In the morning, I worry about filling pages.
But a page cannot be filled with a single word, which is all I have at any given moment.
I must let that worry go.
With one word at my disposal, I can only write one word at a time.
So let the words be mine.
Let me be myself, here, alone in the silence of this room where a man is and two dogs are and a cat is, also.
Let me be myself, here, alone, together with these breathing bodies and the whir of a space heater, and, outside, soft flakes, falling.
Let me give my myself over to this word, to this moment, and also to God.
God in the word and God in the space heater, designed by an engineer who loved his mother in the same way, or almost the same way, that I love mine. God in the cramped fingers of the woman in the factory uniform, shower cap to keep the hair out, assembling the thing that was shipped to the store. God behind the tired eyes of sailors and drivers and clerks that I forgot to pray for, but do now, belatedly.
God in them as God in me.
God in the hands that made the quilt that covers us and God in the slow breaths of the man and the dogs and the cat, also.
God in the snow that falls outside the door through that same air, that, in here, we breathe, warm, breathing God.
The door, made 100 years ago by hands God made.
It occurs to me that God also loves the door.
For wasn’t he-she-they (unsayable name that nonetheless I yearn to say) there in the tree and the birds that nested in it?
Does not God remember those birds which God him-her-them-self urged us to consider, and the man who cut down their tree, and his child, tossing with the fever that would take her?
And does God’s heart not still bleed for the tree, severed from the root, and also for the man severed from his child?
And does God not love even the door that this morning keeps out the chill air as I sit here with only one word at a time to offer up, here in the presence of God.
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