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Category Archives: poetry
Brushstrokes
Leaded clouds filter light to the lake; deep calls to deep. The layered air is painted on; brushstrokes of the wind, movements of the Spirit, fade into the canvas of the storm.
Posted in poetry, story
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A haiku on Psalm 30:5
Following tracks of rain down to the lake for joy that comes by morning
The dry bones
They must have been famished,that bunch of bones shrugged together,flesh and sinew awaiting breath.How long had they been fasting in the dust? They were surely parched;their skin must have sagged,their steps dragged – how manycalories does resurrection burn, anyway? Did … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged creation, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Pentecost, Resurrection, Valley of Dry Bones
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A prayer for the earthbound
As deeply as he descended among the dead, plumbing Hell and Hades,the limits of human horror too easily imaginedby the earthbound; so far he invites us to soar beyond our petty promises of punishment and death, to life beyond the … Continue reading
Prayer for an end to mass shootings
My God,can we not go one week,sabbath to sabbath,without a mass shooting? Will you not beatour pistols into ploughshares,our shotguns into shovels,our rifles into rakes,massage some feeling intoour hearts of stone? I sigh, open my eyes;the mirror stares back in … Continue reading
Sore wounded
First purple, then green new leaves unfurl as though winter had never been; veined and vain, they bear no marks of last year’s deer, no signs of decay. This is not the resurrection of the dead; this is a conjuring … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged crown of thorns, Easter, Jesus, Resurrection, spring
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The midwives
Afterwards, whenthey found you again,did they use their ointments, spices, clothto bandage your wounds? Hairline scratches from the halo of thorns; how did you bear the grass beneath your feet? Midwives of the body,did they wipe your hands with aloe,wash … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Easter 2, midwives of the body, wounds of Christ
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Balance
Picking my way across the wrongend of the beach, avoidingrocks that rock beneath my weight,overhead branches that claw at my head,empty bottles, remnants of some illicit picnic,metal rope, remnant of some construction project,sea glass and sharp plastic shards,the frigid, opaque … Continue reading
Good Friday: a pieta
He died with the cry crushed from his chest,calling out from the cross to his mother.They crucified him on a stolen hill.They gambled away his clothes.He called out to his mother, shecould not swaddle his naked pain. When he was … Continue reading
Washed in the word
Beside a lake melted into being by glaciers I bathe my feet in your word made water – the fluidity of creation – dry them in the sand, scourings of the land eroded, as all flesh, remade asa million grains … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, meditation, poetry, prayer
Tagged footwashing, Holy Week, Lake Erie
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over the water 