No Formula

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the ways
we fertilize change
and for the ways
change escapes
our eager efforts.
We work,
and something happens,
or nothing.
We do not work
and nothing happens,
or something.

We try hard,
then harder.
The problem worsens.
We invest long years
until: success,
or, the loss of a dream
we didn’t know was a dream
until it vaporized
and broke our hearts.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for giving us much influence
and little control,
for standing beside us
as we watch our labor
burn to the ground,
or produce one hundred fold,
always saving us from the lie
that our value lives in
what we have made or lost.
Your grace exposes our folly
and assures us that whether
our legacy is beauty or pain
(likely both)
we are fields of treasure.