Mary Oliver | Praying

I thought this poem makes a great bookend to "After Her Death."

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

~ Mary Oliver

I admit to being somewhat irreligious - an experience that came out of an antagonistic childhood spent in a mission school. Yet paradoxically, for the greater part of my life, I have sought out the spiritual, because while I am cynical about institutionalised religions, I believe, because I have felt it in my life - a presence of the divine in the world.

And I believe in prayer, in all the different ways people do it.