A Psalm of Broken Praise

Lord you have made yourself
to be my rearguard.

Your angels assign themselves
as ministers to all
who call on your name.

And I say, thank you
and the gratitude spills plenteous.

I have broken open my heart
as a vial of perfume.

I have poured the inner oil
over your feet beautiful.

I am coming through what fractures
into a greater praise.

I am entering by the gate narrow
to find a garden expanding on my sight.

I will put on shoes of the news that is good
and walk it holy into the ground

where healing herbs are bruised, the fragrance seeps,
and we are loved as we are.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Wang Xi Unsplash

The Layers of Thanksgiving

Open the day with thanks
as you shrug back the curtains into the view.
Stop for a moment, remain.

Peel back the layers of thanksgiving:

1. everything beautiful in your past to be grateful for.

Delve deeper and you find:

2. the painful things that have shaped your life for good.

Go into a new layer and you find:

3. the small, seemingly insignificant things that make a difference.

Deeper again, peel off another layer:

4. gratitude for the present moment.

Then you become thankful for:

5. the patience you learn through irritations.

6. the challenging people who teach you to love and forgive.

7. the big things you often take for granted.

Then you discover thanks for:

8. the best that is yet to come.

The emotion of gratitude takes over
and you realise the layers won't ever stop,
because at the ever-unveiling heart of thanksgiving you find,
something invaluable:

9. the spirit of contentment.

Jenneth Graser

Photography - Guido Mieth

Hopeful Seeds

Divine chaos entwines with joy
where feet run up and down the passage
in a riot of fellowship.

We have arrived at today.

Where I am in the already,
and the not yet.

The sea is remarkably different
under the mountains and wind.
A memory of sand grits between my toes
with the irritations of a worried conscience.

I need to ease off on myself
and breathe in the salt travelled air
borne acrosss many oceans thus far
to enter so fully into my lungs.

To remind me of every single thing in my life
I have to be thankful for.

Because today there is a gentle falling
rain as summer broaches the air.
Straight through the humble pine
to the valley below, reeds are soft
in the mist shone sun.

Anxious thoughts dip through
silver-lined clouds and become
seeds to plant of love that wins out
over strange divisions.

Today is a day for planting those
hopeful seeds in the ground.

Today is a day for thanks.

Jenneth Graser

#write31days
Day 11 Prompt - thanks

Painting - Zoe Norman

Listen to "Thank God for Something" - Hawk Nelson