We saw a white deer the other night.  Native Americans referred to these extremely rare animals that are all white as “Ghost Deers”.  Our deer has a brown head, but its entire body is ghostly white.  

Such a sacred sighting as it ran across the shore on one side of our lake while we sat in our boat noting it.  At first we thought it was a white dog, but none of our neighbors have such an animal.  The realization that it was a deer brought us to our feet.  It disappeared into the trees only to reappear swimming strongly across the lake.  Keeping a very respectful distance from it with our boat we got to see it leap out of the water and disappear into the woods of the distant shore.

So incredibly white.  

Striking in this unusual color

Amazing.

I immediately began to offer a prayer to the setting sun as this sacred sighting certainly seemed to ask this of me.  For the first time in my life I did not pray for any family member or for myself but, rather, I prayed for our country.  I prayed for peace and unity among the people of the current un-United States.  I prayed for sanity to return to the elected officials who seem hell-bent on derailing our democracy.  I prayed for those in need to receive and for the greed in so many blackened hearts to ease so that abundance may rule the land.

I prayed for love to rule, not the hate that drives someone to take up a gun and shoot indiscriminately into crowds of people.  

Or classrooms filled with the most innocent of us, our children.

I prayed for Love to become our religion.  Not a certain God.  Not a set of rules that dictate right and wrong of others who don’t follow, or believe, in these same rules. Or the same God. 

“God is love”, but not if you insist that it is YOUR God who must be the One.

Gods rule my heart, filling me with joy and gratitude. These Gods offer me gifts of a white deer, a Bald Eagle, the cries of the Loons, the slashing of the dark woods and fields with the bright lights of Fireflies, a dome over my head, evidence of the Universe, on crystal clear nights.

I prayed for our country.

I prayed for all of this. 

Which is also offering prayers for myself, my family, my friends.

For all of us.

I also pray for another sighting of this miraculous, rare individual who we now know shares these fields, woods and lake with us.  The chances for an Albino deer being born are 1 in 30,000.  I don’t know what the statistics of seeing one is.  I leave it to be extremely rare!  

A once in a lifetime sighting.  

A gift ... from whatever God you may believe in.