Prayer for 6/3/2011

Holy One,

I am grateful this morning. Grateful, that you have given me another morning to carry on the task--mine, yours, ours. Grateful, that you have made it so radiant; the sun curls round the cream of our shades to fall in brilliant pools around the room. Grateful, for the human mind, and heart, and the outbursts of their inspiration: for the music of Mozart, which laughs and chatters with the wisdom concealed behind humor as I write this morning.

Grateful, for the return: for the strange coincidence that I should have left this blog in existence (having deleted the other one, an exercise in self-promotion, long ago), that I should find it this morning, quite ready for it, that its title and even url should be perfect to the moment at which I am. That I should see myself shining through so clearly in its sparse entries. How the entry on the election still speaks after all of these months and their disappointments! How the silly entry on Argentina reflects back the amusement--laughing, knowing, yet uncruel (I hope)--I hope to always keep with me, for the purposes of my sanity, and savor.

Grateful, above all, for my encounter, yesterday and this morning, with Teilhard de Chardin. At moments, he appeared almost as a gatekeeper, not merely opening but forcing open the doors of revelation and holding them fast and wide with a shout of joy, as that revelation streamed in and seized me, my mouth opening in sympathy with my astonished eyes, my heart tight with the movement of meaning, my breathing only regular through conscious remembering-- to keep my heart from bursting. What breadth of vision! What depth and confidence of hope! And for all that, at all but the end, somehow, a humility, so different in key from the usual apostate apostles of Progress. I found another soul friend yesterday, another source of inspiration, another interlocutor.

It was impossible not to feel, walking home from Danish Pastry House (where I did the bulk of my reading), something move with in me. I could feel within myself the same spirit, the same vision of Teilhard, restively wanting to be born. The liberation of shame and doubt seeing themselves for what they were and melting away in the face of the light, a choice, and yet a choice forced upon me. Happily forced upon me.

Thank you, Holy One, for the ever-expanding witness and meaning of Jesus, whose face I have begun to see, in suggestion, everywhere. May he be with me today--as I write, as I read, as I talk with Jim, in the doctor's office, yes, even in the gay bar. Let me make the choice to be true to that spirit I met and found again yesterday, with your help.

Amen.