P&S May2021 GIFT

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Elrena Evans

Happy May Day!

I

n March, I wrote about planting spring bulbs last fall—haphazardly, ill-timed, in all my non-gardener glory—and wondering if those bulbs would ever become flowers.

When the snow melted I eagerly looked at the ground, and saw… nothing. Soon, my neighbors had spring flowers lining their walkways, and I had… nothing. I had just about given up all hope when one morning, I saw a tender shoot of green poking up through the weeds in my ostensible flowerbed. In a few days, a tiny iris unfolded in trembling purple brilliance. Now, daffodils and hyacinths have joined the irises, and I am in awe of what I (and the earth and the sun and the rain and the miracle of time) have accomplished.

The theme for this month’s Paper&String is metamorphosis—the changes within us and around us that move us on our life’s

paths and make up our existence. From oniony bulbs turning to beautiful flowers; from a season coming to an end and a new one beginning. Living in a house with two teenagers, I see metamorphosis every day— the redheaded boy who emerged into this world at all of seven pounds two ounces and nineteen inches now towers over me, his red hair almost as long as He has made mine. His erstwhile chirpy treble voice everything beautiful is now deep and in its time. He has resonant. This also set eternity in morning, he made the human heart; yet his first batch of salted caramel pretzel no one can fathom bark. Metamorphosis what God has done abounds.

from beginning to end.

This month, we have Allison Duncan writing about a - Ecclesiastes 3:11 transition in her life, and how early spring flowers and sudden snowstorms taught her something about her own heart. Lisa-Jo reviews a mystery series, Christie takes us on a tour of Maplehurst in

May, and Tonya tells the story of an empty chair that means so much more.

If you’re joining us for the first time this month, welcome! We’ve designed Paper&String to be a virtual “care package” for you, featuring articles, music, recipes, artwork, spiritual practices, and more. We hope these selections inspire you to read, listen, taste, grow, and gather with all of us in the Black Barn Collective. Don’t feel you need to open everything in order—each category is designed to be its own individually wrapped gift, nestled inside this package we are giving to you.

I hope your own metamorphoses bring you joy in unexpected places.

Wishing you all the glories of May...

Unless A Seed Die

by Allison Duncan

O

n the way to my theology class in early April, I noticed fingers of green reaching up past the layers of last autumn’s leaves. I had seen the snowdrops pop up on my college campus a few weeks ago, their pearly petals startling against the surrounding brown, hibernating landscape. Tight fists of buds emerged from tree branches, and

the grass suddenly turned verdant again along the banks of the creek. One day I went around campus taking pictures, trying to freeze time and capture the beauty that is so brief when all of nature is surging toward spring.

It was a treat to see green again, especially the sharp, bright green of new growth. But for some reason I also felt an underlying sadness at seeing it.

When I arrived in the classroom where our Martin Luther class was held, the windows were open, and a light breeze was blowing in.

“Can we have class outside today?” asked one of my fellow seniors, who was quickly joined by a clamor of similar pleas.

“Sure,” said our professor, Dr. Cary. “Some days are meant to be enjoyed outside.” We packed up our notebooks and went in search of a scenic place to sit, finally spotting a sun-warmed stone walkway by the pond.

“Don’t step on the blue flowers!” Dr. Cary burst out as we traipsed through the grass. “They’re my favorite!”

Strewn throughout the lawn, almost hidden, were small blooms, each one a six-pointed star that contained a universe of color. Admiring their concentrated hue, I wondered what kind of flowers they were.

“They’re an electric blue that you just don’t get in the summer,” Dr. Cary was saying. Properly reprimanded for tromping on these treasures, we picked our way through the grass and sat down to discuss Luther and his view of law and gospel.

I was going to miss these discussions desperately after I graduated. Would I find deep intellectual community and life-enriching conversations after I traded in my

backpack for a briefcase? Who would ask me challenging questions, correct my philosophical misunderstandings, and introduce me to whole new worlds of thought? In a few short weeks, my classes would end, my classmates would scatter, and I would be catapulted into the next chapter of life with only a diploma and four years of memories to take with me.

Some of my anxiety about leaving college was to be expected, but I also saw in myself a deep, fearful opposition to the upcoming change. Aside from summer jobs and threemonth internships, the life of a student was all I knew. I had no job lined up, no graduate school applications submitted,

no solid ideas of what to do next. I couldn’t understand my classmates’ eagerness to be “done with school.”

Some of my professors encouraged me to consider graduate studies. These faculty had shaped me profoundly, not just intellectually, but spiritually and personally. I dreamed of joining their ranks and becoming a mentor for students, as they had been for me. I could hardly imagine doing anything else. Still, a Ph.D. sounded daunting.

I remembered a warning I’d read the previous semester in C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. I flipped through Lewis’s words and found the passage, starred and underlined: And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they

will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing. “Unless a seed die…”

I copied this quote onto a slip of paper, then drew a bulb with a network of roots spreading into the words, and with a crown of electric blue flowers.

••• On a mid-April morning two weeks later, I looked outside my dorm room window to see a surprise: falling snow. Slushy clumps were descending— not the perfect white crystals you see in the throes of winter, but snow nonetheless—covering the ground with a translucent mush.

I grabbed my camera and winter coat, which felt unusually heavy for the time of year. Outside,

a shock of cold air exhilarated me. Wanting to hold on to the memory of this unlikely collision of seasons, I snapped a few photos and headed to class. Along the path I saw daffodils flattened, leaves splayed and blossoms crushed. Even the hardy blue flowers, the first to emerge after the snowdrops, were bowed under the pelting snow.

But I felt strangely happy. Even relieved. A few weeks ago, I had enjoyed photographing the flowers as they were thriving, and yes, seeing them succumb to icy death was unfortunate.

But the pity I felt for them hardly clouded my buoyant spirits.

It wasn’t until I heard my classmates complaining about the freak snowstorm that I realized how odd my reaction was. Who wants winter back when spring has come? Who prefers snow to flowers?

I did.

The snow provided a comforting illusion of

reversing time’s unrelenting forward flow. I knew that winter would inevitably turn to spring, and that I would graduate in May. But the snow helped me imagine that maybe I could go back and take refuge in something more familiar.

I was straining against a new reality that was sprouting up all around me, that refused to slow its progress, despite my resistance. I wanted to collect the snow and hold on to it, enjoy it for as long as I wished. But my grip only hastened its melting, leaving me empty-handed, clinging to nothing but my own hands.

Walking back from class, I saw more clearly the wreckage wrought by the sudden cold. The beauty of snow belongs in winter. Carried over into spring, it damages emerging growth. I needed to savor the distinctive beauty of each season and not try to snatch it back when it dripped away.

I began, haltingly, to open my hands to the new blessings blooming around me.

•••

Nine springs after my last college semester, I saw a familiar electric blue in a gardening catalog.

“Early snow glories,” the catalog called these flowers. I had to have some.

A package of tiny bulbs arrived in October, and I planted them in my garden, where they lay dormant among the flowers I had gradually added over the years—marigold, larkspur, salvia, corydalis, iris, rose, lobelia. After five months of cold, I glimpsed sapphire blooms piercing the gray, late-winter landscape. I have watched in delight as they have multiplied in the four years since I first tucked them into the soil.

After my college days ended, I pursued a new kind of education, one that engaged my hands in labor while leaving my mind free for contemplation.

I learned to pinch off spent blossoms to encourage my dianthus and zinnias to keep blooming. I learned, after plenty of mistakes, not to crowd too many broccoli and Swiss chard plants into one space, but to dig new beds that gave them room to grow.

I learned to give scarlet runner beans tall bamboo poles for climbing and to wait until their pods dried before cracking them open to reveal the shocking neon pink and purple speckled beans inside.

Growing tomatoes is the most demanding gardening feat I have attempted—easy enough at first, but the best-tasting heirloom varieties sometimes require careful investigation and study to troubleshoot problems. My first year, I asked local farmers for easy-to-grow, high-yield plants. I learned to save their seeds and start seedlings indoors the next year, moving them outside as the weather warmed. I learned to bury them deep in compost and crushed eggshells to keep away rot and improve their flavor.

The hardest tomato-growing lesson I had to learn was crop rotation. Even if the soil in my garden still looked rich and healthy after three years of producing my favorite Brandywine variety, I had to move my tomato plants to new spaces to protect them from the disease spores that would build up in the old soil. Too many years in one place, and verticillium wilt would yellow the leaves and kill the plants in their prime. Their roots needed four seasons in new, uncontaminated soil, giving the wilt time to die off in the old plot before the plants would be safe to return to it and thrive. I’ve grown more than a few tomato plants that developed yellow leaves and yielded scant fruit. But when I put in the extra labor to rotate them, my tomato plants produced an abundance, overflowing from my harvest basket into friends’ eager hands, topping my toast for nearly every summer meal, and filling my freezer with sauce for months to come.

After college, I learned not just about gardening, but about myself. I realized that the Ph.D. I thought I wanted, to extend my days in academia, would demand more from me than I was willing to give and would return less than would satisfy me. I learned that I could find the intellectual stimulation I wanted in other ways—working as a communications professional at another local university, attending lectures, listening to public radio, forming a writers’ group—two of them, actually—and meeting up with Dr. Cary and my college friends now and then.

I have put down my roots in a new space. And they have sent up exquisite growths indeed.

I’ve spent years raving to friends about the books, shows, and films I love and why. They don’t have to be recent to catch my eye.

They only have to be a new way to see the old, old story of light vs. dark.

This never fails to move me.

While not every review will be for every person, my hope is that these move you too.

Mystery Road, Season 1 Where You Can Find It: Amazon Prime, Acorn TV, or other streaming services Rating: R Genre: Mystery What You Need To Know: Here is a whodunit mystery from the Australian outback that unwinds slowly, pulling the viewer into a story specific to the land down under but with universal application to the conversations we’re having about race in America today. Two ranch hands, one white and one Aboriginal, go missing from their pickup in the middle of the vast outback. And two police officers, one white woman and one Aboriginal man, team up to piece together what happened.

My husband discovered this series on Amazon and told me I had to watch it after he’d finished.

He knows I love a good mystery where I don’t have to be afraid of either graphic violence or sex.

This has neither. But it does deal with difficult adult themes and includes rough language at times, hence the R rating. The show is a slow boil—my favorite kind.

The outback functions as a key character—my favorite device. And the history of the land leaves clues that are hundreds of years old and that are vital to a second mystery operating at a deeper level in the show—my favorite kind of added layer.

I grew up white in South Africa in the very thick of the apartheid years, and believe me when I tell you, those stories are all still baked deep into Part of what makes the red soil of my shows like this so great homeland. Putting is that they aren’t language around preaching at us. They’re our experiences simply letting us gather and sitting with clues and piece together the good, the bad, a history along with the and the very ugly characters. of our own families is vital, not just for a nation, but for our own souls. Shows like this are like sherpas, walking us across conversations we aren’t sure how to have.

There is a moment in the penultimate episode that is so tender I didn’t take a breath the whole time. Two friends finally put words around something that one has just discovered, and one has always known. I had to pause the show to write down their conversation verbatim. The white detective enters the Aboriginal Co-Op, and has this conversation with her Aboriginal friend and city councilwoman: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“So you’ve done your homework, then?”

“I just never. I mean, I know it went on. We all know.

I just never… But I just never thought, my family, you know… I didn’t ask the question.”

“Look, Emma, your mob had forgotten, but you know now. That shows some respect.”

Part of what makes shows like this so great is that they aren’t preaching at us. They’re simply letting us gather clues and piece together a history along with the characters. And watching, we become participants and begin to understand why it might matter so much for white viewers such as myself not to rely on our friends of color to decode history for us. Why doing the work ourselves matters so much, for all of us.

The mystery is a plot twister right up until the final episode, and days later I’m still thinking about this show. My favorite scene by far was watching the white detective spending days and nights digging through the archives and family photos on her farm, trying to make sense of a thread she’s been pulling at, and then watching the whole spool unravel. I can relate. I’ve been doing a lot of the same these days. To go forward, we do need to go back first. In murder mysteries and, much more so, in life.

with ANNA GRIST

M

ay is one of my favourite months. Spring finally arrives in the mountains (although we have had three feet of snow dumped on us on Victoria Day weekend before!) mud is the norm instead of snow, and my favourite road into the mountains near us reopens.

Driving in the mountains always refills my soul.

There is just something about looking into the distance, into the rows upon rows of jagged hills and dark forests, and knowing that even what I can see is mostly untouched, unwalked ground. That for hundreds of miles looking west, there are no trails, no roads, and millions of acres of pine-needle-covered ground that not a human soul has ever stood on. The unknown, unsearchable forest that is simply a speck on this planet that is full of undiscovered glimpses into the creativity of God.

If God’s creation is so deeply unique and unknown, I’m reminded of how much more He is holy: unique, set apart, completely separate from who we are. But he has deigned to put pieces of Himself into creation, into humanity, into a sinless baby boy, into a finite book… glimpses of Who he is, crumbs

of understanding that give us just enough to realize that loving God and loving others is what will fulfil and sustain us.

My finite mind looks at the rivers, the wandering deer and bears and moose and realizes God has put love notes in plain sight,

if only we have eyes to see. I see the vastness before me on those drives, and I feel small and held. I rest in knowing that I don’t have to unravel all the world’s problems, I just need to be sensitive to the people God has placed in my life, and look to Him to provide ways to serve and love them. To keep my eyes on the road right ahead of me.

I lift my eyes to the hills and recognize that my strength comes from the infinite power and love that created even those giant crags. I see God’s boundless enthusiasm for creation and creativity, for colour and shape, for texture and light. I can then go home and create with joy, knowing I am mirroring my Redeemer in His own delight.

This week I’ve been struck by the powerful progression of images in Hillsong’s song So Will I (100 Billion X), and these lines echo my own soul this month:

“If the stars were made to worship so will I I can see Your heart in everything You’ve made Every burning star A signal fire of grace If creation sings Your praises so will I.” So I’ll continue to take my drives and hikes into the woods, and let my spirit be taught by God’s Spirit, and continue to let my soul sing in the firs and from the valleys and then take that encouragement and live it out to those in my path.

In Our Earbuds: Heretics

by Jon Carlson

“H

eretics,” episode #304 of This American Life, first aired on December 16, 2005.

Over the course of an hour, reporter Russel Cobb tells the story of Reverend Carlton Pearson’s transformation. Once a rising star in Prosperity Gospel circles, Pearson experienced a sudden and dramatic excommunication as he vocally and publicly rethought his Christian faith—most notably by

rejecting the dogma of Hell. Even as his church collapses and close friends forsake him, Pearson finds his faith strengthened.

Click here to listen!

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We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

- Maya Angelou

Buckwheat Pancakes from Allison Duncan

H

ere’s a buckwheat pancakes recipe I found online and adapted slightly. It’s become a favorite in my family, even among the pickier eaters who I thought would balk at the unusually dark gray color of the buckwheat flour. I’ve combined the dry ingredients as a mix to give as gifts, along with a jar of cherry butter or jam.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

The Empty Chair

by Tonya Salomons

O

ver the past year I can count on a single hand how many times we have opened the doors to our home and shared a meal with friends and family. As someone who loves making people feel welcome and sending them home full of delicious food and memories, my kitchen has felt a bit like a wasteland. Despite my empty kitchen, the need to create and soothe with food is as strong as it has ever been. The freezer is full to bursting, proof that pandemic cooking often produces far more than two empty-nesters can possibly consume.

In an effort to keep the kitchen blahs at bay, and with no dinner parties to organize, I’ve taken to reorganizing the space in my tiny galley kitchen. The biggest addition is a chair tucked in the corner. At first, I thought it would give me a place to sit while waiting for something to finish cooking or baking.

But when I took a moment to reflect beyond the obvious, I saw it as a placeholder for what’s to come—a symbol of hope that my kitchen will once again welcome those in need of company and food.

Standing at the counter preparing food, I find myself staring at this empty chair and I think of all the people I have missed over this past year. I imagine how one day very soon they’ll be able to join me in the kitchen. We’ll chat over glasses of wine or cups of tea. We’ll take turns stirring whatever is simmering on the back of the stove. I can imagine a time when we’ll be able to stand hip to hip, occupying the same air as we fill platters and plates with bright reminders of all God has provided.

In the most unexpected ways over the past year my kitchen has been the one place where I am reminded that hope still exists. The knife in my hand has become the metronome of my prayers. I am grateful for

the gift of my kitchen, and the reminder that food for the soul looks an awful lot like a feast for our bodies.

I still plate meals fit for company. My husband and I still gather over platters full of delicious food and break bread together— keeping hope alive.

Soon—very soon— the chair in the corner will no longer be empty.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Tomato Pesto Toast

by Allison Duncan

My favorite way to enjoy summer tomatoes is on toast with pesto and cheese. I eat this simple meal often from July to September, when my tomatoes have ripened, and yet somehow I never seem to tire of it.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

buds

“LOVE the navy bean soup! Here I am eating my second helping!” - Tammy Gonzalez

Will you try any of this month’s recipes?

Send pictures to paperandstring@blackbarncollective.com for a chance to be featured in our next issue!

And please tag us when you share on social media:

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with CHRISTIE PURIFOY

I

have discovered the meaning of life, and it is the month of May at Maplehurst.

What do you mean? I hear you protest. What on God’s green earth are you talking about?

Yes! That’s it, exactly! God’s green earth. For eleven months I am (mostly) sure of what I hope for and (mostly) certain of what I do not see, but when May comes back around, and I stand in the garden of this old Pennsylvania farmhouse, my small faith is fed and fattened by the evidence of my senses. This feast of May

is so rich, I can live on it for a year. But what is it, exactly? It is the nearness of heaven to earth.

I will paint a picture with words for you. I will testify to that which I have seen. No doubt it will sound familiar; no doubt it will remind you of that time and that place when you, too, felt as if you could reach out and grasp eternal life, holding it like a flower in your hand.

Earth reaches toward heaven in the form of elegant white goblets with long green stems in my flower garden. These are the ‘White Triumphator’ tulips, and they are, indeed, a triumph. I may have planted the papery bulbs one autumn, but I cannot take credit for this glory. Gardeners are midwives only.

Earth dances with heaven above my head in the branches of an old sour cherry tree. The tree still bears the scars of a windstorm that tried, two years ago, to tear the trunk from top to bottom. The fruit that ripens blood-red in summer has never been good for much except

feeding the birds, but in May the blossom smells like incense for a king.

Earth is renewed by heaven here in May until each blade of grass is green again, and dandelions wind their way like streets of gold.

The visionary writer of Revelation spoke of jewels, but I have never seen a jewel shine more brightly than the blazing orange-red center of a pure white narcissus poeticus. The Poet’s Daffodil, as it is known, flowers long after the trumpet daffodils of early spring have faded. It belongs to the month of May. If the promise has always been that God will dwell with us, finally and forever, then May at Maplehurst is when I experience most clearly an earth forever changed by the touch of heaven.

In May, I can see with my own eyes that which

is often invisible: an earth being prepared for its own remaking.

This preparation is not my doing—though you and I are invited to participate—it is a work begun by our Maker, the master gardener, in a springtime long ago. A seed was sown on the cross. A seed was buried for three days. A seed died, and in this way, defeated death. Forever.

We do still live in the valley of the shadow of death. This past year has made that abundantly clear. But on a warm May day at Maplehurst, I tip my face toward apple blossom, imagining the fruit to come, and know with certainty there is a springtime that waits for us. And it will never end.

Praying With Breath

By Jennifer Goodyer

M

any of us take our breath for granted but anyone who has ever experienced breathing difficulties will know that this is a mistake. Without breath we cannot live; it is with a breath that our life on earth both begins and ends. Our breath is not only essential for our physical well-being but also has the capacity to improve our spiritual well-being.

Becoming attentive to our breath grounds and centres us in the present with the One whose breath is our life within us. This month I explain how our breath already bears the marks of prayer and praise and invite you to explore your breath as a gateway to a more intimate awareness of God’s presence with you.

Click above OR here to view Jennifer’s video

Click to download the accompanying PDF which includes:

• Practice Preparation & Materials • An Invitation to Practice

Tell me a story of metamorphosis.

I

started seeing a spiritual director three years ago, and she has helped me recognize the ways God has helped me grow. I often get impatient with myself for making only slow progress or not seeing much transformation when I practice certain spiritual disciplines.

My spiritual director reminded me that God

doesn’t demand that we grow quickly. She shared the image of a leaky faucet whose slow drips you have to catch with a bucket. You don’t see the change unless you look at a longer interval. It may take time, she said, but that bucket will eventually be filled to overflowing.

S

ometimes change is subtle, slow, working over years.

Once in a while, it screeches in, only barely announcing itself before it whips through your life and leaves you feeling slightly winded. Our upheaval started with a phone call I made to my husband

in Ontario while visiting a friend in Alberta one February. I said, “I just love it out here in the mountains… it feels like home.” And my husband Drew replied, “Well… why don’t we start looking?” Shocked silence as both of us planted that seed in our minds. Fast forward a million next right things, and in May we had sold our house within four days and the next weekend went house hunting in Alberta.

We started touring houses at 10am on a brisk Monday morning, and finalized the purchase of our new home by dinner time. Our realtor told us later that we gave her heart palpitations.

Sometimes when God moves, he FLIES. We moved to just east of my mountains the first day of August. Through it all, God gave us peace, and only the next step ahead: conversations with employers; finding a realtor;

finding a town. (Google Maps found us Bragg Creek, our criteria being an hour from the Calgary airport, and as close to the mountains as possible). God blessed every step and gave us opportunities to show off how trustworthy

He is. God never gave us the full picture or even the step after the one we were on, but He did give us hope, and stretched our faith into freedom to trust Him and realize that we’d be more delighted with His plans for us than the ones we held on to so tightly for so long.

The Team!

Christie & Jonathan Purifoy

live at the old farmhouse in Pennsylvania called Maplehurst and built the Black Barn. Christie earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago before trading the classroom for a picket-fenced garden and an old writing desk. Now she writes books and raises kids and chickens and tends the trees that gave Maplehurst its name.

Lisa-Jo Baker is a

third culture kid, former attorney, reader, writer, and storyteller. Every Wednesday on the Out of the Ordinary Podcast she and Christie explore the surprising ways that cultivating ordinary life leads to extraordinary stories. She is endlessly fascinated by people and how loud her children are.

Elrena Evans first had the dream of

sending you a care package from the Black Barn. She’s a writer, editor, and dancer, a mother of five, an ally and an advocate. A new Paper&String care package every month is her gift from us to you.

Allison Sheeler Duncan studied English

and theology at Eastern University and is now a writer and editor at a university in southeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys growing flowers and heirloom tomatoes, watching superhero movies, and trying new recipes.

Anna Grist is the western Canadian in our

midst, working on Paper&String from the Rockies near Calgary. She creates all the design and layout and contributes a few illustrations and snippets of writing as well as laughter and well-timed GIFs. She’s a wife and mother to two human children, as well as twins Quill & Ink (pictured).

Amy Knorr is an educator, speaker and

writer who loves to create contemplative spaces in real life and online. She is in a Nonprofit and Spiritual Formation graduate program with a spiritual direction certification.

Amy has shared a nomadic married life with her husband, Dan, for 21 years. She is mom to two girls growing tall and a son she will hold again someday. She enjoys a good laugh, a quiet moment, a furry doggy face, a challenging trail and a cup of hot tea.

Anna Kocher is an artist living and working

in the greater Philadelphia area. She’s an art teacher, a painter, and mother of three. When she’s not teaching, painting, or parenting she can be found reading, tea in hand and Ella Fitzgerald on the record player. She lives in a creaky old house with her husband, her kids, her dog, Mystic, and Edmund the cat.

Tonya Salomons

lives with her husband in Canada’s largest city.

During the day, she works as a registered social worker, but at night and on the weekends the kitchen is where she finds the space to recharge and finds her joy, feeding not only the body but the soul. She admits to reading cookbooks like they are novels while sipping copious cups of coffee and eating chocolate chip cookies.

by Elrena Evans

In the wing-folded mystery of the chrysalis In the tight-swirled darkness of the bulb In the prismatic hexagons of the hive God, you are here, and we thank you.

s

In the turning of earth and of tides In the magnetic pull of the poles In the rhythm of changing seasons God, you are here, and we thank you.

In the measured dance of sun and moon In the elliptical patterns of planets In the whorls of the spiraled galaxies God, you are here, and we thank you.

Amen.

Click here to download a printable version of the prayer

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