Father

You know what father meant to me in the growing-up years...cheat, shout, abandon, coerce, take, humiliate.


You know. And yet You have the pluck to ask me this...Call me. Call me Father. Father who art in heaven.


Tell me, teach me, show me, deep down in the wounded places. What is father, God? With Your sweet hand, brush past my lips, my heart. Open what has long been shut.


The sound of my voice, the thrum of trust that calls You Father, Father, Father.

Pieces

So many pieces floating in my life right now, little sticks adrift in a stream. I strain to see a pattern, watch and wait to discover which ones will land upon the shore... a sort of flotsam that finds itself connected by fallen reeds, dead leaves, string from old cloth, but, still, connected. I want to know which ones will float away, forgotten, dash against rocks, splinter, split.

I strain to see.

And my mind reaches for a "borrowed prayer."

Give us.

Give us this day.

This day.

Let me be content to watch the pieces floating, twirling in eddies, bobbing. Let me not strain to see. Just let this be upon my tongue...

Give us.

Give us this day.

This day.

Coyote at the Door

Somehow I woke last night, remembering the coyote at my sister's door. It showed up one day, nose to the glass... drawn, apparently, by some bacon grease that her Eldest poured near the house (when it should have been taken to the far corner of the yard).

In the darkness of my bed, in my mind's eye, I saw the grey grizzled face, sharp eyes, saliva dripping. I saw the hunger in his aspect... poised as he was, there at the glass, hoping for more than a lick of grease.

This made me think of the story of "Dad's" brother. When yet a child, playing in the fields, he was carried off. By a wolf. And I lay there wondering, is there a coyote at my door? Or even more than one? Drawn there by carelessness of my heart and soul?

So I prayed to You, "Our Father, who art in heaven... lead me not into temptation, but deliver me... from the coyote at the door."