Sticks of Time

I have been taught to revere

The preacher. High ceilings. Stained glass in the window.

Revere the man-made cathedrals.

Grand ballrooms of accolades.

Altars made to heavy lungs. To the stringent moment of payoff.

But what of reverence to that which is given.

To worship the caverns cut through age old bark and polished rock yielded to centuries of waves.

What of reverence to the lines in the mirror

The sticks of time reflecting the currents of joy and devastation

What is it like to revere the dishes

The quarters in the laundry room

The crosswalk button pushed a thousand times again

My life is not lived in a cathedral.

Not bowed at the feet of its altar.

The rays of sun rarely find me through colored glass.

Life is at home.

Scratched floors tripping over familiar feet under mine.

A warm kitchen where that old speaker plays our song

In baby wipes on sticky lips and half-eaten apple slices and eyes growing heavy as I hum your dreams to life

Thank you God for this time

For every sacred thing I’ve found in what’s simple

Thank you for $50 FB Marketplace tables and thrifted denim jackets and a peach the perfect shade of ripe

Thank you that my life is lived at the altar of presence

At the reverence for this familiar daybreak

Thank you that this life is simple and that this life is mine

Thank you Lord

It is simple and it is mine