We invent our prayers

The poems in this book invite the reader to embrace life with joy and to welcome its challenges. They praise the diversity, the marvels and the surprises inhabiting the blanket of life covering our small planet orbiting an average star in one among a myriad of galaxies in a universe we barely know and understand. They celebrate the adventures through which humans progressively have learned to describe the constituents of life and its behavior. They also call us to meditate upon our abuses against each other, to examine our wasteful and destructive exploitation of the environments out of which we grew. They aim to understand more than to judge. They want to celebrate nature, its harmony, its beaty, the sustenance it gives to us and the comforting feelings it can inspire. They try to emphasize the interrelatedness and unity among all living things. Throughout them modesty, discipline, balance, empathy and love are recurring themes and inspirations. The poems are grouped into eight sections following the eight subdivisions of the day that monks adopted to organize their disciplined lives. Each section is introduced by a brief poem orienting the reader toward what the poems attempt to accomplice as outlined above. This way of organizing thoughts, emotions, experiences, images and meditations seems appropriate to guide the reader toward the intimate and restful pace that poetry can inspire.