I thank you for that secret praise
Which burns in every creature,
And I ask you to bring us to life
Out of every sort of death

And teach us mercy.

(Anne Porter, “Leavetaking,” in Living Things)

In the dim hours of dawn, on awakening, I said to myself, “Lord, show me something.” Waking twice in the night, summoned out of impossible dreams, I said to the shadows as well, “Show me something, show me something new.” Lying in the dark, I traced the steps and feel and smell of our earlier walk that morning to see if there was something I missed, something unnoticed.

I unlocked and then let latch the gate behind us. Footfalls sounded across a quiet street, the rhythmic beat, the swish of fabric, the unwillingness to speak at first, to interrupt the quiet. The walk rises, leaves earth on a bridge through the air across the channel. I run my hand lightly along a cold handrail, rusted and warped from incident. The wind puffs lightly, northward up the channel, cold on my face. A few sailboats anchor in the placid water. Falling to ground again, feet slapping concrete, the car park of a harbor inn is empty. Vacancy. I leave off there, turn back, sleep overtaking my reverie.

Rising after dawn, I try again for real. Out the gate we go, past a congregation of crows cawing over a dumpster of lunch-leavings. They scatter. On the bridge this time she calls me back, breaks my pace, in my crossing. We lean over the aluminum rails, peer down into the brackish water. “Dolphins, six of them,” she says. I watch them surface, side by side, gray on gray, turning and rolling back below, praise burning in the deep. A neighbor-walker stops, says, “yes, they’re beautiful, aren’t they?,” and we give assent, smile.

In the marsh the tide is out, the mud flats dark against the green of sea grass. Praise burns in its varied grasses - smooth cordgrass mostly, though I learn that low, black needlerush, salt grass, or saltmeadow grass stake out areas that are slightly higher in elevation. Sometimes, though not today, the white-stemmed head of an egret rises above the grasses, aloof. But there are others unseen or unknown to me: the loons and grebes, cormorant, sandpiper, herons, terns, and sparrows, the ones about whom I am mostly ignorant, bookish and inexperienced. Today, the black sands bubble in hope, suggesting a muckish life between the reeds, a secret praise. We walk on.

On the far side of the loop, in the midst of spoken prayers, I consider my reading that day, Paul’s letter to the church in Philipi, when he roots his every hope to see his friends again “in the Lord,” in the certainty of God’s purposes. He makes no wish, no mere precation, but trusts in God to bring it about. And I think: I have been clouded about such things, laboring under wishes and not trusting in the Lord. And here is Paul sending Timothy, his son in faith, when all others “seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 2:21), speaking life to his friends out of those sorts of deaths, out of seeing self-interest triumph. And still he will “hope in the Lord.” Still, he is faithful in hope.

The north bridge over the channel bears a date, 1955, making it our contemporary. Over half a century it has borne the weight of traffic and storm, the relentless movement of the tides, and yet it holds. Adding yet another burden to it in my tread, adding to over a half century of wear, I think: Lord, have mercy. Carry my burdens. Let life come out of every little death. When cicadas sing, give me ears for secret praise. When the sun rises over the water, let me burn with praise. Teach me mercy under the concrete and traffic of life, in the rattle and rub of the day. Give me an unclouded love like that of parent for child, an untempered hope, a praise not secret but regular and new. Show me something new. Everyday, show me something new.