Only my footsteps in the snow,
Only the glow of my fire,
Only a choir of wind to sing the benediction.
But I feast on memories
In a holy place.
It has been so long since I have heard my own voice
It startles me
When I say the grace.
May all things lost, apart, alone
Find some small shelter of their own.
~ from THE ART OF BEV DOOLITTLE, "A Mountain Man's Christmas" by Elsie Maclay
God is absorbed in work, and hears the spacious hum of bees, not the din, and hears far-off our screams. Perhaps God listens for prayers in that wild solitude. And hurries on with weaving: till it's done, the garment woven, our voices, clear under the familiar blocked-out clamor of the task, can't stop their terrible beseeching. God imagines it sifting through, at last, to music in the astounded quietness, the loom idle, the weaver at rest.
