I was swinging in the hammock chair on the porch, watching the rain. Catching the lightning cut the sky, listening to the thunder crack. Noticing the brightness of the colours, even in the darkness of the weather. The clump of orange tulips, but not simply orange. Redorange and yelloworange with streaks of purple that creep down into the stems, standing against the green of the grass. All the green everywhere vibrant, the leaves on the trees just about bursting with colour and wet. All so new, so young, just barely unfurled from that secret winter place.

My bed is in the corner, inside the point where two outside walls meet, next to the window. Tonight the rain is unending. The rain and wind a steady rhythm swirling around my corner to put me to sleep. The rhythm a sad one. Sad, but good. Steady, reassuring, content.

I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I've been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down by drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide,
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It's here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again,
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart -
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God - spend them however you want.

- Rainer Maria Rilke


I didn't write that poem, but I like it a lot and I find it resonating inside me. I found it in a book by Philip Yancey called Prayer.