Words are unimportant in approaching God. Instead let us go to God with the same attitude one child had as she sat almost hidden in the midst of a field of waving wheat. When her grandfather went looking for her, from a distance he heard her going through the entire alphabet, softly saying, "A, B, C, D, E ..." Curious, her grandfather asked, "What are you doing?" "I'm praying, Grandpa. But I don't know the right words, so I'm saying all the letters and letting God put them together."
The Beloved listens
as I dovetail words
into walls
and walk in winter landscapes.
None of the alien, snowbanked roads
lead home. Even as I speak,
the shadows shift
across the stones
I have tried
to mortar into place.
The beloved listens
and weaves willow silences
into my words.
The quietness of Love
builds me a better harbor
than words ever could,
a place from which to sail,
a place to remember
on the map I navigate by,
where the heart of the compass rose is home.