The day before, setting the table, wiping the counter, counting the seats, there is time to remember, to mourn those who will not grace this feast; those whom we see no longer, one way or another. And this, too, is a blessing,grief that touches cheeks with saltand tenderizes hearts,since it reminds us of love; and this, too, is a cross,that we …
Nothing escapes the attention of their inquisitive and thorough beaks. Nothing extraneous will be left unconsumed. Between them, they are cleaning up.
Can I free Jesus from my old and calcified, allegorically literal, algebraic interpretation of his parable about prayer and remember that God is not worn down by my cries, nor eroded by my need, nor numb to my grief, nor impassive to my witting and unwitting, egregious, and unnecessary participation in injustice?
If you were to write a gospel, what would you include? what might you leave out? Would you slide in a cameo of the time that Jesus, passing through your toll booth, caught your eye, mouthed, “Follow me”? Would you elide the moment of mad fear, somersaults of stomach and soul, taste of metal …
Did Jesus delight in the absurdity of dreamscape?
Was he ever afraid to close his eyes?
Sometimes when I pray the words scurry by like ants I watch their silent progress unregistered on the kitchen scale undulating in their trail unnoticed until they become a swarm indistinguishable one from the next Sometimes there is one you see that carries five thousand times its weight enough to feed them all for a day ____________________ Image: Ant bite carrying leaf photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash …
Psalm 19:2 “One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.”
June is, among other commemorations, gun violence awareness month. As part of the work of addressing and redressing gun violence, my parish hosted a Guns to Gardens: National Buyback Day event on June 11th. While we are still mentally and spiritually processing the ways in which God has called us to confront gun violence, I found myself reflecting on the experience of standing before the forge that afternoon, physically processing gun parts into garden tools …
It is time to look for the hand of Providence, to cry as a bird in the nest, to look up, and not down into the emptiness at my own feet.
That one,
heir to the earth
in the fluorescent heavens
of the grocery hall:
the sparrow cannot fall,
it will not fall uncaught
by the eye of God.
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