Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven’t deserved
of days and solitude, your body’s immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger, nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few simple questions: did I love,
finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? …at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
(Adapted from The Light of Invisible Bodies by Jeanne Lohmann.)
Gracious and loving God, be with us as we learn to praise all that our life entails.—AMEN.
