Dear Friends,

The last week has been quite an emotional ordeal. When I arrived in San Antonio last Friday, the doctors announced that my daughter (Rebecca) might not make it. It was sobering and thank God I was sober. I was present to every moment. I felt everything I was supposed to feel. My heart belonged to me.

By early this week, the tide had turned. Becca was out of danger. It might have played out differently. But somehow by the grace of God, it didn’t. So I have been reflecting on Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Our Prayer of Thanks”. It is a lovely piece, an invitation to sentient beings, to pay closer attention.

“For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and
the system; and so for the break of the game and
the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.”

I must confess that I do not know the mysteries of the game. I do not understand the rules, nor am I able to foresee any outcomes. But I am learning on a much deeper level how to be thankful. What a blessing – a simple gift which threatens to change my every waking moment.

See you on Sunday.

Carter