PRAIRIE GATE

The prairie makes listening in the sacred silence easy. The break of dawn and the evening sundown on the wide prairie spread silence into stained sweeps of atmosphere. The French have a saying: "La nuit, tous les chats sont gris" meaning, at night all cats are gray --- in the darkness, we are all alike, in our need, our longing, our confusion, our questions, our prayer. As the ground we've walked on all day long, now fails to reflect the light, and dissolves into shadow, we stop looking for answers on the paths we know. Our eyes go upward. The sky is endless and welcoming, a lamplit window of heaven.