Praise and Song

Letter 4522

The rains have stopped and dawn comes brightly. My heart holds energy and my limbs are strong.

Such newness and joy! I am ready for the world.

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Let me sing of the joy I feel, and lift up all that undergirds it for all to see. Let me fill my day with praise and song! Gratitude! How else to mark this turning point if a morning?

Let me live and speak my joy today.

Consider:

Can I sing of my gratitude today?

Reading:

❖ “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” — Mary Oliver, “Sometimes,” Red Bird

❖ “For it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” — David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer

❖ “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” — Psalm 100:4 (KJV)

Thank you for reading. If this helped you today, please consider sharing it.

~B.R.

Statues

Letter 4521

Walking through a garden of statues.

Old wisdom looking down on me.

One after another, over many years, were they placed here.

What do they offer?

Some look upon me sternly. Others are engaged in worlds of their own, or look into the distance.

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Perhaps it is the ancient artists with whom I am speaking. They left these figures for me and others like me. It is not the grand figures of history with whom I confer, but named and nameless ones who left behind the visible world.

Let me remember the world is not the world.

Consider:

Can I thank those who came before me?

Reading:

❖ “I am a part of all that I have met;” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

❖ “We carry our history with us. We are our history.” — James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

❖ “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…” — Hebrews 12:1 (KJV)

Thank you for reading. If this helped you today, please consider sharing it.

~B.R.

Facts

Letter 4520

I saw a vole running along the wall.

Its world is filled with huge objects, the wheelbarrow the size of a mountain.

My world, too — how large is my mountainside when viewed by you, Lord?

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How small am I? And yet so loved.

Let me embrace my position in your world, Lord.

Consider:

Can I be grateful today?

Reading:

❖ “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.” — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

❖ “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

❖ “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” — Psalm 8:4 (KJV)

Thank you for reading. If this helped you today, please consider sharing it.

~B.R.

Laws of Spirit

Letter 4519

Looking across the field, a family of deer is browsing at the edge of the woods. I am far off, and no danger. They peacefully feed.

They are fulfilling their purpose without question.

Here in my room, I am in turmoil as I wonder what will come next, what I will do, how I should act.

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Why do I not fulfill my own purpose without question?

You placed me here on this cushion, Lord. You gave me this heart and soul. Let me feed them without worry over where I might go later.

Consider:

Can I seek your will, moment by moment?

Reading:

❖ “Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, ch. 17, trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson

❖ “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” — Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

❖ “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” — John 4:34 (KJV)

Thank you for reading. If this helped you today, please consider sharing it.

~B.R.