The Power of Prayer
8/21/21, erin, living room
My favorite moments of being a human happen
when my mind is flipped and my polar magnets reverse.
—
There’s immense power in this group of cirrus people
who beam love at my family
from twenty-thousand feet.
—
Day by day, Day by day,
Oh, Dear Lord,
Three things I pray:
To see Thee more clearly
Love Thee more dearly
Follow Thee more nearly
—
There are people like wisps of cloud of above the Armstrongs, watching, praying across the blue. These wisps are people who love, they can only promise change. The individuals are cloud-streaks, they send down a ship for us. This ship built from your prayer, intercession, intention, and faith.
Yesterday Breeny celebrated “3 Months Adjusted” (three months since his original due date May 20th). I look up. I celebrate the sky above. And still I cling to the raft that carries us across rolling seas of anxiety.
That violent sea which (as seas do) crashed high against the dry and changed it permanently.
Anxiety, a sea unfamiliar to me, rose and rose around me during February
In March it tossed and turned me
even as I called it by its name.
—
Over the years, I’ve heard words arranged in such ways
that my actual world-view changed…
My relationship with time changed
when the night was growing late
and the bass player stated
to his beloved vocalist,
“I’m almost ready.
I just need
a couple
more
half-hours.”
.
My heart beats upon my eardrum tonight as I type.
Remember the moment in Whale Rider when she describes how it’s
“quiet down deep”?
Someone from our ark tosses me a life ring.
__
My relationship with websites changed when
A pianist once asked a flutist what she was doing
and she said,
“I’m just wasting Internet.”
—
A renter walks outside and finds a gushing geyser of water from his sidewalk.
An official-looking city employee tells him authoritatively, “This is no one’s fault.”
Later, it turns out, it was exactly that guy’s fault. We laughed so hard at the syntax!
Maybe, from my perch on your sturdy raft, looking anywhere but aft,
I laugh at that simpler (non-NICU) causality.
—
These are words I will never forget. I have made them my own. I’m falling asleep again, I just need a couple more half hours thank-typing.
—
Brian Greene recently told an interviewer that in 10 to-the-exponent years,
human consciousness will
…well…
entropy.
Wither and …
in the future
when any thinking being or any computing structure is trying to carry out its calculations
it will necessarily release heat to the environment but
the environment will say NO MORE I CANT ABSORB ANY MORE
and then that structure will burn up in its own entropic waste
and will disintegrate
.. The power of prayer absorbs the excess heat, it has this far, it will this week.
==
Being home, being home, being, home.
==
As our newishborn Breeny enters himself more assuredly, our toddler Nora embraces her creativity.
The NICU parenting machine screeches audibly.
I miss Breen at 4:00 am. I hold Breen at 2:00 pm. I ache, I pine, I whine for the baby. The power of prayer surrounds me, grounds me.
Only this toy we enjoyed all day, tripping now that it’s in my way. Only this piece of Nora’s laundry. Only this green suitcase, still zipped shut since rapidly departing SLC.
There is so much to say.
There is an entire photo essay, someday.
Thank you for all of moments you have shared, just to Pray.
I thank the pray-ers we might never see. I thank the quiet, I thank the noisy.
I thank the cirrus people I can almost barely see. I thank you for those couple seconds of love-beams between your million moments of living.
—
It is miraculous wind that moves us from December into August.
It is a ship made out of prayer that keeps us above water.
It is a wide sail of woven, stitched, quilted, and webbed intention
that invites miracle wind.
—
Breen breathes, Nora breathes, Jon breathes, and I breathe.
Breathing again.
Only this breath, this gratitude for the power of prayer.
