Tag: Great Blue Heron

A Personal Prayer

When I walked to the shoreline, there was a Kingfisher just down the bank.

Across the creek, a Great Blue Heron plodded.

This morning I got a note from a friend who has cancer and is struggling through treatment. He was flown to Hopkins and is in the ICU. He asked for prayer.

I prayed. I wrote and sent him a prayer. I am praying. I will be praying. I haven’t stopped. It never feels like enough.

What I want for him is a miracle. A return to health and home and family and worship and all the things he loves and that love him back.

How about a miracle, God? Have you seen the world lately? Have you seen how we behave? How we treat one another? Most of us don’t deserve miracles. But you still give them. I can’t always figure out why or where, but it’s not on me to do that. Miracles are you, God.

I can hear Bob Weir singing, “I need a miracle every day”–and I get that.

I feel it in my soul–the miracles of morning coffee and a hug in the kitchen, and making breakfast for my daughters, of a world where the seasons change and there are Kingfishers and Herons on the shoreline.

I think of the ICU. Where miracles are breath. And modern medicine. Doctors and nurses. Love of family. Technology. Communication. Patience. Time. Prayer. Hope.

I sit on the shoreline praying for my friend. I feel your presence all around me.

A jet flies over with its landing gear down; it’s a majestic sound and sight. It’s a miracle you’ve given us through the minds, reason, and intellect you created in us.

I pray now with tears in my eyes for multiple friends with cancer who love you and who share your love with others.

We all need miracles every day. Send some extras to those with cancer and to their families. Keep them connected to your love, your peace, your healing.

I lift them up to you, God.

Thanks for listening.

Love you.

Amen.

Thank you

Thank you.

Thank you for breakfast with Anna this morning at Rise Up.

Thank you for laughter and conversation taking Ava to work.

Thank you for the slow driver on Oxford Road who reminded me to slow down.

Thank you for the Oxford Conservation Park.

Thank you for the body and energy to skateboard and for the joy I get from it.

Thank you for the Eastern Bluebirds who cut across my path.

Thank you for the tree I sit under to think and pray and listen.


Thank you for the Great Blue Heron who squawked and landed on the dock across the cove.

Thank you for the hammock on the point across the way, which has been there for years and always reminds me to rest.

Thank you for the Bishop’s words on Wednesday that “Every day is a conversion experience.”

Thank you for giving me new eyes to see familiar places afresh.

Thank you for giving me words when I frequently don’t know where they come from.

Thank you for making my path clearer and clearer for me each day, even though I don’t fully know where it leads.


Thank you for companions on the way.

Thank you for the everyone I have crossed paths with, people walking their own paths, walking together for a time; thank you for those who have encouraged me and for those who I have struggled with.

Thank you for forgiveness for the countless times I have screwed up and the countless times I will screw up in the future.

Thank you for your Creation and for making me feel at home and at peace in it.

Thank you for the wisdom and inspiration that comes from your Word and from the words you’ve given to poets, mystics, artists, musicians, and prophets, known and unknown.

Thank you for the conversation this morning, under the tree, through Mary Oliver:


(Note: I was compelled to pick up Mary Oliver’s book “Devotions” when I left home this morning. I always start reading at the bookmark, where I stopped reading last time. I opened to “When I Am Among the Trees” and it picked up steam from there.)

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ saying:
Follow me.”

Thank you for your Son and for his invitation to “Follow me.”

Thank you for your love, which always comes from you, and your love that comes through others.

Lord, help me use my life and myself to serve you, to glorify you, to be your love and to shine your light in the world.

Here I am, Lord.

Thank you.