SHE SELLS SEASHELLS

Thank You God for Language and Humor,
two gifts which combine to give us
endless pleasure as children and adults.

We find rich joy in tongue-twisters such as:

She sells sea shells at the seashore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

And:

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
The butter Betty Botter bought
was a bit bitter and made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter
makes a batter better. So Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter,
making Betty Botter's bitter batter better.

You gave the gift of humor and rhyme to people of all languages, as in Bengali:

Pakhi paka pepe khai.
(Bird eats ripe papaya).

You give us great challenges beyond
our control in life: lightning strikes, diseases, the death of family members,
hurricanes - and we worsen our condition
with war, dishonesty, duplicity, theft, insensitivity and malice.

Guide me always to do what I can to make life better, to reduce the tension and the hatred and the anger, to use language to console
and to give joy.

Let me never loose my sense of humor,
my happiness, my language, and my laughter.

And let me never lose the pleasure
You have given us in word-play,
and in a tongue-twister learned as a child
from my father:

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Thank You, God, for language,
and for the special joys of clever language.

All this I pray to You in confidence and hope,

Amen

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