You can relish a rainbow and a cup of tea, sunrise and a flock of birds, a cemetery walk and a friend's newborn, the first blush of wildflowers in a patch of dirt and the looping rapture of an old favorite song. ... You can't mend a world, but you can mend the hole in the polka- dot pocket of your favorite coat. They are not the same thing, but they are part of the same thing, which is all there is — life living itself through us, moment by moment, one broken beautiful thing at a time.
In prayer the stilled voice learns to hold its peace,
to listen with the heart to silence that is joy, is
adoration. The self is shattered, all words torn apart
in this strange patterned time of contemplation that,
in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me, and then,
in silence, leaves me healed and mended.