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Category Archives: poetry
What is good news?
God showed me a robin in the snow, so I hung a feeder from my window: so far no one has used it but
the cats live in hope. Continue reading
Flotsam
There is a thread that ties the sparrowto the hair on the pillow in the morning;There is a straight line from “My thoughtsare not your thoughts,” through,“There are more things …, Horatio,than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”There is some … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged 20 days of evangelism, Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, scripture
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A memory in black and white
A memory so ancient, it could be in black and white. I met the vicar on the street, in his white collar. He said, “J’accuse!” He did not. He said, “It has been too long since you received Communion.” I … Continue reading
It was the sea
It was the sea,salt and water,the press of the tideand the undertow;the frightening mysteryof jellyfish; the shells,whitewashed tombs yet evidence of enduringbeauty I remember oncewe went outin a rubber dinghy,daring the waves to drown us,and they did.Beneath the boat,I held … Continue reading
Is it joy?
Is it joyor curiosity that binds them;astonishment in discoveringthat Godhas made another, unalike,incomprehensible if somewhatfamiliar? Is it joy,the flick of the ear,the tic of the tail,a frisson of fur filledwith staticelectricity,the stuff of life? Who would not enjoythe vast and … Continue reading
A Song of Anna
What would it sound like, what would it feel like, if we had Anna’s song, too, to sing as our prayers rise like incense at the end of the day? Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Anna, Canticles, Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Song of Simeon
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Decade
Ten years a priest.
I should have something to say,
but I have let words trickle away,
at funerals or weddings,
during mundane Monday
phone calls, meetings … Continue reading
By another road
It was not the journeya wise person would have plannedwith toddlers in tow, wakenedby the stuttering motion of a carstuck in traffic,jammed in their seats while the worldhemmed us in behind and before,each shining roof the baked tileshell of a … Continue reading
A prayer on the threshold of the year
Dear God, are we ready for a new year? Already it is at hand, already it has arrived on distant shores and makes its way towards us like a steam ship, like a migration. Time, your creature, our sibling and companion, orbits us.
How will we greet it: as a child of your mercy or an angel of your justice or an incarnation of your endurance? Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry, prayer
Tagged Matthew 24:37-39, Matthew 6:34, new year resolutions, New Year's Eve, psalm 118:24
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Holy Innocents: transferred
There must have been others who retracedtheir ancestors’ footprints over Sinai,although no Moses basket launched upon the Nile;instead, the Innocents wakened from a nightmareby the whisper of a blade, the fadingmemory of mothers’ final, ululating lullaby… Innocence today plays with … Continue reading
over the water 