01
for this ordinary day Lord, here I am.
How strange it is,
that some days feel like hurricanes
and others like glassy seas
and others like nothing much at all.
Today is a cosmic shrug.
My day planner says,
rather conveniently,
that I will not need you,
cry for you, reach for you.
Ordinarily, I might not think of you at all.
Except, if you don’t mind,
let me notice you.
Show up in the small necessities
and everyday graces.
God, be bread.
Be water.
Be laundry.
Be the coffee cup in my hands
and the reason to calm down in traffic.
Be the gentler tone in my insistence today
that people pick up after themselves for once.
Be the reason I feel loved
when I catch my own reflection
or feel my own self-loathing
fluttering in my stomach.
Calm my mind,
lift my spirit,
make this dumb, ordinary day
my prayer of thanks.
“Earth is so thick with divine possibility
that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere
without cracking our shins on altars.”
—Barbara Brown Taylor,
An Altar in the World 02
for feeling it all Blessed are you who feel things
big.
You who might feel embarrassment because of
how overwhelming things can be.
Blessed are you who need reminders that those
emotions are not bad or good.
They are just . . . information.
You feel angry because this is unjust. You feel sad because this is awful. You feel tired because this is exhausting. Your emotions are not wrong or bad
or lying to you or telling the full truth.
They are giving you a bit of data
that you shouldn’t ignore.
We love, and lose, and fall, and get back up,
and fail, and try again.
Your humanity is not an affront.
We are reminding ourselves that
this is who we are, how we’re made:
to feel the pain, the grief, the stress,
the risk, the fear, the heartbreak.
So, you beautiful creature,
here is your permission slip to feel it all.
To feel the joy and delight and excitement.
And the sorrow and fear and despair.
All the yellows and pinks, and violets and grays.
Because you are the whole damn sky.
03
for when you just need to put one foot in front of the other Oh God,
the thought of trying for a new and improved me
makes me tired.
I am barely getting anywhere,
so draw me closer to a different vision,
one that sees that I don’t need perfection—
I need love.
Free me from the expectation
that life should always be better.
From the everyday stressors—
the bills, the pressure, the dependents,
the existential fears about the future
and the worries of right now.
I am threadbare.
Blessed are we, remembering
that the world is not ours to shoulder alone.
Help us put one foot in front of the other
as best we can.
Oh God, today,
give us enough to go on,
give us hope to see a future,
give us joy to see a present
lit up by your love.
P.S. And give me only enough humility
to be reminded that I look terrible in hats.
I mean, truly, unphotographable.
Copyright © 2023 by Kate Bowler. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
