For your prayer
your journey into God,
may you be given a small storm
a little hurricane
named after you, persistent enough
to get your attention
violent enough
to give you to new depths
strong enough
To shake you to the roots
majestic enough to remind you of your origin:
made of the earth
yet steeped in eternity
frail human dust
yet soaked with infinity.
The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.
You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful-
They are the most rare.
~ Joy Harjo from "Singing Everything" in AN AMERICAN SUNRISE
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear;
Can't know except in moments...
...we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
~ Joy Harjo in "Eagle Poem" from IN MAD LOVE AND WAR
For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness.
