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A Prayer for Those Who Sleep in the Cold Lord, fresh from the comfort of a warm bed, I offer a prayer for those who sleep in the cold. As autumn arrives, the migrant songbirds flee, the leaves begin to brown at the edges, and those without safe haven brace for night. Lord, send an angelic emissary down to inspect Your people who lie curled in tight balls, instinctively minimizing their surface to volume ratio to lessen their heat loss. Let the flutter of Your angel's wings not disturb the cardboard intended to present a barrier to the wind and to provide an insulating layer that slows the convective heat loss from their bodies, which shiver, it is claimed, as a physiological mechanism to create warmth by expending energy. Lord, direct Your agent into their dreams. How long has it been since you walked through the glacial thoughts of one counting minutes until the relief of sleep dulls the bite of the cold, only to wake in a moonlight free of whimsy to find the routine and entirely unremarkable truth that, with the deepening night, the temperature has further fallen? There is no relief. Lord, if it falls outside Your plan, to offer succor to the cold, this I ask: in the walls of the bedrooms of the warm, have Your angel loosen planks, disturb the fiberglass insulation, welcome drafts that sidle beneath blankets and prompt dreams of their own, in which the sleeper finds oneself surrounded by a people of bone, aching with chill from gusts expelled with each of our gentle breaths. |
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A Prayer for Those Who Sleep in the Cold David Keffer Knoxville, TN October 6, 2014 |