Pause for Prayer: TUESDAY 9/30

Singing Crickets by Francine Ethier

 

The crickets sang in the grasses.
They sang the song of summer’s ending,
   a sad, monotonous song.
“Summer is over and gone,” they sang.
“Over and gone, over and gone. 

   Summer is dying, dying.”
The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody
   that summertime cannot last forever.
Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year
- the days when summer is changing into fall -
     the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.
- E.B. White in Charlotte's Web 

It's the last day of September, Lord,

and choirs of crickets are reminding me

    that summer is over and gone,

    that summer is taking her leave of us,

    that summer is going, going, gone...

At the end of day comes the crickets' hymn,

    on a wisp of a breeze, a dirge

spoiling my summertime reverie

    to autumn, crisp and chill...

My lips refuse to join the song

and yet its chant beguiles me 

and draws me in 'til I embrace

- or am embraced - 

by seasons changing: 

    fall's beginning,

    summer's ending,

    going, going, gone... 

   

Is this the gain that comes in loss?

Is this the grace that's born of grief?

Is this the joy that I'm to find

in letting go what I can't keep?

Is this the secret in your pledge,

    the grace we all await?

the message in the crickets' song,

    their simple, plaintive prayer?

September ends this evening, Lord,

and crickets tell no lies:

    the  ugly rumor must be true,

    summer's passed 

    and autumn's on the rise...

 

Teach me how to sing then

    in the crickets' choir of praise, 

to join with them in their welcoming

    this season of your love,

to welcome in the changes, Lord,

    that every season brings...

Amen.

 

And here, for your prayer and reflection, is the sound of a chorus of crickets...

 

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