For all things bright and beautiful,

For all things dark and mysterious and lovely,

For all things green and growing and strong,

For all things weak and struggling to push life up through rocky earth,

For all human faces, hearts, minds, and hands

Which surround us,

And for all nonhuman minds and hearts, paws

And claws, fins and wings,

For this Life and the life of the world,

For all that you have laid before us, O God,

We lay our thankful hearts before you.

Origin:

Dr. Gail A. Ricciuti, Associate Professor of Homiletics at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York.

Options:

• This prayer helps us develop compassion. Before praying each day, take a minute to locate your "feeling heart," or what Jesus called the heart shrine. Close your eyes and move out of your head and into your heart.

• After each line, think of an example of "for all things" that particularly moves you (for example, your garden, the hundred-year-old trees in your yard, or the herbs on your windowsill).

• Each time you read the italicized lines above lift up a different person so that the prayer becomes a living prayer chain.

— Dr. Gail A. Ricciuti, Frances Sheridan Goulart in God Has No Religion: Blending Traditions for Prayer by Frances Sheridan Goulart