PRAYER: "Day Now Ending"

God whose gift is the day now ending:

You are the end of every beginning, and the beginning after every end.

You brighten every darkness with mercy, 

And you darken every burning light, cruel or harsh, with grace.

Receive in your great and generous heart this one, holy day, mine and yours;

For I have seen your face in the sweet eyes of friends,

And I have heard your tears in their fears and sadness.

In the royal reds adorning autumn's last act
I have gazed upon the apocryphal texts of old limbs and broken branches:

Each one a gospel in color, each one an invitation to wonder.

And it's all so good:

The fragile, the bold, the bewildering, the beautiful.

I would release to you, yield to you now, all I did not accomplish,

And any I pride I gathered to myself and claimed as my own.

Enfold my moments, these hours, this day in the arms of love,

And, if it be your will, shape of them another:

A day to follow this great and holy night.

Into this darkness I walk in faith, trusting in the hand

That waits for me now, in my resting, in the unknowing

That is the face of the deep:

The end of every beginning, and the beginning after every end. 

10/21/20

Dover, NH

DGJ