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Posts Tagged ‘worship’

Manual

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 18, 2026| 5 Comments »



 
The hands are churches that worship the world.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Daily”
 
 
To pour water over the aloe, 
the cyclamen, the jade plant, the cactus,
this, too, is prayer. Prayer in touching 
my own dry lips, marveling at the fullness
beneath fingertips. Worship in hefting
the tea pot by its thick black handle. 
Worship in squeezing the sudsy warm sponge.
Just yesterday, while we were driving,
Art said to me, “Why not open to the marvelous?” 
I equated marvelous with the grand, the inexplicable, 
even the strange. It didn’t occur to me then 
that gripping the smooth, leather arc of steering wheel 
is marvelous, cradling the white paper cup full of coffee 
is marvelous, fingering the waffle pattern on the dishcloth
as I fold it is marvelous. Marvelous, flipping through 
skin-thin pages of notebooks. Marvelous
and sacred, my palm resting on my husband’s thigh.
Marvelous, these knobby knuckles, how they 
curl around the hair brush. Sacred, 
the pillowed pads of these fingers, how they 
trace the lines of my husband’s face,
how they twist and tug wool around the knitting
needles, how they tap at the keyboard to fashion
language out of feeling, how they rest above my heart
and translate into praise that beat, faithful and familiar.

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