Overture

I am learning to pray for someone new: something enfolded in mystery and as common as the dawn of day. Bess is in her seventh week of her first pregnancy. The little person shown at left here is eight and a half weeks, so Bess' embryo is just a bit less developed. Bess is building another world within her, something wholly new; she and the Creator of the universe are together composing a new song note by note and line by line.

Here is a melody that will change the universe.

Life is hard to describe with unclothed language. Poetry and gifted prose may say much about the experiences of life, and the sympathetic, honest reader will nod in agreement, even at the hardest parts of these confessions. But life itself, Life, is like music - moody, complex, and moving; melody and harmony, counterpoint and supporting chord movements; the triumphant major and the melancholic minor; fortissimo and pianissimo...one prays not so much for this as with this.

That is, admittedly, opaque. But it seems hard to strive for heaven when one finds himself already there. And it seems hard to ask for blessing when we are already so extravagantly blessed. The love Bess and Bryan have for one another have everything to do with this. My prayers for this new life begin with gratitude and celebration.