The Praying Mantis

              "Do you mind if we pray first?" I asked. 

            "Sure," Heather smiled in both genuine desire to comfort and polite anxiety to finally leave. Her girlfriend Stephanie had already been home alone in bed waiting on Heather for hours now, adulting like the "normie" pro Stephanie was, awaiting a 7 a.m. workday tomorrow and their shared big event to come later in the day. 

            "What the heck is that? Is it a praying mantis?" Heather passively asked me. "It just jumped on my hand then onto to the pavement. Do you see it there?"

            I looked down at the pavement beside her knees, gently bent over the sidewalk beneath us. Sure enough, there sat an equitably sized, fulgent green mantis. 

            "Wow, I haven't seen one since I was a kid! That's definitely a praying mantis! How cool! Let's look up the spiritual meaning of it!"

            "You see, that's what I love about you. I would have never even thought of that," she told me in her motherly way, in effort to remind and assure me of my unique goodness. 

       "Google says it means 'good luck', Heather!" I told her, now even more enthusiastic about our uninvited guest. 

            "Let's pray with it," she said.

            "Of course!" I agreed, as we knelt on the pavement together, the meek mantis between us.  

            "Mind if I pray with you?" the pleasant little waitress who'd just served us bacon and waffles asked, having evidently noticed our informal prayer circle just outside the diner's window.  

            "Of course!" we both agreed, the three of us now kneeling, holding hands around the tempered mantis.

            "I don't know how to pray," the young waitress informed us timidly, "but I'd still like to pray with you, if you can show me how to." 

            "No problem. I've been having a really hard time coping with things in my life lately, and tomorrow Heather here is going for in vitro again. She's been trying to have a baby for years, and that mantis there jumped on her hand a few minutes ago. I looked up the meaning, and it said it means 'good luck', so we figured we'd pray together over the mantis. Maybe it'll bring luck to us all," I replied with a hopeful smile on my face that had only just formerly been crazed with confusion, desperation, and fear.

            "Well, I gave my second baby up for adoption recently, and now my life is a mess, so I appreciate you letting me pray with you," the waitress responded trepidly.

            "Just repeat after me," Heather suggested, as she began to recite the serenity prayer:

            "God, grant us the serenity

         to accept the things we cannot change

         the courage to change the things we can,

         and the wisdom to know the difference.”

      A peaceful energy flowed through our entwined hands as we recited the prayer with her. Once finished, we sat in the stillness a moment, eyes unopened, then we each quietly stood and walked away as the mantis, too, tranquilly went on about her own business. 

 

 

Reviews

[angel]

How sweet and lovely, and how wonderful to be able to teach someone with the desire to pray to do so.
I guess that little green mantis was good luck after all!
Did you ever notice things on plant stems in a meadow that look like a lump of mud, sort of egg shaped?
Inside that is where the mantis passes the winter.

[Coyote Poetry]

A wonderful story shared dear Angeline. I liked how you used the praying mantis. Nature is the best teacher, if we pay attention. Perfect ending to the amazing story.
Coyote