Journal of Sacred Work

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

 Fleda Brown, a local columnist for a small paper in Northern Michigan introduced me to the poetry of W. S. Merwin. Born in New York City in the late 1920's, this Pulitzer prize winning poet offers words that seem simultaneously startling and soothing. Somehow in these, his words, is a knowing of both grief and gratitude. It strikes me that is the life we live – at the bedside, on the streets, in boardrooms and living rooms – a life filled with moments of simultaneous grief and gratitude. And if we listen, just listen, maybe we will hear, even so, words of thanksgiving.

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

— W.S. Merwin

From "Migration: New & Selected Poems" (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright 1988 by W. S. Merwin

Perhaps most of all when we feel that nobody is listening, may we lift up our gratitude nonetheless. And today we do lift up our gratitude. We give our thanks to you. Thank you, thank you dear caregiver, for your gifts of Love.