What do you pray for when life is good?
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| Ice cream in the morning. Photo by Stephan Geyer, Flickr |
What do you pray for when life is good?
What do you pray for when the rain is dripping off the storefront window, mere inches from your chin in hand, giving you a glass raincoat with a cozy, caffeinated lining?
What do you pray for when all your screens go dark and you have magic paper in your hands -- black and white and blinding all over with a creative spectrum invisible to those passing by the quiet reader in the corner?
What do you pray for when the noisy silence of a warm Saturday twilight carries you, all alone save for the cuddling breeze, to dreamland on the deck?
What do you pray for when you pluck sprigs of refreshment, Italy, and Christmas from the rooftop garden and stick them in jar cups to perfume the kitchen you haven't gotten around to cleaning?
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| Spent. Photo by thart2009, Flickr |
What do you pray for when someone seems to want you, and seeming is enough to push tantalizing optimism through the sneaky leaks in your emotional dam, and you let it pour for the simple pleasure of feeling it flow again?
When do you pray for when the job is well done, and you're the one who did it, and while you have not shattered the earth you have at least nudged your own hesitant land mass a couple inches to the left?
What do you pray for when your lower register is shot because you finally stopped caring who heard you screech/belt/be imperfect?
What do you pray for when you catch your eyelashes casting shadows on a gallery wall -- a fleeting installation meant only for you?
What do you pray for when you know in your most certain heart -- that delicate poached egg balanced in a cup in the middle of your chest -- that good is all around you, that still more good things are coming, and that for once -- for a brief, breathtaking moment -- you're patient enough to wait for them?
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| Gushing. Photo by theilr, Flickr |
Prayer #258: When Life is Good
My future is uncertain. My times are scary. My life is fluctuating. My mind and my hours are occupied always.
Yet my moments are crystallized -- perfect prisms hanging in an open window, slave to the elements, banging against the glass but never flying off.
Keep me attached to these refractive moments; they redeem the twisting in the wind.
Amen.