I pray a prayer of celebration today for a joyful wedding anniversary in our family. Twenty years ago no one could have imagined or anticipated the over-arching health, love and creative children that have grown in this marriage, open and inclusive to the welfare of others. My prayer is one of deep gratitude and hope for continued shaping a life of love together.

I prayer a prayer of lament today for an unwelcome diagnosis for another in the family. No one could have imagined or anticipated this invasion into a healthy life, and even now we don’t know what it means, what it will look like, where the journey will take us. My prayer is first, that God in mercy will continue the healing toward wholeness already begun, and that each of us will know how to participate in that healing, through tears, laughter and love.

I prayer a prayer of urgent petition for peace and justice today for this country, buffeted about in division and question about where truth can be found. No one could have imagined or anticipated this liminal place in which we wake every day to new surprise, and can’t count on things that were true yesterday being the same today. My prayer is that people of great compassion and will speak truth to power, speak the truth in love, and know when to speak and when to keep silence for the healing of all people.

I pray a prayer for  an awareness Holy Presence–in me through the frustrations of technology, through the quotidian mysteries of caring for my dwelling and the people in it, through the extroversion I adopt to go out to meet people, through the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart as I listen to the One standing behind me, saying “This is the way, walk in it.”  I could not have imagined or anticipated that at this point in my life, this would be a day on which I found myself, living in light and darkness simultaneously, trying to navigate a clear path between mundane and epic concerns, living intentionally and consciously, sorting out what things have my name on them and what things to let go.

But this is the day that the Spirit has made…I pray to rejoice, to weep, to do good, love mercy and walk humbly with whomever I encounter…for God’s sake!