A prayer of gratitude

Oh, Great Creator, we lift our hearts and voices in gratitude for the rain.
For many months, we pleaded
for relief, months filled with
burning sun and burning woods.
We prayed when flames ignited near Old La Sal, scorching acres of forest and grasslands, combusting homes and businesses, leaving behind
a seared landscape.
In the face of such destruction,
our petitions ascended while we bent our backs to restore what was lost and our knees as we bowed before your mighty forces.
You heard our prayers, at last, and the rains came to bless this land of red rock and blue mountains.
Clouds wreathed the Abajos,
La Sals, Elk Ridge,
the Monuments, and arches.
Showers draped the desert,
fell upon our roofs, and
splashed silver in our streets.
The sagebrush, pinyons,
and junipers released their
fragrance as water dripped
from their needles and leaves.
We took long, deep breaths
as our skin plumped
with the delicious moisture.
Children played in the streets, laughing and splashing each other, and we used our windshield wipers for the first time in months.
Pure water filled the streams,
washes, and tinajas, so the birds and deer, the skunks and coyotes could drink deeply, quenching their thirst.
Yet, we need more
of the life-giving water.
Are we like greedy children at Christmas, ripping open
package after package, strewing
the room with wrapping paper
and hardly looking up to say thanks?
Perhaps. But, Great Creator, please understand, we sometimes walk this earth with split hearts, one side filled with anger, fear, or grief, the other with awe and thanksgiving.
We are a people in training
for a new earth, a new way of being.
Help us have whole hearts
before you and toward one another.
Help us give thanks for tiny miracles: The daisies, prickly pears, and narrowleaf four o’clocks
blossoming after the rain,
the sound of streams bubbling again over sandstone, and the new green burgeoning on the pinyons.
We give thanks now for the
gathering of the clouds, dense with moisture, heavy with heaven’s love.
We thank you for the rains that have come and those still coming to saturate the soil, to drench the trees, to fill the reservoirs with water.
We praise you for the mud
we’ll squish between our toes
as we look heavenward in gratitude.
With Isaiah, we’ll sing,
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad...
and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as a rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing…” (35: 1-2).
We know your great power,
Creator of universes.
You have said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55: 9).
Let the rains come gently, we pray, for two, three, four, five days, or more, and let the winter snows
accumulate deep and white
upon all our mountains.
But if that’s not your will, let the storms come according to your way, your wisdom, and your timing.
In thy name we pray, Amen.