This was a coooool prompt!  Below is a peek into the chaos of the house of a teacher at the end of the school year.  It sounds a right mess but it is just life scattered around the house of a family with a teenager and a young adult woman in transition into her grad studies in another province in process of moving…my children on the move.

 

walking in the chaos

these piles of clothes

this lived in home

that is new and not new

 

scattered pieces of life laying down on

floor

couch

table

 

dust

remnants of meals

heels

reverberations of other people’s lives not yet covered

by mine

or my family’s

 

attempts to place memories

from other places

in spaces too small to fit them all.

 

piles of books

gifts

photos of other times from other homes

where I felt more like they were mine than somebody else’s

 

contained chaos in empty cereal boxes and milk cartons

dishes in sinks

vases of roses given in gratitude remind me I am here for other purposes

than my own

 

padding on floors

to scattered rooms filled with remnants of business

dropped or placed

rested

draped

flung-back sheets in anticipation of days filled with hope to rise to the sun and reach for something new

reminds me life is filled with business and prayers in motion

walking prayers when we don’t have time to stop and kneel

or reach our hands to the quaking leaves and feel the wind in our hair

reminds me

this too is life

this too is living a walking prayer

a thankfulness

remembering to stop and hear the voice of Creator in this mess sometimes, too

 

because it means we live

and our living is full of dreams and prayers

and hopes that we bring medicine into this aching world

even when we leave footprints in the dust of our own floors

(c) r. l. elke