prayer poems for you

I’ve been sharing these prayer poems on social media recently. Readers asked if I’d save them so they could send to others. Here they are, for you.

Do we ever stop to consider
that they might be longing for us, too—
the ones we love and miss?
On this side our longing is called grief
and soaked in sorrow,
but their love is called joy—
which wants everyone to join.

They may not count down the chronos we number,
for they know the kairos that is beyond time.
But once in a while when I feel their presence,
I also feel their pulling—
the eagerness to offer to another
the best you have and know.

I wonder about the beatific vision—
if their lives are consumed now by gazing at God,
what space or time could they have
to think of us?
But holy remembering brings full presence
(and I have tasted this truth)
so I wonder if by beholding God
they also get to behold what God loves
(which is us).

If life in death is changed, not ended
and if love cannot die (as the best stories tell us)
then I fear we have short-changed the mystery
by cold, hard words we use:
lost, dead, gone.

One Word whispers another Way
and whenever I quiet down my sad soul to hear it speak,
I rise up and remember—I have only glimpsed God.
The fullness is a different story.
The next act will put this preamble into place.

For who wouldn’t want to press the best book
into the hands of their beloved
and say with joy—here! You really must read this.
I can’t quite put it into words
but it changed
my life.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci

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Jesus spent most of his time on the planet
doing nothing extraordinary. Thirty years
of normal work and everyday life: eating, drinking,
building, growing, talking, praying.
A son, a brother, a friend, a neighbor.

When the time came for change
and he moved into his ministry—
the three short years that held Extraordinary Everything,
that we are still unpacking 2000 years later—
he transformed each everyday way of being
to become a holy way of meeting him:
food and drink, daily work, prayer and conversation.
He let us draw near to him through
the relationships he knew (and loved).

So when we want God to move in our lives—
powerfully or prayerfully, however we ask—
we would do well to remember the odds
are that God will be found in the ordinary,
dwelling among us, moving through
meals and prayer and work and sleep.

He only healed a handful in the time he had here.
He did not pour miracles on every teeming crowd.
God chose to reveal a different
divine way of being
than the magic-maker we might conjure.

Catch his voice in conversation
or listen for his whisper in work and rest.
Behold him in the boring.
He must have loved the quiet
and the overlooked.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci

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What if the next day matters more?

After parties have ended,
confetti swept to piles,
adrenaline subsides,
cameras click to black, and
we return to ordinary time—
what if the real work starts then?

Not only dreaming, scheming, planting
but in the building, fixing, growing?

What if history is in the making
not just the marking
of a single day
but countless hours after?

What if despair and hope
loom large under a spotlight
but we are called to dwell in quiet corners,
the place where peace gets made
(and beds and meals and plans)?

What if we set our sights beyond
hoopla’s horizon to a hundred mornings after—
each dawn a silent gift to start again,
the space where dreams get chiseled into stone?

Yes, we need
to stop and celebrate,
mark milestones and moments on the way.
But may we not mistake
the celebration for the culmination.
Becoming will last longer than beginning,
and calendars stand firm on ground
of ordinary hours.

So let today—
another, unremarkable—
remind you of the miracle of mystery,
of much work to be done
and time to do it:
the wonder of a day we won’t recall.

Copyright © 2021 Laura Kelly Fanucci