In the evening at dusk, I put the coyote’s food where I always do.  I look through the trees.  There is only a couple of acres in front of me, but in what I see, they go on forever, an eternal forest.  Because my heart is moved, these trees and I will be here after we are gone.

Just as my father will be at the table where he read the Bible.  Just as his prayers are stilled alive in my bedroom, that was once his.  Just as the angels are still in the trees where mama saw them.  This sort of thing is undiminished by time.  The spirit keeps them living after the body is gone.

 One time a long time ago when my life was falling apart and I’d gone to the desert, I met a woman from long ago, who prayed for her children of the future.  She was sitting up in the night, everyone else asleep, some on the floor at her feet, and she prayed. 

You might say she was born into hard times, but she saw that what was coming would be worse, that we could be lost from our hearts, and so she prayed.  Taking my lead from her, I do the same, for the descendants of my grandchildren, and my nephews, that if they come to that time of trouble, they will find the road rising up to meet them, already under their feet.

Of one of my grandmas, the one who lived for a while across Turkey Creek, it was said you could sometimes hear her praying before the visitor came into sight.  I wonder what the people feel who’ve built their houses there, if they hear her in the trees, in the water of the creek.

I know that in your own way you do the same, that you scatter your praying across the landscape, and in the path of those you love.  It is a good time to remember this, that the earth and the trees, the water – even the streets – don’t hold just tragedy and pain, but are rich with the faith of generations, dense with love. 
​
Those old people who came before us, they remembered us before we were born.  And they prayed.    

A few days ago, a raven raised a ruckus in the backyard.  I had three dreams with odd images, all in the same color.  This morning the crows had a serious fit.  When they are this numerous and unrelenting, I go check to see what has them so upset.  
​
Today I asked them to show me and they tried, but whatever it was, I finally left them to it.  Something is there all right, but it is shy, and I am hesitant to disturb it.  Not afraid, just respectful.  Could be the big animal that’s flattened the tall grass beside the house.    

This not-yet-arrived something has announced itself.  In symbolic language, it’s sent the equivalent of a shout, employing dreams, birds and whatever it is that hides in the trees.  I am prepared for a knock-you-out-of-the-bed dream, a phone call, a surprise in the mail, the sudden appearance of someone from the woods.  Whatever it is, I will know it when it comes.

You might be curious as to why I am telling you about this.  The reason is that sometimes the spirit seems to treat my writing as an invitation, or even a prayer.  I write about something pulling at my consciousness, and the next few days become a bit psychedelic. 

Like the last blog in which I wrote about the reappearance of the lost shawl.  The next day, a friend found a favorite earring I’d lost.  It was outside with the stopper on the back still in place.  I also lost the computer backup with all my books, but before I could be upset, I asked for help.  I went promptly to look under the car’s seat and found it.

No, I have no idea how it came to be there.  Yes, I know there are mischievous beings who do things like this, but my focus had been about prayer and the vector of time, and I believe these small events were affirmation. 

I take seriously my conversations with you, dear reader.  I am aware that more is listening than I can see with my eyes or hear with my ears, though hints and signs are sprinkled generously everywhere. 
​
The bucks have already eaten their fill.  The fawn, thin and hungry, is here.  I think I see apples in her future. 

And then when I am finished, quite suddenly, I see the answer is already here, has already arrived.  “Oh,” I say.  “I hadn’t realized that the closed door was right beside the one that is open, one that is so familiar I hadn’t realized it was a door at all.”   The open door, as you might have guessed, was the answer to a previous prayer.  The spirit is at work, even when I am slow to see.

But all the steps, my work, are necessary: the prayer, the way I work with plants, the way I work with dreams – all that precedes the sudden revelation.  If it was not for these I’d not have had the experience of revelation, of ‘knowing’ that I was already where I’d aimed, that the prayer was answered in the praying. 

So, if you’re still with me, patient reader, let’s take this one step further.  I left a shawl at a gathering.  I returned, searched, asked if anyone had seen it.  It is a beautiful shawl and I was sorry to have it leave so I said a prayer for its return.  Later, I found it, neatly folded atop a stack of blankets in the back room. 

Are you smiling kindly and remembering my age?  Old people are so forgetful, aren't we!  Though I have to say that sometimes it seems as if I am remembering instead of forgetting, remembering what’s true. 

But if you are a dreamer and believe in prayer, you have to allow for the possibility that the shawl came home without my having found it.  Let me put this another way.  If we think of the moment of prayer as having no vector, yet holding all possible directions – forward in time, back in time, etc., then we can imagine a mystery that leaves room for prayer to undo what has occurred.  I imagine others who live in the woods long enough know what I mean.

Am I talking in riddles?  Did I go one step too far?  I thank all that’s holy that I have a few friends who understand my off the edge and underwater perambulations. 

​I thank all that’s holy that I have found that 'one step too far'.