A Prayer of Thanks
This is the day the Lord has made;
I will rejoice and be glad in it.
I turn my attention toward You, God.
I listen for You. I wait for You.
I meditate on the beauty You have brought into my life,
I recall a favorite childhood haunt, a creekbed–
boughs lilting overhead, bobbing leaves and dappled light.
The splash, the instant chill of my feet in the water.
When I was young, I went there to play.
But as I grew, I went there to meet with You.
I always knew You were there
in the muddy pools and rocks
Of the everyday and the places we play.
The places we go to get away.
You met me among toads and lizards and decaying leaves
that offer up a holy incense of life-from-death.
You were always Full Circle.
Wholeness.
You were always present in all things,
In the decomposition of the old
and the sprout of the new rising out of it–all of it beautiful.
The blossom inseparable from the breakdown
of fallen things time-transformed into rich earth.
The wild sweet william that brightened those woods
no less splendid than pale roots entangled
with pillbugs and moss.
I find belonging among your creatures
(even though I cannot now run to those woods).
I take my place in your dynamism,
for a rare moment, thankful to be myself–
that self who got to be alive in Your world for just a moment
and see You in rough bark and white-tailed deer.
(They huffed when they saw me, and bounded lithely over the hill.)
What can I think of heaven–
and what can I say about Eternal Life?
O Lord, my eyes are not lifed up;
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
(Psalm 131:1-2 ESV)
Impulse of Life, never dormant, always making and remaking,
Resurrecting and laying to rest,
I am borne by Your profuse energy
and nurtured by the constancy of Your motions.
“Blessed is the one . . . whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither–
whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 NIV)
The Lyrical Realist 