Attentiveness is the beginning of all prayer, says the great poet Mary Oliver, and everything that lives is holy, says the confusing poet Billy Blake, and all the way to heaven is heaven, says the tart Saint Catherine of Siena, and let grief be a falling leaf, says the testy poet Van Morrison, and grace under duress is the great story of us, says the undersigned muddleness, and how we reach for one another and listen to one another's music and share stories like the most amazing and nutritious food--that's what we are all here for.

Me personally I think stories are the coolest wildest prayers there are. It's no accident that the skinny Jewish guy who wandered around Judea some centuries ago was a terrific storyteller, his tales mysterious and shimmering, wriggling their way through the millennia even unto our day, and now into the ears and hearts of our children and our children's children; stories matter, stories live forever, stories are how we shuffle quickest toward the Mercy greater than the ocean and denser than the stars in the sky. Stories maybe save lives. They sure saved mine.