A Psalm of Icy Awareness
The earth around my home
is now locked in a winter wrap
of bone-chilling snow and ice.
Water, once clear and liquid,
a joyous, flowing community,
is now frozen into crystals of ice.
Recently in humanity’s long history
there has arisen an isolation,
a separation of those who share
common human flesh and bone.
While once upon a time we gathered joyfully
in families, tribes and clans,
we now so often live divorced
from earth and from each other,
with loneliness as our only company.
All isolation is ice-olation,
frigid to human flesh,
cold and lifeless to the touch,
untrue to our most basic unity, community.
And whenever I act single-handedly,
apart from an awareness of my sisters and brothers,
I become a deformed, divine disciple.
And tribeless, O God, how can I tread the path
that you have designed as companion course?
Ah, the wisdom, so divine,
in your Genesis words,
spoken to perfectly made, fully automated Adam,
“It is not good for one to be alone.”
From Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim by Ed Hays
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Prayer action suggestion:
Spend some time this week building human community—in your family, locally, nationally or internationally.
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