Nursery Rhymes

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard; Humpty dumpty sat on a wall; All for the want of a nail the war was lost! Really, when you think about it these rhymes are not all lovely stories yet we have delighted in telling these rhymes to our our children and our grandchildren. We have often told these stories at bedtime hoping they would help littler ones sleep well! Then of course there is Three Blind Mice who scamper in fear of their tails being cut off! I stumbled across the following poem by Billy Collins and offer it for some humor. I hope you enjoy it. Today perhaps you might take a moment to ponder your favorite nursery rhymes and those moments when you have enjoyed telling them to children and grandchildren. My prayers today are a few Children’s Prayers, and the ones I include are as crazy as the nursery rhymes! Enjoy.

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version Of “Three Blind Mice” by Billy Collins
And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer’s wife
or anyone else’s wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic’s answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard’s
mournful trumpet on “Blue Moon,”

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen

Angels bless and angels keep.
Angels guard me while I sleep.
Bless my heart and bless my home.
Bless my spirit as I roam.
Guide and guard me through the night.
And wake me with the morning’s light. Amen

Now I awake and see the light;
Lord, Thou hast kept me through the night.
To Thee I lift my voice and pray
That Thou wilt keep me through the day.
If I should die before ’tis done,
O God, accept me through Thy Son! Amen.