Category Archives: prayer

Burned

This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry is informed not only by the Gospel and its parable of rejection, revenge, celebration, and their cycle, but inevitably by the images it calls up of contemporary violence, war, and burning cities; God save the innocents. After … Continue reading

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The witness

And in the dirt between the rows a single grape transfixed my pity, split, seed spilt on unforgiving earth, ragged skin torn from purple flesh; like a dog, I wanted to kneel down and lick the wine from its tender … Continue reading

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The middle man

#preparingforSundaywithpoetry
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Seventy times seven

How many hurts accumulate like straws under a camel’s nose before it sneezes, before the involuntary blast of anger, grief, ugliness propels one’s inside out, clutches at the throat like stone eggs, tears a slow, impassible river floating faded, sodden … Continue reading

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Two or three

Two or three: Jesus why are you afraid to be too alone with me? ______________ #preparingforSundaywithpoetry. This Sunday’s Gospel is full of numbers – no, not of numbers, of people, unalone. Matthew 18:15-20

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Savour

This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry perhaps bears more relation to the stories of Jesus’ original temptation than to his twin command to Peter to, “Get behind me, Satan!” But between those threads, and the idea that one could follow Jesus, taking up … Continue reading

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Don’t we?

It has been a horrible weekend for gun violence in America. I cannot keep my heart from going out to the family of the teenager gunned down at a high school football game, while I was listening to the strains … Continue reading

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On this rock

They set a boulder to blot life 
from the garden, light from the tomb. 
When it was rolled away you spoke 
her name into the morning like dew. Continue reading

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Silent prayer

Nothing is silent. The breath of God is not absent. The wheeze of trees in full leaf hefting their branches in dance. The sigh of waves that fall before they reach the shore. The call of an ant six whispery feet one side of a blade of grass. The sun raging with … Continue reading

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First and last

Do you remember how,in the parable, he paid them, last and first?To the first he was fair, but to the last he was magnificent. Neither knew whether to laugh or shout or fall to their knees; so we, too, swayed between the thirsty and the relieved, envying and blaming each in … Continue reading

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