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Prayers of Compassion

A Morning Prayer when Mourning
This prayer from Prayers for Animals by Carol J. Adams (Copyright 2004) was read July 25, 2004 during the 6:30 AM service in the chapel in the woods of the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Pennsylvania campus.

Dear God,

This morning Your whole of Creation greeted me,
as it does each morning.

Squirrels, as usual, were busy with a labyrinth of tree limbs
ducks dipped and shook in rhythm in a synchronized swim.

Everywhere I looked I saw Your Creation.

But I stop, hit full force by the aching sense of loss.

Someone I loved deeply is dead.

I loved him so.

He had asked so much of me,
so much care, so much nurturing.

He taught me about the deep places inside of me.

I think I am doing fine,
he has been dead for so long now.

But the amnesia that covers my grief
deprives me of the memory of him, too.

He was so alive, too—like all of us this morning.

When I encounter my grief, a hole opens up.

It swallows so much.

First to go are my words.

How hard it is to speak of this!

I feel again the breaking of my heart.

But perhaps to know that I feel it breaking
tells me I have distanced myself
from the immediate heart-stopping grief of his death.

Now I understand it is a wound,
a wound that will not kill me,
though at one time it felt as though it would.

Can I receive the life of today,
the glorious morning life that greets me here?

God, I miss him so.

I take comfort from Your animals just in their living.

I will take comfort, but I know,
as I am sure You know,
that I will be back,
back with my wounded heart
and the knowledge
that the wounding is perhaps a sad gift from You, too.

I am more whole now,
knowing I loved,
than I was before my heart was broken.

See the other parts of the Memorial Service for the Animals:
A Memorial for the Animals - We All Have a Need for Love - Sermon
In Honor of Frank and Mary a poem by Roberta Schiff
A Prayer and Benediction of Life and Love By Michael Klaper, MD

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