Praying Today

I.
Lord,
I thought I had come to terms
With the beauty and savagery
Of the natural world
Babies
The size of the universe
And the speed of light
Not to mention
TV and cell phones
The Internet
And photographs of my house
From outer space
And particles so small
That they routinely
Pass through the earth
And touch nothing.

But that was before. . .

I discovered that
I am an ecological planet
Inhabited by trillions
Of microfauna and microflora
That (at least in most cases)
Have worked together
To make “me” into
The improbable ecological Planet “I”
That stands before you
This afternoon.

That was before. . .

I learned that
In the ocean
Two miles down
Fauna and flora
With their attending
Microfauna and microflora
Exist happily in and around
Hydrothermal vents
That spew boiling
Metal sulfide rich water
Heated by magma
Oozing though cracks
In the earth’s crust
(terra firma indeed!)
That hardens
To spread the ocean floor
And put in constant motion
The continental plates
That grind together
To create mountains
And earthquakes
And volcanoes
And tsunamis.

That was before. . .

I read that 600
Newly discovered life forms
Are flourishing four miles down
In stygian blackness
Below the ice in Antarctica.

That was when I
to put it into succinct scientific terms
FREAKED OUT

II.
Lord,
Right now
I only know that today
I am persevering
Praying
Struggling to comprehend
Thanking You
For that
Improbable
Crazy
Complicated
Chaotic
Mysterious
Marvelous
Miraculous
Thing called
LIFE.

ah
8/21/08