Hot Buttered Toast – savour + waver
Gratitude isn't a platitude... it's a prayer
A Prayer for Life
Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk.
The sun was sinking, preparing to set.
It was incredibly peaceful.
The sky was blue.
The air was crisp and sweet, like a fresh apple.
Our daughter laughed.
Our Pup skipped and grubbed around.
My heart rose.
And it strained.
And it bled.
For every innocent soul
In this shared world
This miraculous sacred Earth
Where life is divine
And destroying it
A crime
Against Nature
Against us All
When a body is a shield
And a target
And our children
Are not even named
Because how do you name
10000 broken babies’ bodies
When there’s no breath left
To cry with
And those you are meant to trust
Send weapons and make endless war
And wake and dress and dine
In splendour
And breathe as though the air
We share
Were not thick with blood
And grief
So heavy
It is unbearable
How do we breathe?
It’s as though
I can hear
Her wracking unending yowl
My Earth
My People
Life… given with unilateral love
Destroyed with unilateral force
When all we have ever learned
Throughout our briefest humanity
Is that violence begets violence
Hatred breeds hatred
As the great Mother holds it all
Every drop and atom
Even as her tides rise
Temperatures soar
Icecaps melt
Beings die away, for ever
And she asks
What is this for?
Who is this for?
And when will you learn
What you came here to learn:
That there is enough for everyone
There is enough of me
To hold and heal
The whole of you
Every one of you
But only when you see
There is no them
There is no me
There is only us
And there cannot be
Anything less or more
Than everything.
So easy to get dragged down by the heaviness… until it feels that there’s never been lightness… as though life has always been this brutal, prickly, senseless.
The last letter I wrote struck a chord. Lamenting the feeling of loss that’s been creeping in as I witness my children grow… even as I am acutely aware that my everyday feelings, rising from everyday motherhood, are coloured in ways that make me look at every bit of it – the holiest highs and love-lined lows – so very differently.
Because there is one other ever-present lament playing in my mind, over and over – unending, full-volume, agonising at times – and that lament is followed, over and over, with the words ‘ceasefire now; ceasefire now; ceasefire now’, which have also become the closest thing I have to a prayer.
A hope beyond hope yet still I must cling to hope. Without it, what would be the point of any of it? Where would I go in this life? How could I ever wish to be anything other than someone who grabs and steals only for themself; to hell with all others?
And I see the millions march, boycott and rally… and I see hope. Even as it is too heartbreakingly late for more people than I have ever met in my life. Too late for them. More people than I can ever know the names of. More children than I’d ever be able to gather and hold close to my body, even if I lived for another 50 years.
And this lament – this unshifting one and its coupled prayer – plays beneath the rest of the day, as it always does for us all… the two sides of our hearts…
And I think of this as I watch my eldest, in particular, straining at the edges of her boundaries, wanting to try and test and challenge; wanting to grow in ways she’s not ready for… but perhaps that’s how we grow sometimes. By being brave.
Hopelessness creeps in when the same record is played, on a loop.
Desperation creeps in when we expect the record to play a different tune.
And I realise that gratitude isn’t a platitude; it’s a prayer.
SAVE THE CHILDREN: Write to your MP
OXFAM: Voices from Gaza
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Emergency Response
UNICEF: Gaza Emergency Appeal
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