“There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake and listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave upon wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.”
~R.S. Thomas, 1913-2000

Perhaps it is these heat-heavy days and nights that caused me to choose this poem to begin our worship this past Sunday. The images within it remind of some of these summer nights when, fans whirling by my bed like an airplane before take-off, I open my eyes and feel the night around me. Most times I am able to go quickly back to sleep. But there are times when thoughts come and hang in the warm air that will become the next morning.

I may have shared this poem before in this space. It is one I happen upon now and then and remember how much I love it. While I believe the poet is speaking about his relationship with the Holy which I share, it always reminds me of my childhood imaginings of the people that live on the other side of the world. Maybe all children ‘live’ in the small world of their own home, their own neighborhoods, families, town or city. By that I mean that their, our, image of what life is does not travel far from what they can see and hear at the moment. I say ‘our’ because I believe mostly we all live this way, regardless of age, with the lens of what the world is like firmly focused on the world in which we presently find ourselves. In our early days as a species it is what kept us safe and on-going. In some places in the world, perhaps not too far from your own home, this is still the case.

But it is the luxury of those who know safety to imagine what the world outside their own view is like. As a child I spent waking and nearly-sleeping hours wondering about places I had never been before, places across oceans and in countries where faces looked different than my own, where sounds and rhythms of the day did not match my simple comings and goings. Some of these places I have now been blessed to visit, others will probably only ever exist in my imagination or what I can can cobble together through books and other media.

What appeals to me about this poem is thinking of other people awake in the night praying. I imagine this mist of prayer rising from the bedsides of all those in house and hut, under stars and on beaches, in high rises and country side, laying awake while offering prayers. Prayers not only for those whose lives are like their own but also for those they also can only imagine. I can see this mist rising to create a cloud that hovers over us all. Prayers of protection and comfort. Prayers of gratitude and celebration. Prayers to soothe a mother’s aching heart and give courage and hope to a father’s worries. Prayers to heal the earth and honor all those who journey with us. Two-leggeds. Four-leggeds. Those who fly and swim. Those who slither and crawl. All held in a cloud of prayers offered by those we know and those we will never meet.

It is a comforting thought to me. And an image that makes falling asleep in the summer heat not only bearable but blessedly joyful.