Walls and green grass are a comfort in a frantic,
over caffeinated life, so full of demands.
We walk this way only once.
The grass under our feet
so that the land feeds us like a mother.
massaging tired feet with cool life;
while the stone walls provide the boundaries against
which we push, but for which our soul longs.
We want to channel our lives, or allow them to be.
We know we only have so much to offer
and only have so much energy with which to work and wander.
So the walls give us permission in our lives
not to run frantically through too many fields
only to get very far and have little to show for it
precisely because the walk was to work and not to play.
Rather, we give ourselves to mother earth as we walk on grass
but also welcome father wall which protects us from
our own tendency to go too far or wander too near the cliff.
And that, my friends is how we define vows.
Like a garden-hose which now has a gentle spray for fragile leaves;
and now, with one turn of the nozzle,
has a jet-stream which could take paint off a house;
so too are our lives. We sometimes need to spread out into a field
and then sometimes need to stay within the confines
of the walls of our lives – marriage vows, clerical vows, friendship vows.
And so we pray the prayer of walls:
Lord God of the Universe,
stay with me as I navigate the walls
which life will offer me today.
Show me which ones to which to be obedient,
which ones to climb on just to see the view,
and which ones to ignore as old – built for an aged time –
over which to scamper, jump and flee recklessly into the green fields
in which to dance and dance and dance until I
collapse in a poole of laughter and tears at what life brings me.
And thank you for grass. AMEN
