Grace Before Sleep

I have recently stumbled upon a choral piece that is full of simple beauty, images of friendship, and thankfulness.  Sara Teasdale, the author, won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Sadly, 15 years later, at the age of 49 her life ended by suicide.

Often our lives are like this, a mixture of great beauty and inexplicable pain.  The inverted message of Easter tells us that after great suffering there can come to us an unexplainable miracle.  This is the hopeful story I choose to believe.

Grace Before Sleep

How can our minds and bodies be

Grateful enough that we have spent

Here in this generous room, we three,

This evening of content?

Each one of us has walked through storm

And fled the wolves along the road;

But here the hearth is wide and warm,

And for this shelter and this light

Accept, O Lord, our thanks to-night.

Sara Teasdale

(1884-1933)

Composition by Susan Labarr

Here is a wonderful version from South Africa: