Fold Our Hands In Prayer

I have not cried yet about the Newtown massacre, numb at the thought of 20 Elizabeths and the brave teachers and staff being gunned down by a madman. A very sick man. 

I woke in the dark thinking about the families left behind too wounded to even imagine how to begin to live again.

My chest hurts.

Thinking about how slammed I was by mom's death, how grief kept coming and coming in waves, for years. and still.

But she was 75. Had lived a good life. 

Somehow, that makes more sense in the world of loss.

Not 6 year olds who make gingerbread houses at birthday parties and eat Cheerios, who you wave to every morning as they get on the school bus and can't go anywhere without their blankie and hug you with juicy love and a kiss on the mouth every time they say goodbye.


I am wordless, yet filled to the brim. 

When you have no words remember that you have hands, hands built for bracing yourself as you fall, hands perfectly designed for holding another with interlocking fingers and wide open palms, hands that fold beautifully against one another in prayer, hands that will wipe away tears, hands that connect to arms, and arms that connect to bodies and that those bodies can reach out and will reach out to embrace and that the embrace is not just an offering it is at the very same moment a receiving

...When you have no words remember that silence is the gospel of peace


- from "When You Have No Words" by Donna Jackson 

Let's fold our hands in prayer

connect your arms to somebody today ~ 

xo b