Palms and Prayers and Prickly Pears

My palms are almost back to normal.
A few days ago, celebrating the return of spring to the Mountain,
I neglected to put on gardening gloves
before cleaning the leaves surrounding
the prickly pear cactus.
Poor decision.
I tried to fix the painful situation.
I used a scrubbie on my palms,
tried to pull the spines out with tape,
then taped over my hands
to lessen the chances of moving the spines.
Later, while on Zoom for my Wildlife lab,
I set it to audio only
and, unseen by the prof,
multitasked by pulling at the spines with tweezers.
Yesterday we planted one hundred White Spruce seedlings
and most of the remaining spines came off
inside my leather gloves.



It was a beautiful day for planting.
Sunny sky.
Slight breeze.
Upper forties.
I carried a bucket of three-year-old seedlings
about twelve to fifteen inches high,
their hearty root systems soaking in several inches of water.
Denny would poke a hole into the ground with the spud bar
and I would untangle a seedling
and hand it to him.
He would kneel,
tenderly tucked the roots into the hole,
then use the flat end of the spud
to force the soil around the roots.
On to the next!
After watching Denny kneel with the first trees,
I decided his kneeling shouldn't go to waste.
"I am going to pray for people every time you kneel," I announced.
He chuckled. "You always need a system."
"Nevertheless!"
I started with immediate family members,
then extended family.
We worked our way through church pews,
the County Historical Society,
Denny's old teaching colleagues,
then mine.
After one hundred trees, we still had people left to pray for.
Luckily, there are more trees to plant tomorrow.



I have been thinking about prayer more recently.
(Pandemics are like that.)
For years, I have wanted to know how prayer works.
and hope "Physics of Prayer 101" is offered in heaven.
But recently I've wondered
what is the most effective way to pray regarding COVID-19?
Do we pray that the power of the blood of Jesus
will overwhelm the virus?
Do we ask for protection? Healing?
(For whom?
Ourselves?
Our family?
Our friends and neighbors?
Our nation?
Beyond?
I pray a five-year-old's prayer:
"God bless everybody in the whole wide world!")
Do we pray "Thy will be done"?
Do we ask the Holy Spirit to intercede for us when we can only groan?
Do we figuratively rest on Jesus
like a newborn sleeps on daddy's chest?
I have prayed all of these ways this week,
prayers that rise like incense to heaven.

If I am remembering Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles correctly,
(and I may not. It's been forty years.)
Taran, the protagonist,
meets creatures who are weaving his life story
into a tapestry.
He is unimpressed.
There are knots
and frayed yarn ends
and no design is evident.
He is disgusted
and wants to give up on his life
and on the creatures,
but then they tell him that
he is only seeing the back of the tapestry,
that the front is an exquisite work of art.
His hope returns.
I need to reread those books
and Psalm 23.
I will hold them with my mostly spine-free palms
and fall asleep on my Father's chest
knowing that I am only seeing the back of the tapestry.

"I have not forgotten you!
See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands."
Isaiah 49:15-16



Rest well, friends.

Fire Whistle Prayers

Longer than I can remember,
each time there is a fire whistle
I have stopped my lessons
for a moment of silence.
I tell my kids
"If your family prays,
use this time to pray for the people in trouble
and the helpers.
If your family doesn't pray,
you can think happy thoughts."

There are only two times I can remember
when I have not stopped and prayed
at the sound of the fire whistle.
One was in the fall of 1993
when Den and I
were at Luke's second grade parent-teacher conference
with Miss Hanak.
"So... what is Luke like in class?"
"He reminds me of my dog.
He looks at me with those big eyes
and tries hard to do what I ask."
Oklahoma's siren blared.
We continued to talk.
After the conference,
Den and I went for a few groceries
and ran into a friend.
"What's going on up on the mountain?
All kinds of fire engines are up there."
We found out
when we were greeted at our mailbox
by a fireman.
The leaves that Den had burned a few days ago,
the spot that just that morning
had frost on the ashes,
had rekindled in the bluster of fall winds.
Fire had burned through the forest,
around the house
and almost to the barn
but the only casualty
was the outhouse
and its license plate collection.
I was chagrined.
It was the only time in years
that I hadn't prayed
and it was our property.

I thought of that day this past Monday
as Penfield's fire whistle sounded.
Deep in windy playground conversation with the fifth grade teacher,
I did not stop to pray.
A short time later as we re-entered the school,
my class smelled smoke
and the siren went off a second time.
We stopped then
for a moment of silence.
I was curious where the fire was.
"Right up the valley.
Caledonia.
A fire is burning up to the ridges
and the fire plane has been called."

When I went home that night
I was primed to tell Den about the Caledonia fire.
"So... how was your day?" I began.
"Eventful...."
"Forest fire?" I teased.
Den's eyes widened.
"How did you know?"

The second fire whistle,
the one we had prayed for,
was the Caledonia fire.
The first fire whistle,
the one I ignored
for the second time in my life,
was our property.
Again.

I am still shaking my head,
thankful for the minimal damage
but a bit weirded out.

Epilogue:
In Den's defense,
once again the fire had been out for two days
and he had checked it
multiple times each day.
He would never burn on a windy day.
Our new rule is
"Only burn when there is snow on the ground."
Two companies' brush trucks were needed to put out the fire,
but five companies,
Rockton,
Brady,
Oklahoma,
Grampian,
Penfield,
and the DCNR showed up,
just to be safe.
The fire was contained on our acreage.
One tanker sunk in our soggy yard.
Den has a blister on his thumb.

A Winter Morning's Prayer

I recently read that people often have guilt
because their minds wander when they pray.
The author (Philip Yancey?) suggested that we
turn our stream of consciousness
into a prayer.
I've been trying it on my way to school.

Whoa! The driveway is slippery!
Keep Gilda away from that tree!
God, bless Aaron Adkins who sold us Gilda.
I think he's in Kenya now.
The election massacres are horrific.
Give the Kenyans peace.

Here's that curve
where I went into the snowbank twice last winter.
I would be sooooo embarrassed
to tell Denny and Dorretta
that it happened again.
Thank you for family and friends to share my shortcomings with.

Denny put the stonework in that ditch with his dad.
A local woman grew up
hiding from the communists
in a ditch during the Korean war.
Thank you for my life in America.

There's a lot of traffic on 322 today.
The top of the mountain must be pretty slippery.
I wonder if Shirley is in one of those vehicles.
God bless Shirley.

Put it in neutral to coast down the mountain--
I get braking on all four wheels
and save gas.
Give Paul and Katrina wisdom in their plans for next year.
If they have to drive more,
at $6/gallon,
gas will be a major consideration.

Stop at the Rockton post office for Mom's mail.
Help her to rejoice in this day. Me too.

I have now passed from the Susquehanna watershed
into the Allegany River watershed;
Rockton is on the eastern continental divide.
I remember visiting Colorado's divide,
when a tiny car drove up
and three guys unfolded out of it.
"This here's the continental divide.
That means half of the country is on this side,
and the other half's on that side."
Then they refolded and zoomed away.
Help my stupidity to not be too obvious.

The frost and light snow are on every tiny branch.
Luke used to call this a "magic day."
God, give Luke a big hug today.
Let him feel your breath.

There's the little cross where Marion Miles died.
God bless her grandchildren.

I'm passing the bus station.
Bus stations always make me sad.
May something good happen to that guy
when he gets to his destination.

There's Riverside's enormous flag.
I think that's the biggest flag I've ever seen.
Except maybe Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
God bless the people who serve in our military forces
and their families--
Jeremy
and Kasey
and Steph
and Luke
and the other Luke
and all Luke's friends--
and our Baltimore friends.

I'm almost to school.
God, put your hand on my family today.
Oh, and please heal that guy
that was in the accident in Tanzania.
Why is it that my thoughts are so often selfish?
What was that C.S. Lewis poem?
"... I am mercenary and self-seeking though and through...
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin.
I talk of love, A scholar's parrot may talk Greek.
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin...."
I probably didn't get that right.
Hold my mind together.
Me again.

Parking lot. Take the keys.
It's crunchy cold. I love it!
Yessss!
And amen.