fall

... prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been.

I have learned to quit speeding through life, always trying to do too many things too quickly, without taking the time to enjoy each day's doings. I think I always thought of real living as being high. I don't mean on drugs – I mean real living was falling in love, or when I got my first job, or when I was able to help somebody . . . In between the highs I was impatient — you know how it is — life seemed so Daily. Now I love the dailiness. I enjoy washing dishes, I enjoy cooking, I see my father's roses out the kitchen window. I like picking beans. I notice everything – birdsongs, the clouds, the sound of wind, the glory of sunshine after two weeks of rain. These are the things I took for granted before [cancer].

Desire is a tricky thing, the boiling of the body's wants...
I've been the one who has craved and craved until I could not see
beyond my own greed. There's a whole nation of us.
To forgive myself, I point to the earth as witness.
... tell me,
what it is to be quiet, and yet still breathing...
...to honor this: the length of days. To speak to the core
that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what's
shouting, but to what's underneath asking for nothing...

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer.