| In the morning, when I’ve got my bearings, I take my glass of water outside and talk to the sun. I ask pretty much for the same things each time, and that is what comes to me, but the crucial part, or foundation, of my prayers is that I let my heart be moved in the praying. When I turn out the light at night, fix my pillow just right, and say, “Goodnight, God,” my heart is fixed on gratitude. Sometimes, I cry. |  |
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.
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.
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