Our Feather … a prayer

And the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. And he replied, “keep it light…”

Our Feather,
one small brush of the grand and lifting wing,
holy are all the names of God.

Your kindness come
and your kiss be felt warm
on every lump of soil,
gust of wind,
lapping of salt sea and fresh water.

Give us today
and let us recognize it
as a gift —
the bread and beauty of it —
and that it is like no other.

Forgive us all the love
we owed but hoarded,
and our careless or angry trespassing
on the lives of your children,
even as, with unbearable effort,
we forgive
the taking and the trampling
of what is precious to us.

Draw your hush across our lips,
and pull us back
from what we would regret.
Find us an escape or stay with us
when there is none,

for yours is the place our hands are held,
yours is the courage of the sequoia
and the broken atom,
yours are galaxies of starlight,
and the hum of bees —

Now … and when we come to sing
all our todays
into your tomorrow.