets any worse to take action.
Basically, ask yourself why you don’t want to go on Facebook or social media anymore, and whatever images or rhetoric that are haunting you right now, that’s why we need prayer and meditation.
Will you commit to meditating or praying for Canada every day for the rest of 2026?
Here are themes you can center on:
- Please pray or meditate for peace and unity across Canada.
- Please pray or meditate for love to fill the cracks between political parties and their leaders
- Please pray or meditate for national security
- Please pray or meditate for relationships in our families that have fractured because of Covid
- Please pray or meditate for our economy, that it be supportive and strong, not just in numbers, but also in reality.
- Please pray or meditate for those who are being squeezed financially and can’t afford their groceries, gas or their rent.
- Please meditate or pray for a mentally and emotionally healthy next generation of children.
- Please meditate or pray for our American neighbors whose national unity is undergoing extremely difficult pressures.
- Please meditate or pray for our police force, for a good balance between strong bodies, clear minds, and responsive hearts.
- Please meditate or pray for our education system, for kids who are not attending classes or aren’t learning under school funding stressors. Please remember the kids who dropped out during Covid and have fallen through the cracks.
- Please meditate or pray for indigenous communities that need access to clean water, well-built schools, and local health care, who are struggling with over-access to drugs and alcohol.
- Please meditate or pray for Canadians who are being drawn in by drugs in response to stress- especially meth and fentanyl.
How to pray or meditate?
I once heard a spiritual teacher say that in Christianity, love is the highest level of attainment; and in Buddhism, spaciousness between stimuli and response is the highest level of attainment. I used to side with one or the other, but now I don’t really care anymore, because ultimately we need both (if they aren’t the same thing).
There are lots of different ways to center yourself and invite in divine love peace and/or spaciousness.
Christians have different types of prayer.
Meditation comes in different forms.
Please choose something that you connect with.
And of course at the foundation- the hardest part- is our personal relationships. When asked how to bring in world peace, the Dalai Lama always says, “Go home and repair your relationships with your family members.”
What’s the story behind this?
My mom texted me a couple months ago and mentioned that there was a movement to pray for world peace at 9:00 PM local time every night in Britain during World War II, a nightly ritual that some credit with winning the war. It was called the Silent Minute. (Dorothy Forster revived the practice in 1994.) This got me thinking… How much Canada needs healing love right now.
I grew up Christian (Mennonite and Evangelical) on the prairies and I also spent time in the Anglican church. I considered joining a monastery when I was going through a tough time when I was younger- but now I mostly just meditate. This year, I stumbled upon Near Death Experience videos on youtube where people of all faiths and walks of life have medically died and come back; they talk about the amazing spiritual experiences they had on the other side- often of profound and consuming love. Many of them tell us that prayer has powerful effects, and they ask us to keep up the praying efforts. This has renewed my interest in prayer, although I don’t think the technicalities of what happens in our brains and spirits exactly matters as long as we’re:
- carving space and time out of our day to invite in the sacred,
- asking the Source of love and peace to come and repair us and our fractured political landscape.
How can I join?
If you are as alarmed as I am about what’s happening in our world and specifically how it’s affecting Canada, please join [what I hope to be] 100 meditators and pray-ers across Canada in their commitment to directing their practice to our home country every day for the rest of 2026. You don’t have to sign up, but if you do, it will help to know that we’re praying and meditating alongside others; for those of us who have had the pleasure of experiencing it, meditating or praying alongside others can be really uplifting and powerful. And you don’t have to commit, but if you would like, please fill in the form below. I have already committed to five minutes a day until the end of 2026, and I commit to helping you get through to the end of 2026 administratively and with videos or a newsletter of some kind. If you’re getting in on the ground level (ie. before I fully know what I’m doing yet!) you can help me if you want! I’m good at administrative things, and I definitely have a passion for national unity, but I think I may need others to help in some way. Let me know if you’re interested in helping in your corner of the country or online or something. Thanks and please spread the word! Send this link to anyone you think would be interested.
A couple options:
1. If you want to join the 9 O’Clock movement to pray for 1 minute every night at 9 pm local time, that works- here is a simple prayer you can say:
“Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me.
2. If you want to do the 5 minutes of prayer or meditation, I and some fellow meditators across the country meditate at 1 PM CST every day, but I may ask if we could move that if we need to move it to the evening. We’ll see where this goes. Suggestions welcome.
3. If you know of another movement or group already doing this, please e-mail me and I’ll add it to this page. Ideally, I guess it would be best if we were all praying and meditating at the same time, but there are a variety of lifestyles out there to work around.