Just enough time has passed that people think I’m okay that I’m myself again back to normal whatever that means when in fact I’m a wounded warrior a man who’s been in a battle to cling to meaning and to hope and to a chance to heal.
How long is enough for such things? How much time does it take to believe you will be okay maybe someday in an unknown future as the moon hovers mournfully over the pieces of your life littered across the ground like dark humus meant to rouse a dormant soul?
There may not be enough time. How could there be? Time is meaningless. It’s here it’s gone it’s fragile it’s tenuous it’s mystifying it’s merely a container for the life you thought you would have.
That life has slipped from your grasp. You’ve lost the one you loved. You will not get her back. There’s no normal anymore or okay or time enough to heal the deep wound. It remains.
New York City 20th Anniversary of 9/11 Weekend Memorial
A Prayer for Our Country On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11
“For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.” ~ Henri Nouwen
God of expansive and generous love, whose concern is the whole wide wonderful world, especially the vulnerable and anawim (poor ones), who hears prayers in countless languages, who cannot be imprisoned in any one religion, who took human form in a person of color, in whom unity is discovered in beautiful diversity, whose heart breaks anew each day at the disease, death, and destruction wrought by the creatures of earth, hear our prayer.
We cannot claim you as our own – you are not an American God. To do so is blasphemy.
Rather, you claim us as your own – ordinary folks from all walks of life, each one different, yet more similar than dissimilar – and you call us to live lives of genuine love, caring for the least of these among us, becoming persistent warriors for peace, laboring to achieve justice for all, seeking to be compassionate as God is compassionate.
So, while we identified some enemies and misidentified others in the aftermath of 9/11, and then marched dutifully off to war, thinking we could avenge the harm done to us when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck and a plane was forced down in a Pennsylvania field, and so many innocent lives of loved ones with futures and hopes were lost to us, we were mostly serving ourselves, not you.
We pray for our country on this anniversary of tragedy and resolve. We pray for comfort in our collective grief.
We pray too that the discipline of duty might be turned to addressing our own troubles before turning our fury upon others.
We pray that we begin to take seriously matters of liberty and justice that affect us all, directly or indirectly – climate change, income inequality, equal access to voting, racial profiling, police violence, wrongful convictions, prisons built upon profits, women’s health and reproductive choices, equal protections for our LGBTQ siblings.
We pray for healing amid our deep divisions, not so that we all think alike, but so that we might again be able to talk meaningfully and honestly with one another.
Finally, we pray for the wisdom to reclaim and redefine our nation’s core principles to ensure the liberty and justice that is due to all.
Award-winning photo of Morro Rock by Dallis Day Richardson
Blessing for When You Don’t Know Where to Begin
This blessing isn’t sure where to begin. So many steps are just steps in the dark. So much of life is shaped by uncertainty. So many questions litter our paths. Where to begin.
Where to begin in mending one’s shattered heart. Where to begin in creating a life on one’s own. Where to begin in accepting joy when it comes. Where to begin.
Even if there are discernible first steps, then what? At the core of being human the heart beats with a force originating in the earth’s beginnings where fire and water and soil and air collide and explode into wondrous breathtaking life! Is this the place where healing begins – as you immerse yourself in this cosmic life force? If so, where do you learn how to do this?
This blessing sees how often you lose your way as you unsteadily chart a strange new path alone without another soul truly able to guide you. What could anyone possibly say? They would be trying to piece you back together into their vision of wholeness.
This blessing admits defeat when necessary. There is no winning the wrestling match with grief when it approaches with muscles bulging and gaze focused squarely on your weaknesses. It will pin you every time. Every damn time.
Maybe though, just maybe, this is precisely what you need – a sweeping wide-ranging battle to live with the very things you fear most – loneliness, meaninglessness, being forgotten left behind as the world moves on, accepting undeserved joy – as you spar with your muscled opponent who looks surprisingly familiar, like someone you’ve encountered before but haven’t seen in years.
When we fell in love it was a long and lovely fall tumbling heart first into a trust so deep and wide neither of us recognized it at first.
Here where the soul is bare and unashamed and caught off guard by the beauty of another we discovered home for the first time in our lives.
It is not to be taken for granted – this serendipity of finding what we knew our souls needed but had never been able to find – a shelter from the storm, a refuge amid life’s troubles, a sanctuary of healing grace.
Your dying shook the foundations of this home we fashioned out of love and sweat and laughter and tears.
Now many questions travel with me in this liminal territory I’ve entered – where am I to turn for shelter, how will I recover a sense of home, how do I cultivate a circle of trust, how does one pray with a heart bereft, how do I travel this long, lonely road?
Travel with me, sweetheart. Please, I pray, travel with me, as I wait for answers and go in search of them.
Travel with me, sweetheart, and in the traveling hold these questions with me until a new dawn arrives.
Travel with me and be home for me, and in the sweet mystery of love be home with me.
I’m told you’re looking down on me from above, but I don’t believe it. I don’t want you looking down on me from some lofty perch. You never did that in life, so why would you start now? It’s odd to even think about you hovering over me – how high I’m not told – viewing my life as a spectator, watching me move from here to there, seeing me make my mistakes and not being able to prevent them, having little to do with me really, other than to observe my days and pray for the best.
In life, this life, you were always by my side and I felt your deep presence. You were my sanctuary – where love flourished, where healing occurred, where life was restored each day, where hope never died.
On this side of the veil I still look for you in this sacred meeting place where egos fall away and love without conditions abides.
You don’t look down on me from above. You look as you always have, into my eyes, with a tenderness too deep for words. You draw me out and love me, unreservedly, truthfully, and that is a gift that can only be given from the inside.
You who wonder if a time will ever come when contentment comes calling again.
You who limp through most days on legs weary from carrying the heaviness of grief.
You who look for signs amid the trees and birds of the air that there is yet some life able to flourish and fly.
You who struggle with even the simplest things.
You who have given up on the why, and need to know how – how to be, how to move, how to breathe, how to live.
The heart knows its way home. It does. The heart – your heart – has always hungered for wholeness, has always delighted in joy, has always longed for love, has always looked for the truest way.
This blessing may not be the one you expect. Yet it is the one you receive – even as your heart aches, and healing seems slow, and days long.
This blessing meets you where you are and remains with you – in the silent spaces, in the open wounds, in the private pain, for as long as you need.
This blessing knows that even though it seems impossible – you will be well again, you will be whole again, in the fullness of time.
The pillows you bought last year for the futon are lovely shades of lavender and blue and we both loved them yet we knew right away they weren’t nearly big enough.
So, I bought larger ones in a complementary color to slip behind them. I hope you don’t mind.
The dining room tablecloth of earthy browns and deep reds we have had for years has never been my favorite (sorry for not telling you) and especially now as I seek out cheerier colors.
So, I put a bright floral tablecloth of many colors on the table and may go in search of others like it. I hope you don’t mind.
Reddish brown pottery pieces you picked up at local pottery sales have been displayed on a shelf one taller than the other and while the designs carved by the artists on them are intriguing the colors have never appealed to me.
So, they are now in a box in the garage that will eventually go to the thrift store. I hope you don’t mind.
The living room where the final weeks of your life were spent in a hospital bed looking out at the trees and plants rabbits, squirrels and birds needed a feng shui makeover which I’ve attempted complete with a little garden of green and flowering plants in the windowed corner of the room on what was your puzzle table.
At this table where you stood often gently moving to music while working a puzzle I have placed the living urn gleaming white with a Hawaiian Umbrella tree planted and nurtured in the soil with you. I hope you don’t mind. (In fact, I hope it pleases you.)
I’m not trying to erase anything, sweetheart, about our lovely life together.
But I realize I can’t leave everything the same or I will soon be mired in the past.
And I can’t change everything either (nor do I want to) or I might become forgetful of all that was so beautiful about you and me together.
So, I make room in the here and now moments of each new day to simply be present to that which opens up before me like a holy invitation to live again.
Let breezes sweetly whisper through the trees at midday
Let clouds drift lazily across a buoyant spring sky
Let the sun’s brilliance gild rugged hillsides nearby
And let it all remind me that this day is holy
Let friends call and listen tenderly to my pain
Let strangers offer a kind word or gesture
Let hours pass and leave no trace of regret
Let this day unfold with a gentleness born of grace
And let it all remind me that this day is holy
There is no denying this world looks different to me now my future blurred by uncertainty love’s healing work barely begun and the cruel finality of death no longer merely an idea
But let the birds sing in the morning let friends be present by my side let moments of contentment quietly come let memories wash over me like a balm let joy one day follow these days of mourning let healing imperceptibly take root and grow
And let it all remind me if I have the courage to see it that this day indeed is holy
dreamprayact 