You will hardly believe your ear, since,
as You know, I like to divide my time equally
between feeling sorry for myself,
and asking You to make things better for me.
But just this once, I'd like to thank You for
all those things, beginning with the gift
of life itself, You have showered on me for
no earthly reason that I can see,
except that inexplicably in the face of
selfishness and ingratitude of monumental
proportions and endurance,
You love me.
My daughter, three years old and fearless, loves nothing more than wading along the shallow shoreline outside our house. Holding hands, we walk barefoot upstream quietly in the water, stepping delicately over stones. Besides the water sounds, there is just immense silence. We stop and listen to the water. She asked me for a story; I did not have one. Listening, she turned in delight and announced, "Daddy, this water is talking." In listening to the river a kind of silence prevails, broken only by the rush of water over rocks. Such a silence is more like faint echoes, each a series of dim reverberations. They continue in you, distant yet familiar.