The rolling emptiness of a Sunday afternoon, The deafening silence of a vacant room, The brutal roar of a mind gone mad, After years of loneliness leave a soul unclad. Reaching a loved one in search of a friend, An unforeseen blow reveals this is the end. A vacuous pang sucking life from my eyes, But after all else this should have been no surprise. Disjointed and pondering, unsteady and shamed, Bloodcurdling abuse tearing a

Where are you I want to speak directly to you. I want to hold you fully in my awareness while I speak to you. You’ve been with me my whole life But I was always afraid of you. You were never bad You are only as harmful as we make you. It’s strange, when we treat you as an enemy, you become an enemy. But when I make you my friend, you cease to be

In all of my inadequacy I stand, Eyes cast down, chin quavering, salt trails glistening   In all of my paucity of soul I come, Weak-willed, straining to have what I want and to do what You want   In all of my scarcity of mind that streaks my days with fear and grasping, I hide from the world   In all of my insufficiency I kneel, with downcast eyes and open hands, letting go

Lord, help me . . . save me from the world outside of me, trying to crush me and push me into its mold. But Lord, I have swallowed the world and it is inside of me. Save me, too, from the world within. . . . The world that burns, that eviscerates, that kills like an ever-spreading cancer. Save me from being eaten alive, emaciated, and gutted. Save me from being drowned by the

There exists, they say, a great adventure for each of us, but where will we find it? for now we leaf through the old calendars in case we save something from the years – truly, what goes on in reality? who remembers what happened yesterday? everything hazy, confused in the morning I walk over the rubble of two wars in order to get to the kitchen for coffee vagrants watch the trains departing and their

The wind howls; People cower As doors sigh then clang shut, Metal latches loud and angry; We feel safe indoors, unaware That time thus drains our alkaline train Of thoughts battered with each gusty grey sky Colliding water and heat, steaming brains. Yet not all storms are tears, pain, fears; In years they can grow crops of stronger Rain, a cleansing rest: The mud, the Flood, the waking lungs, expanded chest — Close your eyes,

  We sing because God sings, and the great mystery grows among lilies, lilacs and rose while mother dies, and the bell rings in a season we’re still to know.   We sing because God sings over us, a great mystery we each yearn to tone. “I will establish the throne of his Kingdom for ever,” heard Nathan, about a king, a king whose words we weep to sing:                 Restore unto me the joy of

Virgin Soul (Isaiah 43: 1-8) Like a virgin bride that waits for her bridegroom, my virgin soul waits for You, oh, Lord! My virgin soul waits to be impregnated with Your Word. Speak It in the recesses of my heart, my being, my virgin soul. My beloved speaks in the dark night, early morning, midday, late noon, early evening. He whispers in my ear as I embrace him in my arms:   I have created

Or, Reflections on the Gospel of John in Response to Leonard Cohen I hunger. Bread fills me. I hunger again. I thirst. Wine makes the heart glad. My thirst is not quenched. I question. I have seen all done under the sun. Truth eludes me. I love As the wonder of a man with a virgin. Yet the unity is cracked. I live, Tasting, hearing, smelling, seeing, feeling all these mundane joys, Yet I die.

It is possible to ring with crystalline purity like a wineglass traced by fingertips. Each of us bearing Fingerprints, evidence in clay. Whether we be muddiest earth or turned perfectly transparent, Our heart of hearts remains Hidden even to us. Whether it be holy of holies or den of demons….Well, How does it resonate? Do its walls reverberate with that lone immutable Note? Consume the Word and hear His name sung on your palate. Taste

God of the margins, We encounter you in the ostracized, in the liminal, on the outskirts of town. We encounter you in the pariah, the reject, the apostate. Sometimes we are the pariah, plagued by the ghosts of failed expectations. Of merciless accusations. With no consolation but your deafening silence. Sometimes we find you again. In a fellow outcast whose words spark hope. Whose vulnerability is magnetic. Whose inspiration is contagious. Their voice reverberates with

The sky is the colour of ashes—       White and grey; The eaves drip icicle tears       falling away   My life is filled with ashes,       my mood is fey; Death upon death finds my heart       falling away   Across my forehead a cross      —charcoal dust— Reminds me that my frame       will soon rust   Over the shadow of death       a Cross Reminds me that life       can flame from loss   The kernel of wheat       must die,

In the gloaming across the sere grass I see a shadow roaming up the hill, across the loam I see the dark shape pass.   Golden evening light has given way to misty twilight, the shadow’s flight (or was it descent?) lost in grey.   Who was it walked that hill? Who was it passed by without seeing— the porch, the cat sleeping still?   And who, indeed, let their shade-self walk across the bare

I want to hold my worth in my hands; to trace my accomplishments in gilded letters on spine and cover; to smell them in ink and paper.   But my desire is a dream awakened, and all I can trace are tears of shame, that I have nothing to hold out in offering but empty hands.   Empty hands—not clenched fists, angry, or grasping at given gifts; Empty hands, ready to hold another’s, to serve,

They are like trees along a riverbank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper. —Psalm 1:3, The Living Bible   What if the season is barren rather than bearing? How if the leaves have curled and the river has curved away—away from from this tree, empty?   “Empty? Why art thou empty?” Asks the Spirit-wind, rustling through parchèd leaves. “Have you ceased to delight

“…as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire.” – Plato (Phaedo, 66b)   I often wonder     what it means          that God gave us               bodies   made of bones,     flesh, and water—          with fingers, for example,               to pop open sodas   for sipping on     some hot summer          day—or with               eyes   to wander into the gaze     of others—strangers,          enemies, lovers—

Kindness flowing out in wine and chocolate chip cookies, in smiles and eyes, in words and hidden acts   Grace flowing down in water and wine and blood over dark soul nights, to unworthy us   Love flowing over from hearts and hands, eyes and lips in forgiveness again, and again—every time   Gifts ever flowing that we cannot earn, cannot repay, we humbly receive with open, empty hands   Full over flowing hands and

Advent Heavy lay the snow the last warm breath just lingering inside our gloves next to fatigue it slowed and chilled me and my brothers toying with a seam at winter’s hem until the cold was far too much we stumbled home and stood like living clouds of steam our thrown scarves garlands for the railing and the chairs Mother I even began to feel afraid when the last light topped its arc those slender

 What if prayer is a furnace?      When we confess, every sin and every evil thing         is burnt away into ashes.            But every prayer in line with Life and Love             —stemming from God’s Spirit—                  is refined like gold and silver.                     What if that? 

All the Secrets You don’t believe me, look there, part the grass, he’s walking through the kitchen in his shirt you laugh he’ll hear you and come looking. He keeps (I saw it from a faded picture snagged at midnight on a full-waned moon a solitary awning’s bulb the best light going) a frog that talks, oh yes I mean it don’t you say I lied, I’ve heard it croak a choked horn’s wheeze that