I got a grandfather gift, and a nice one too! It is the sort-of children's, muchly adult illustrated book called Grandad's Prayers of the Earth by Douglas Wood. Wood's name was familiar, and when I searched him online I discovered that he is the author of Old Turtle, one of my favourite kid's books.
The grandfather in the book walks often with his grandson and offers that the trees, the flowers, the birds are all prayers: "A bird prays when it sings the first song of the morning, and it prayer in that silent moment just before it sings. And the robin's last song at sundown is an evening prayer."
The illustrations are beautiful and I like the notion that everything living praises God. It is biblical too. Read psalm 104, or psalm 150: "let everything that has breath praise the Lord."
After the initial wonder of holding our very new grandson, Nicholas, my mind went to what sort of world he will grow up in, and my part in making it less hospitable, less balanced. I'm not proud of what the Boomer generation has done. But the book comforted me, both in my conviction that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" and that I can be part of teaching and modelling for my grandchildren what abundant life as a gift of God really means.
Do you know this book, or Old Turtle? Do you believe that the very existence of other creatures is a prayer to the Creator? Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?
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