we are all saying please

we are all saying please

My granddaughter toddles to meet me when I arrive. I pick her up and she pats me on the back, reassuring me, letting me know that all is well, no matter that the wheels of my mind are spinning from the latest savage cruelty and violence. All is well, her tiny starfish hands tell me. She takes a bite of broccoli and offers me the next. She is praying for my wellbeing. Eat this and live long. We put on The Dubliners and swing dance together. She’s praying may your legs be strong that we might dance like this forever.

Our prayers for each other flow back and forth. Be well I love you stay warm thank you for the tea, for the blanket, for the meal. We are saying please and thank you a ball tossed back and forth between us endless laughter catch and throw catch and throw the birds the dogs the crows and coyotes, happy to see us happy, willing us to keep catching and throwing the golden ball that unites us, that shimmers with the promise of the life we are making now for our children and our children’s children, repairing the world with the care that is the heart and hum at the center of all our prayers.

we are all saying please may the headlines tomorrow  read of reconciliation, deep rifts mended by careful listening, a sweeping away of greed and violence as if by a flood of Noah’s proportion.

we long to board that Ark with our friends neighbors and families, our pets and plants and the seeds to germinate a new world where kindness is the nutrient we add to our water, where we grow our food together, where our children are free from prejudice.

we want to wake up to early morning fog the color of deep dreams, where we can unfurl ourselves into the radiance of new beginnings, where hope has returned unbidden in the night like a phone call from a friend you didn’t know you missed.

we want to wake up and find that the rain that came in the night left our sidewalks glistening, our  rivers running  clean, the ocean waves breaking  with the ecstatic song of whales.

we want to drop to our knees and thank the spirits for delivering us to a new world free from the pervasive suffering that fills our waking awareness.

but listen: it’s here. don’t laugh. every kindness, every seed planted in soil free from pesticides and pollution, every meal we cook from food grown without chemicals, every time we slow down enough to let a car into a long line of traffic, it’s here.

every time we coax our children away from screens and phones, every time the magic of the world touches their young souls with mercy and poetry, it’s here.

we are saying please to moments of connection that keep our hearts open, that despite all the conflict and deep divisions, we are waking from a bad dream and putting one foot and then the other onto the floor of our lives, knowing that grace can illuminate us at any time.

we are all saying please please just listen quietly when we are sad and despairing, do not try to fix us, there is no fix for grief except to greet it and set a place for it at the feast of all that is.

we are saying please may we all be met with compassion may we understand that not all wounds are visible may we be patient with each other willing to think twice before we judge or condemn.

may we weather this storm of darkness that is sweeping across the earth by building shelters together, each brick, every stone set carefully in place for generations to come because surely what we do now will ripple down the years and even though our names may be swept away in the flood, the stones we now set firmly in place with tenderness and precision will still be holding up our corner of the sky.

we are all saying please, strengthen our faith, fortify and guide us. let this be the time for ceremonies and rituals of forgiveness, to remember the ones among us who perished in the force of the gale, to light candles in their honor and make of their names a holy flame.

we are saying please let it be so. Let this turning of the seasons be the marker when we finally know that there is nothing more we need to be in order to walk this earth whole and holy, a time when the demons that tell us we are not worthy, we have failed, we have not done enough to earn the love of spirit, are sent back to whatever dark realm they emerged from so that the love we offer tenderly to ourselves becomes the blessing and the gift we offer to others.

May this be the season when we befriend ourselves and fall deeply into the love always waiting to catch us.

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 Read more essays in my book The Ripening: Essays on Love, Loss, Marriage and Aging available on Amazon.