Let’s start with a prayer for healing and renewal: “Lord, I come before You today in need of Your healing hand. In You all things are possible. Hold my heart within Yours, and renew my mind, body, and soul. I am lost, but I come to You with grace. You gave us life, and You also give us the gift of infinite joy. Give me the strength to move forward on the path You’ve laid out for me. Guide me towards better health, and give me the wisdom to identify those You’ve placed around me to help me get better. In Your name I pray, Amen.”
The poet Robert Frost pondered in one of his poems on whether fences are meant to keep people out or keep them in. Maybe both. “Fences make good neighbors,” the late great American bard concluded. He must have loved his privacy and detested nosy neighbors. The better for his poetry, I guess.
Instead of fences, countries and their states, provinces or municipalities have borders that could be used to keep their people in or others out for whatever reason depending on how strict the regulations covering these borders are implemented. In this time of Covid-19 pandemic, protecting our borders against the entry of an invisible enemy is paramount.
What can this near-sighted Ibaloy writer say? It’s always prudent to face challenges like this Covid threat with a united front. Like Honest Abe Lincoln declared, “In unity, there is strength.”
Here’s “Great City” by Harold Monro: “When I returned at sunset,/ The serving-maid was singing softly/ Under the dark stairs, and in the house/ Twilight had entered like a moon-ray./ Tune was so dead I could not understand/ The meaning of midday or of midnight,/ But like falling waters, falling, hissing, falling,/ Silence seemed an everlasting sound./ I sat in my room,/ And watched sunset,/ And saw starlight./ I heard the tramp of homing men,/ And the last call of the last child;/ Then a lone bird twittered,/ And suddenly, beyond the housetops,/ I imagined dew in the country,/ In the hay, on the buttercups;/ The rising moon,/ The scent of early night,/ The songs, the echoes,/ Dogs barking,/ Day closing,/ Gradual slumber,/ Sweet rest./ When all the lamps were lighted in the town/ I passed into the street ways and I watched,/ Wakeful, almost happy,/ And half the night I wandered in the street.”
May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ continue to bless and keep us all safe.
