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Category Archives: preparing for Sunday with poetry
Cast out
Demons shake and scream; for God alone my soul in silence waits. Something deep within mutters “unclean”; for God alone my soul in silence waits. Power demands authority, but humility whispers and spirits writhe. For God alone my soul in … Continue reading
Fisher
You flee again to Galilee, another Herod, another threat, kings and prophets always at odds and you, raised with the memory of blood and fire, fishing for another way, the kingdom of God, as it were, silver-scaled and just, within … Continue reading
Anything good
Anything good this way comes, fragrant from the desert, fat from fasting, presumptuous in his humility,faint traces of aloe following him like a draft, children hanging from his heels like lambs trying to suckle from the hem of his garment. … Continue reading
Forewarned
They left by another way to avoid the falling stars bombarding the night sky, minor apocalypses scoring their trails across the Red Sea. They dreamed of corridors between the waters knowing that God created dry land once. Cradled by sand dunes haunted by Herod’s gaudy and the Child’s humble glory they … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, poetry, preparing for Sunday with poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged Epiphany, Gaza, genocide, Herod, magi, red sea, Suez, war
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The Word
In the beginning, the Word breathed light. In the beginning, the Word formed the vowels of the ocean, hard consonants of land. In the beginning, Word crawled, swam, flew, blossomed. Before flesh, there was the Word; utter God, utter Being, utter Love. John 1:1-18
Nothing is impossible
If nothing is impossible with God, what can be trusted? The sun may lose its grip on heaven, fall helpless to the ocean, sink or set the world aflame, melting its willing, molten heart. Birds of prey may sing lullabies … Continue reading
The great forerunner
A star is a miraculous being, born of the infalling of dust and ashes, the sacred debris of creation set aflame on the altar of nightfall; A miracle blazing by night, as dawn breaks open the path of the rising Sun, outshone, the star remains, its fire … Continue reading
John, the post-traumatic prophet
My first Advent as a priest was the season of Sandy Hook. That Sunday the Gospel was about John. I realized that he must have grown up in the shadow of that massacre of innocents committed by Herod; although he, like his cousin, escaped, it would leave its mark on his parents and his small self.
I find myself this Advent once again, for obvious reasons, contemplating post-traumatic John the Baptist, his infant self and all that imprinted itself upon him through the coming of the Christ child and the world’s unwillingness to accept the angels’ proclamation of peace upon the earth.
#preparingforSundaywithpoetry Continue reading
Endings and beginnings
Unfurl the sails and let them cover the sun, the moon, the stars with the urgency of glory glorying in the new creation, with tender attention to the fig tree that you always loved, seeing it swell and fall over … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, preparing for Sunday with poetry
Tagged Mark 13, Year B Advent 1
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Words that do not pass away
I do not remember well my mother’s voice any more; the soprano on the cd is younger than I knew her. What I carry buried deep within my skull are nursery rhymes and nonsense that emerge like sea mammals, occasionally, … Continue reading
over the water 