Juniper and the Prayer Walk
Brother Juniper walked slowly through the streets that wove around Triune Mercy Center like an asphalt and concrete quilt. His bare feet tap tapped the sidewalk gently with each step, the hem of his brown hoodie catching the breeze like a whisper. The morning sun was soft, not yet sharp with heat, and a mist clung to the sidewalks like God hadn’t finished dreaming the day into being yet.
He prayed with his eyes open, like Francis taught him. “Let the world be the prayer,” he used to say, and Juniper’d taken that to heart. He passed a busted chain-link fence, where a dandelion pushed up gritty and good through a crack in the sidewalk. Juniper knelt beside it, softly whispered, “Blessed are flowers that show us resurrection.”
A voice called from a porch just ahead. “¡Buenos Dias, Brother J!”
It was María, maybe eight or nine, all fire and wonder, with tight curls pulled back in a ponytail and a Spiderman hoodie too big for summer. She lived with her mamí, abuela, and twin brothers in a delapidated trailer in Berea. Her papí had been taken months ago. Just… disappeared.
“They say he’s coming back,” María said matter-of-factly, “but mamí cries in the kitchen when she thinks I’m asleep.”
Juniper nodded. “That’s a tough thing.”
María looked both ways, then leaned in close. “I made a deal with the angels,” she said. “If I sing every night by the honeysuckle bush, they say they’ll fly to where he is and bring him dreams of us. Then, one day, they’ll bring him back to us on a humble donkey.”
Juniper didn’t blink. “I believe angels keep their promise.”
María’s eyes sparkled, and for a second, the air shimmered—like heat off asphalt, but soft and holy. A butterfly the color of sunrise landed on her shoulder and stayed.
They walked to the sidewalk where the dandelion grew. María crouched and blew on its fluffy crown. The seeds caught the wind like little lanterns, lifting toward heaven.
“The seeds’ll find him, right?” she asked.
Juniper looked at her, then at the sky, then at the dandelion’s seeds still rising. “Love always finds a way,” he said. “Even when the world builds walls, love walks through them like clouds.”
They stood there in silence. A monk and a kid. A prayer and a promise. And the upside-down kingdom blooming in the cracks in the sidewalk.
