Let me stretch out
this bit of prayer on the
pavement in the spring rain:

I do not know the time
for the seed to break open
and wend its way through the soil,
for the wound to cease throbbing and
begin the slow work of healing,
for love to finally confound
our defensiveness.

In the middle of the night,
I wish I knew, but stretched out
in the peace of a spring rain
I’m willing to simply be
without knowing.

And without knowing,
while being, I can bear witness:
to the soil that is good and hospitable
for new growth, to the body’s ability
to live with fresh scars, to the
holy inevitability that
love will
unsettle us
over and again until we
concede all that we do not know.

(And really, I just completely don’t know.)

So I bear witness
and I pray in the rain
for the soil and the seed,
for the body in its wounded living,
and — most of all — for love
to be the mystery that
we don’t know
but yet
the very mystery
by which we have being.

a prayer on Acts 1:7