Garden of the Heart

Prayer for the Seventeenth Day of Lent

Bless, O God, the pure ideas of the heart blown in
on sympathetic winds to germinate on fertile
ground, and help us nurture them. Protect them
from a summer day too hot, a storm too violent.
Make them resilient and able to withstand the overzealous,
kindly meant attention from a relative or friend who snips
the eagerest of sprouts—for symmetry, to spare us
disappointment.

Make in each of us a garden, well supplied with sun and rain.
Teach us husbandry and grant us patience for the weeding
and the cultivation. Thus, believing you began the planting as
a gift of work and purpose, may we tend and not abandon it.
And what of trust? How can we know a grand idea from a
fantasy? If heaven-sent, it will be sturdy and exuberant. Its fruit
will heal the sick or feed the hungry, shade the weary, school
the would-be wise, or simply yield delight, a place of beauty
radiant with love, a feast for famished eyes.

Amen.