SEVEN GRATITUDES: prayers in every language

Migwetch Mamogosnan. Thank you, Creator.

This Potawatomi prayer has been on repeat in my head and heart for several months, ever since I began learning my native language. Basically, it’s a general prayer of thanks, because native people tend to be grateful people.

Thank you, Creator, for everything that you have done for me…

And it continues from there, relaying gratitude after gratitude, asking that God be present and known.

So in that vein, I pray today, in snippets. In bits and pieces. I lift up seven gratitudes with a few of my friends, and as we do, I pray that you lift up yours within yourself, that we learn to practice grateful prayer on a regular basis, in whatever language we use to connect to the sacred.

My eyes have been sore this week from too much time spent on the computer, too much time reading over book endorsements and waiting for emails to come in. So I go outside to remember. I go outside to the “tonic of wilderness,” as Thoreau called it, and nothing could be more true. It is medicine to close my eyes and listen to the world do whatever she needs to do in that moment, to speak whatever she needs to speak.

It is there that grateful prayers pour forth, that we remember our place here. So we pray.

Seven Gratitudes: a prayer

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for the Center for Action and Contemplation, for a class on the Franciscan Way that reminds me I am not alone.

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for the ways you resurrect us every day when we’ve forgotten that even the coldest places inside of us can be resurrected.

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for people who do not give up on each other, who do not give up on you. It is there that we are truly the church.

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for two rowdy, Lego-building boys who are so full of life their bodies can hardly contain it. Were we once so young and alive? Remind us.

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for seasons in which dreams are made reality, for seasons in which we grieve and repair what is broken. In all seasons, You are there. 

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for the hammock in my front yard, from where I can see the hawks fly overhead, from where I can hear the birds talk about the universe, their chittering a sure sign of spring.

Migwetch Mamogosnan, for the gifts of activism and voice and protest, by which we shift the world one nonviolent voice at a time. And surely, you were always with us, and surely, You will always be.  Migwetch, for knowing my name, my sister’s name, my brother’s name, the names of those we thought would never be remembered. You do not forget. 

Migwetch, Migwetch, Migwetch.

Amen.