Praise and Grief | Call and Response

Let this be bigger than you. 

In relationship to my relationship with Life,
this prayer seems to be opening me
in ways I don’t fully understand yet.

Let this be bigger than you. 

In relationship to climate change,
collapse, transformation,
however you want to name it,
this prayer gives me space to breathe,
to feel, to acknowledge.

I am not in control.

Let this be bigger than you.  

A voice in my head cries:
This is urgent!
Stop making excuses!
You must do something!

And maybe that’s true,

but I read something recently
about bearing witness,
which made me wonder
if that could make a difference—

to bear witness
to this morning
to setting moon,
to rising sun,
to lilting wind,
to clouds grazing sky,
to wrens nesting
on the side of my house,
to dog chewing a leaf,
to milkweed growing
through the slats of the deck,
to bottlebrush drying in the planter,
to mushrooms blooming on the fallen tree trunk
split by lightning years ago.
Half of it grows upright,
the other half caresses the ground.

Let this be bigger than you.   

When ice covered Texas in the February freeze,
a friend told me he felt sorry for the trees.
I looked out at the frozen canyon and thought,
Somehow, I think the trees will be okay.
Indeed, they seem to be.

Humans, perhaps another story.

There is a strange dissonance
in looking at what I know is there
but cannot see.

In the mountains,
a white-out landscape,
a parlor trick of Mother Nature,
to make a whole mountain range
disappear, not with fog or snow, but
a skyscape of smoke from fires to the west,

reminding me of the morning
I woke up to find my canyon
cloaked in ice,
a shimmering
translucence,
where the night before
stood a dense sea of green.

There and not there at the same time

Is this real?
Is this real?
Is this real?
How can this be real? 

Let this be bigger than you.

I’m embarrassed to admit:
a part of me is filled with exhilaration,
the sheer enormity of existence,
the vulnerability and the persistence,
the beauty and the devastation.

Let this be bigger than you.

Could it be both praise
and grief to bear witness

to this moment:
celebrating the mountains
though they are veiled by smoke.

to this moment:
consecrating a concrete slab
at the edge of a cliff, remnants of a home
that no longer exists, one massive column
lying lifeless on the beach below.

to this moment:
dancing with the trees
and the bright, chiming melody
of icicle castanets.

Let this be bigger than you. 

What comes next?
What comes next?
What comes next?

Let this be bigger than you.

When I close my eyes,
birdsong fills the whole space.
And the wind in the trees.
And gentle chimes.
A car across the road.
An engine above.

Call and response.
Call and response.
Call and response.