Need

When I needed it, there it was.  And it is for this reason that I give thanks for all that I need.

I have needed so much:  (and I begin writing down all the ways I needed people in my life to respond a certain way to me:  I needed him to do this and I needed her to do this.)

But this isn't what I'm talking about.

What I needed was already given, but I wasn't able to receive it.

A glass of cold milk.
Blackberries warmed on the branch.

A moon we see simultaneously.

Barn swallows who won't fly from the nest they made from mud and spit no matter how close you come because under those pointed, black and orange wings:  children.  They don't even have a word for courage.


Wind that tells you stories of mothers hauling babies on their hips while bending low to glean the fields, and you can smell her hair in the breath that rolled hot and dusty over 1000 miles of gold space.


When I dug my hand into the dirt today, I could have mistaken it for sinking my hands into hot water.  The earth held the sun that settled there, attracted to the flat, dark matter that took in this energy only to give it unselfishly, immediately, without hesitation to the seed.  And the seed broke open in that generous transfer and yearned again toward the sun, shooting green arms toward an embrace it recognized as the first warm thing it had known.  I am the Light.

Let the things I need find ample space to be.  Within me.  Within the daily activities of my life.  Within the lives of those God has given me to love.

To receive.  To return.  To receive again until there is nothing left of my name to call me away from this Presence.

Heal my blindness, so I might understand this vision.