Photo Prayer 2021-13 — I Look Up From My Work

The ice and wind of winter have departed. Huge tree limbs and small branches litter the yard, the rotten and the weak snapped from the heights and thrown to earth. Like a mother imposing order in a house upended by a child’s willful anarchy, my job is to clean up this mess. Again and again I kneel to reach the ground while the strong wood that remains aloft flowers and buds. From every tip and nodule, leaves shyly show themselves. What was subdued is beginning to move. It seems delicate and vulnerable, yet at the same time unstoppable, relentless. For just a moment, I get off my knees and stand. I look up at the spreading canopy and, beyond it, the sky. And beyond the sky, something to which we are called.

Photo of trees in bloom and just leafing out, Arden, Delaware.
Photo and text copyright 2021 by Danny N. Schweers.

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Comments

Sybil wrote:
Lovely narrative on this!

Ellen wrote:
❤️

Julie wrote:
From the moment we enter this world, we are on our way to that infinite Somewhere, Something. Trees are an apt usher for those thoughts, with their roots firmly planted but their branches reaching upward, stretching, waving -- testing the air for the path toward up.

Marti wrote:
Like this picture a lot! Thank you!

John wrote:
Wonderful Danny. I loved the word “relentless” inserted in the perfect spot.

Bill wrote:
Great text. Thanks. The photo looks like a winter sky.

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