A few updates from our prayer requests of yesterday:

Regarding Heather, they young mother who was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant (and safely delivered of her son, Heath), who seemed near death on Monday:

Heather’s sudden problem was an infection and that her fever is down and they were able to insert a feeding tube today. Considering on Monday, they told the family she probably wouldn’t live three days, that is its own small miracle. Hopefully, the feeding tube will help her regain her strength and chemo for the one nasty lymph node can continue. Thanks for your continued prayers for my friend.

Heather’s story is very dramatic, as you can read here.

Also, Darling Sarah (who always charms me) emails:

Miss A, Yesterday was the first day in 2 weeks I was present all day (no dissociation). Thank [everyone for their prayers]…Prayer does work. I’m a firm believer. And, my life has improved by huge amounts since I started praying the rosary and just asking for God’s blessing. I had thought I was completely past this; but, I guess not.

Sarah is not out of the woods, but she wanted us to know that after several harrowing weeks, yesterday – a day when many hundreds prayed for her – was a good day.

Also, I do not have permission to go into great detail, but please pray for reader WM, who writes:

I’d like to be added to your prayer list. My parents were murdered in their home [last month].

Our friend Joseph, meanwhile, sends me this link, which includes a message to all who have been praying for him. He is much too generous to me, and I suspect we have not heard the last of him, but please keep him in your prayers as well.

You know, my email is rather loaded up with prayer requests, little messages from young widows, young men fearful because they’ve worked diligently and played by the rules, and now they worry that they may lose their jobs and the ability to support their families because of circumstances quite outside their control. Older men and women who also worry about their jobs, because it would be so easy for their companies to replace them with gonzo young turks who will work for much less (but also, frankly, know much less).

The idea of experience counting, of accrued wisdom having a value, seems to be fading with our increasingly sick corporate culture, our unstable economy and with the daily evidence before our eyes that our government is the playground of bullies, egoists and mad scientists.

I have about 30 windows open, all full of interesting things I mean to write about. Have had several emails from people asking me why I have not written about the Gates/Police/Obama story.

What’s the point? There are plenty of bloggers covering it very well, and I find Gates to be a bit of a publicity hog who likes to stir pots, so that bores me. With everything going on in America right now, this Gates brouhaha seems like one stupid-but-deadly brew, where each man (and for that matter the president) could have handled himself better. I don’t think the cop is a racist, he’s just a cop. Gates is just an over-petted man who likes attention. Obama is just an overhyped man wearing a suit and shoes too big for him, who surrounds himself with ghouls and refuses to confer with an experienced, cautious and knowledgeable tailor, or apparently, to watch where he is going.

I say feh on all of it, and offer you a cute joke.

The fact is, with all those open tabs, all of those interesting stories – I’m feeling called to my room, and my makeshift, temporary oratory. I’m feeling called, – no, not called but tugged and relentlessly pulled – into prayer. Firstly for the purpose of praise and worship, then in supplication all of those who have asked for public or private prayers, for all the folks in my prayer book, for all of my friends, my family, and the president (yes, I pray for him, every day, just as I prayed for Bush) and finally in hopes of wisdom and instruction and silence.

So, since I’m not a saint, I’ll likely be back later in the day, but for now…the oratory, the prayerbooks, the Icons and the silence all call. The Holy Spirit stirs, then ravishes. I cannot resist.