Not every morning begins in crisis. Sometimes what we need is a prayer for the unremarkable days — the ones that ask nothing dramatic of us and offer nothing dramatic in return. The days that simply exist, and ask to be lived.
For this morning, which is asking nothing extraordinary of me — for the coffee, the ordinary light, the familiar sounds of the house waking up — I am grateful.
Let me not spend this day in rehearsal for some other day. Let me not miss what is actually happening in the effort to prepare for what might happen.
Where I am quick to judge, make me slower. Where I am slow to speak when speaking would help, make me braver. Where I am tempted to be busy as a substitute for being present, let me notice the temptation before I’ve already given in.
Give me one conversation today that matters. One moment of genuine attention. One small act that costs me something.
And at the end of it, let me be the kind of tired that comes from having been fully in the day — not from having run from it.
Amen.
This is a prayer I return to on the mornings when nothing is obviously wrong and nothing is obviously right — the mornings that are simply mornings. I find them harder to meet than the dramatic ones. Ordinariness requires its own kind of attention.