a prayer

On the bus today, I became so completely engaged in my book, that I momentarily forgot that my life was separate from that of the character's: a Muslim boy fleeing for his life in Niger. I don't mean that I was lost in my imagination, putting myself in his shoes...no...it was different -- like he was my brother, writing me a letter. I think of Keith, and I wonder what he flees from on this day. How is his asthma? Is he lonely? Did he mean it when he told me he was dying? I caught myself praying for this boy in my book...for a boy who only exists in a work of fiction.

I sit here talking to my cat...asking her about her day and if she misses Peter. Libby, did you sit in the window a lot this afternoon? Who did you see? I tell her that I love her. We both miss Peter's presence around this house.

I think about the girls I worked with today. Do they play near the creek where my volunteer group found a gun during a clean-up this weekend? They seemed so young, giggling about the possibility of having a brownie party at the end of the year. But their spirits are weighted. Their eyes are tired.

I flip my Bible open to a random passage. I find comfort:

"...the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words...

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Amen?

Amen.