Pause for Prayer: SATURDAY 10/3

I've posted this prayer in other years, too, but it's one of my favorites and  I've done some more work on it - so here it is again...

 

When fall comes 'round each year, Lord,

I wonder if, by night,

you climb down from the heavens,

perhaps on some great ladder,

to paint the leaves, just one by one, 

in all their autumn glory...

I wonder and I muse, Lord,

on how it is you might decide

the trees that you'll choose first

as worthy your brush...

 

Why the ash and not the maple?

Why those towering elms 

but not the oak 

close by, just down the street?

 

And oh, the colors, Lord:

I love orange, red and yellow!

But it seems perhaps you favor

the purple, rust and brown...

 

 

It seems you move from tree to tree, 

painting branches, here and there

- with swaths of green left in between -

until you next return and then

with blessings from your palette,

complete what you'd begun...

 

Do we see with different eyes, Lord,

a beauty I'm yet blind to?

Is your splendor in the branches 

or in the changing, turning hues

of all that lives and breathes?

 

The wonder in my reverie 

probes wisdom, grace and memory

but you alone, the artist, Lord,

know autumn's sacred mystery...

 

And sooner than I want, Lord,

these leaves in all their beauty 

will lose their grip on branch and limb

and spill, swirl and fall,

in November's chilly gusts

to  my backyard 

for the coming winter's snow...

 

Draw my eye, my heart and soul

to see the  beauty you reveal

when night by chilly night

you climb down from the heavens

and paint the leaves, 

just one by one,

in autumn's passing glory...

 

Amen.  

 

All photos by CP in Concord, MA  

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