Making My Bed

I sat this evening mesmerized by the sparks of a bonfire as they took flight toward the sky. The moon was in its place and I was surrounded by friends and the sound of children's laughter as they ran in the dark among the horses and dogs. Goats complained in the background. I stared into the fire and heard my grandfather's repeated advice that "hedge burns hotter", whatever that means.

My bathroom is quite nearly remodeled. My therapist is more enlightened by me than I am by him some days, I think. For $110 an hour, I think I'm highly entertaining. We may be reaching the end of its usefulness. I had recorded a program that I had yet to watch on TV so I tuned it in after returning from the bonfire in the country. Among the singing was a Psalm, delivered in its historical context. It wasn't written for me and yet I think it was written for all of us. I came home from the party with such a sense of peace and contentment - in spite of everything that contraindicates those things. The psalm rang especially true for me who has made a lot of beds in which I'm now sleeping. It helped me bring my halves together.

For Everyone Who Ever Questioned or Wondered
For Anyone Who Ever Faltered or Wandered
For Me and For The Rest Of Us Who Sometimes Don't Fit

"To
The Chief Musician:

Psalm 139
1. O Lord, you have searched me and
you know me.
2. You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my
thoughts from afar.
3. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are
familiar with all my ways.
4. Before a word is on my tongue you know it
completely, O Lord.
5. You hem me in - and behind and before; you have laid
your hand upon me.
6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for
me to attain.
7. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your
presence?
8. If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in
the depths, you are there.
9. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I
settle on the far side of the sea,
10. even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11. If I say, "Surely the darkness will
hide me and the light become night around me, "
12. even the darkness will
not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light
to you.
13. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my
mother's womb.
14. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15. My frame was not hidden
from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the
depths of the earth,
16. your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days
ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of the sand. When
I awake, I am still with you...
23. Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24. See if there is any offensive way
in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

May we all have peace in the beds we've made.