Prayer in Pothos and Pigeons
My prayer has always been calling out to the unseen Christian God. I feel gratitude for the warm sun and the birds chirping along the hedge, but I never lean in and thank them - they who were made by that unseen. I wary to tread into some false idolatry, worshiping crystals rather than Jesus, who for most of my life was the one. But if God is omniscient then the birds that sing and the heart shaped leaves that fall with their next generation to bloom are as deep as the risen son. I can find my God not just in a spiritual place that I always look up to the ether for, but in the blades of grass I grip between my toes. That bird that hits its claws against the glass of my window cyclically could be God speaking something insistent to me. Perhaps I can understand if I open to its call.
All this I am considering was inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem:
Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look
up into that blue space?
Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don’t worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.
Even when the swans are flying north and making
such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening
and understanding.
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring and how it
springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is
that really a problem?
There are thousands of voices, after all.
And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)
that the swans know about as much as we do about
the whole business?
So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly.
Take from it what you can.
Not the only one to inspire. Definitely not the only one.