The Prayer of a Good Day

You know it’s a good day when

last night and this morning it snowed and snowed and snowed –
somewhere round 17 inches of the stuff just kept piling up
and in the sudden sun of the late afternoon, you look outside
and there’s your neighbor with his grown son on their 4-wheelers
snow blades firmly attached, plowing out a path to your garage
so you can get your car out if you need to and you get motivated
to sweep away enough snow from your back door to make a path
to them to offer up some gooey brownies fresh and warm from the
oven and Larry teaches you how to drive the 4-wheeler and lets you
plow some snow out of the way just for fun and refuses any money
for his efforts in that sly country way of just acting like he didn’t
hear you and going about the business of being a good neighbor
and it is so wonderful it’s just about enough to make a grown girl
cry as you make your way back into the warmth of an old house
that stays warm like new ones can’t seem to, oooey-gooey brownies
in hand as you glance back over your shoulder and watch father
and son playing in the snow and helping a neighbor just cos
and suddenly you realize that you’ve just been to church and you
whisper your amen there on the steps where only God hears

Yeah, that’s when you know it’s been a good day

Maple Festival Tastes of Communion

Taste this . . . have you tried this? . . . have a bite of this . . . do you want to take some of this home? . . .

Maple Festival in the Highlands is one big communion table where we’re feeding each other with offerings from hearts filled with the love we call neighborliness.

But make no mistake – it’s love.

Have a taste of this, says Bev, of the sample of butter-rich goodies from Pearl’s friend from Norfolk, who sent some batches of love for the Ladies’ Auxiliary.

Take home some sausage gravy, Patsy offers, her body bent and broken over in exhaustion from the making.

Have some sweet tea I made, Jean offers up, like shed blood, as she goes home to lie down, too sick to come, too determined to stay home.

John slips me an extra sausage pattie from his station at the serving line.

Tim bestows a free donut fresh from his hands to mine and I lick the maple glaze from my gloved fingers and proclaim it good and very good.

Gloria hoards the box of fresh donuts I bring her in the night on her lap, smiling with the glee of a child.

Francis and Kristie and Jessie generationally surround me, swooping a plate of buckwheat cakes with sausage gravy into my eager hands.

It is a time of abundance and superabundance.

It is a time of sacrifice as people gather and work hard, giving their time and their effort – and this from a people who already work hard – every day.

It is communion.

Broken bodies are given in service.

The blood sweat of earnest labor pours forth from them.

I stand back a bit and behold them all and know that I am in love with them.

Communion.