Hashlamah: a prayer of acceptance

By Angie Ora Whittemore

One morning my mom and I walk

a remote island coast near her home.

Watch your step, she tells me,

these beaches are littered with glass.

Shards of white and foam green lie

amid discarded caps and lone shoes.

We scan the sand before placing our feet.

A quarter mile on now, I bend

to examine these pieces

and     wait     look

the glass is rounded, smooth, opaque.

There are no rough edges,

no jags to pierce my skin.

Decades of churning in the sea,

weathered by rock and grain,

        and salt to turn it milky raw,

allows the refining, the tolerance, the acceptance.

Lord let this be me: let me cup my hands to the coarseness of life.

The sickness, the seeming rejection, the hunger I have not yet sated.

And Lord let me behold this refinement not just in others, but in myself.

Hashlamah.

Hashlamah is a Hebrew term meaning the surrender to or alignment with the will of God and the nature of reality.

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Angie Ora Whittemore lives in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband and three daughters. She is happiest near the ocean, where she finds balance, inspiration and play. As a committed friend of Jesus, she is drawn to the ways the Divine is manifest in the natural world and in everyday life.