A Poem for Thursday

This is not an easy week. 

This is a week of remembering and sadness, remembering the phone call in the night that changed our family forever.  The life of my father-in-law was large with love and laughter.  The ache that remains is only healed through belief and trust in the good heart of God -- a God I trust as a child who doesn't understand all the reasons and chooses to rest in His embrace.


Thirst
by Mary Oliver (from the collection Thirst)

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have.  I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time.  Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.