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Would you like to fly? There was a bird this morning on the floor of my room with a yellow breast whose neck had been twisted twice and whose little eyes stared flat looking at me with no expression at all except to say "I tried" And I said nothing in return for a while until one thing seemed unbearable not to ask Would you try again little bird? Now that you know Now that you’ve been hunted and dragged from field to floor by a predator who actually meant you no harm except to take your life? Would you want to fly now? Would you still nest in the small branches of trees until the moon rose high and the stretch of your wings guided you to the bliss of warmer places? Would you try again? Or would you say If you were here with your full russet cheeks "I’ll hide instead Beneath twigs Beneath the holes of uprooted trees Eating whatever worms slither by Whatever crickets hop close enough to snatch into my beak"? But then we’ll have to ask the cricket too Little bird Would he do it if he knew Would he sing? If he knew the thick grasses would betray him to you It’s the right question isn’t it? The one we have to ask If loss is the moment when our skin grows thick Our necks stiff, immovable and un-gazing or is it the moment we look at our wings On shoulders or knees and say "This is the music of life as it plays Loss is part of the music of life." and fly away? Questions for meditation: How do you think about loss? Is it something to be avoided at all costs? Is there any loss in the avoidance of it? Could it be acknowledged as painful AND natural, an occurrence that doesn't alter our behavior because it is inevitable and also not the final truth? A prayer using words: Resurrected Abundant Life, Living balm to loss, True Face of all things living and dying and living again, bring us into the truth of our own flying, our own courage to love and persist in loving, knowing the stark honesty of your resurrection. Amen. **A note about Building Altars prayers. I like to use different metaphors for "God", to move us away from the habitual cultural association of "man in the sky", "man", or "human" at all. The words and metaphors we use matter and are so much more diverse than "Father" even in Judeo-Christian language--including the unnameable, unsayable syllables "Yhwh", including "I am". It's important to re-engage big, wide, and deep words that stretch us to imagine a "God" that is the connector of all things, the electricity of all life. I hope you will join me in deepening and stretching the images we use. It has great consequences for our faith and the way we engage it in our daily lives.