The coffee was ready

"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer." — Romans 12:12

The coffee was ready before I was this morning, which happens sometimes when the timer does its job and I do not do mine.

I sat down and the kitchen was still dark and the list was in the journal where I left it and I opened to the page and looked at the names. There are mornings when the list feels like work. When each name is a weight you pick up and set down and pick up again. This was not one of those mornings.

This morning the names were just names. I said them the way I say good morning to Biscuit, which is to say I said them because they were there and because saying them is what I do. The prayer was not large. It was not the kind that leaves you wrung out. It was Monday, and the prayer was Monday-sized, and that was enough.

I prayed for Becca. I prayed for Dan and the children. I prayed for Hannah, who I have not heard from in a week and a half but who is fine, I am sure, because Hannah not calling is not the same thing as Hannah not being fine. I prayed for the woman at church. I prayed for Edna's hip, which has been bothering her since June, and for Pastor Holloway, who looked tired last Sunday.

August has started. I can feel it in the house, in the way the light comes through the kitchen window a few minutes later than it did at the beginning of July. The summer is not finished but it has turned a corner. The garden is still giving. There is plenty left to do and none of it needs to be done this morning.

I finished the list. I closed the journal. Biscuit was on the porch where he always is, and Junebug was asleep on the windowsill in the spot where the sun hits first. I drank my coffee and I sat there for a while longer and I did not think about anything in particular.

There is a kind of prayer that is just sitting. No words, no list, no asking. Just the morning and the coffee and the quiet of the house before the day begins. I have come to trust this kind more than the kind that tries too hard. The trying is not the point. The sitting down is the point.

Lord, thank you for the mornings that do not ask anything of me.