Your poetic and prayerful offering because I know you carry everybody’s burdens.
I hope this prayer helps you make it through the day. If even for a minute. I’m happy with that.
When you thought I lay resting, I saw you bending at the waist under the old oak that lives in Pawpaw’s back yard. You uncloaked yourself like seers removing veils after seekers departing from round wooden tables marked with scratches and covered in candle ruins. Bricks fumbled and landed at the foot of the tree. I saw the carvings they made along your back as if you were made from the bark of the old oak you wept under. Your lips were pressed together and your mouth was paralyzed from the constant closing, but your thoughts found an exit through the button in your belly.
You never asked for anything. Not a cool glass of mint water to subdue your thirst. Not a meal made from another’s hands. Not an ear to hear what you whispered in that well on the night when the moon grew pregnant and red. You never wanted your presence to be the dread that possessed a moment. Or your asking to become burdens that slowed the process of a soul making it to heaven. Instead, when they came to you hunting for answers in moments God was listening, their wishes, wants, and needs bled through their teeth. They hardened over time and became the bricks you carried on your back like altars carrying petitions and prayers. Like you were meant to deliver them to the place God stays.
But… what about your prayers? Is the reason you don’t pray due to the paralyzing of your mouth? Are you afraid your teeth will break if you asked for replenishment? Why do you hide in the silence when it’s your turn to lay your letters at the hearth? Has your heart always been this big? Or did you learn that to be loved you must become the sacrifice?
Before you lay another brick on your back, remember that there are altars available to you. The Divine does not ask for your spine as a sacrifice. Nor does it demand that you search for its essence in the needs, wishes, or desires of others. Your back is not a plate that holds six courses for souls starved and greedy for green beans and collards. Your patient petitions were not made to wither under the pressure and heat of those needing salvation.
What if the altar you needed rested atop your tongue? What burdens, heartache, or needs would you speak of? What secrets would come spilling from the wells of your throat? What vibration would rhythm the song of your prayers? What sound would raise the heaviness that sinks your back in? Would it change circumstances like seasons in a second? Or would it reinforce the weight of people who have made a refuge of you?
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Before you lay that last brick on your back, remember that there are altars available to you. That prayers are signals we send to the universe. That in order to receive we must start with opening. And sometimes the openness looks like standing. But, we cannot stand if our backs have been compromised. So, may the bricks you have placed along the length of your vertebrae, become the red dust you use to cleanse the structure of your home. To rid your mind of the lie that you must be the sacrifice.
I pray you hear God singing from the roots of that old oak. That Pawpaw’s hands show you how bricks are used to build homes and monuments out of the bareness they keep.
Altars are sacred places where offerings are made. May you receive everything you’ve ever poured in the most favorable ways. I pray you remember that the weight you hold is not yours. That you give your cries to God today. That the sunlight smiling over the leaves of Pawpaw’s tree finds you and brings movement back to your paralyzed lips. That weightlessness cascades over the bruising of your back. I pray you remain open the ease you need. I hope you remember that even those who go silent are heard in the most turbulent chaos.
And a final word:
Remember that love costs nothing. You needn't be in spaces that expect your drainage. You were not made to betray your wishes to prove you deserve love that is rightful to you.
You are so giving. Always giving. Without complaint. Expectation. And are always willing to offer the hairs on your head even for those who were blessed with crops of their own.
You are held, hugged, and healed today. There is no such thing as a burden only you are meant to carry. But if there is a such thing as a love that is only yours to experience, I pray that it be yours and yours alone. I will witness the praise. Witness the weeping. Witness the release because you remembered you are never alone.
And in the moments you find yourself too bruised to kneel at the altar, I’ll carry you there. I’ll cradle you and sit us at the fireplace. I’ll speak life into the fires and let the smoke carry your needs and grief to the cosmos.
Lay your burdens at the altar. Let the others find their way.
Deep love and gratitude to you.
Always.
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