The Beauty of Gratitude

The late poet Brian Doyle taught me a lot about the extraordinariness of the ordinary aspects of life. He gave thanks in poetic form for shoes and clerks and in the poem below, for nurses, which in these times we might extend to caregivers of various kinds. The ordinary tell extraordinary stories...

I am thinking this Saturday that we might pause as we lean into or toward the Sabbath and write a poem about something ordinary in our lives for which are grateful. My dog, anything but ordinary, a bed, a mug, an orange pepper. When we shine that gratitude on anything it assumes a beautiful sheen!

A Prayer of Awed Thanks for Nurses

"Witnesses, attendants, bringers of peace; brilliant technical machinists; selfless cleaners of all liquids no matter how horrifying; deft finders of veins when no veins seem available; soothers and calmers and amusers; tireless and patient and tender souls; brisk and efficient when those are the tools to keep despair at bay; those with prayers in their mouths as their patients slide gently through the mysterious gate, never to return in a form like the shriveled still one in the bed; feeders and teasers, mercies and singers; they who miss nothing with their eyes and ears and fingers and hearts; they who are not saluted and celebrated and worshipped as they ought to be; they who are the true administrators of hospitals and clinics, for it is they who have their holy hands on the brows and bruises of the broken and frightened; they who carry the new infants to their sobbing exhausted thrilled mothers; they who must carry the news of damage and death to the family in the waiting room; they whom You know, each and every one, glorious and lovely in their greens and blues and rainbow clothing; they who are You in every tender touch and quiet friendly gentle murmured remark; they who are the best of us; bless them always and always, Mercy; for they are the clan of calm and the tribe of tender, and I bow in thanks for them. And so: amen." brian doyle