Prayer for a Pure Heart

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. -Matthew 5:8 Lord, build around my heart a wall of grace to sift the daily facts as they come in that nothing but the truth would find a place and nothing but Your love would dwell within. Refuse despair an entrance to […]

Evening Dance

Sing Ring-a-dilly and a merry good day! Sing for your sorrows, friend, have all gone away. The grass is all greener, and the heat gleam’s a’ gone Sing fa-la-lonnie for the past is beyond! – Green is the summer air, and orange the fall Plump is the pumpkin in the grass and the sprawl. One […]

Night After Night

I know you love me but… I feel the shake dreams, waking in the night. I jerk like dropping off a cliff, I cry but have no tears, and endlessly, monotony brings back the things I dread again. Night after night. – I know you love me but… you let the mocking follow me around: […]

That Day in Jericho

A sea of chatter filled the air around: the shouts and laughter–turbulent and loud; and Bartimaeus, sitting on the ground raised his voice to shout above the crowd. The darkness pressed like noise upon his eyes. His heart, suspended, barely touched its beat. And yet he shouted, focused on the prize and would not stop, […]

Goodbye, 2018

The world is waiting in the street— with music, dancing, flashing light. The next in line will rise tonight to take the crown and claim his seat on this hopeful New Year’s Eve. Did anybody see you leave? Slipping past us in the lane to the darkness and the rain? Did you think we would […]

Candles

Every anum on the mark we pour ourselves in wax again, and try to coat a candle that hasn’t yet been burned away. – And every year we see ourselves, the new improved—as we could be and think “this year we will not burn away or let the wax drip down.” – But coated candles […]

Christ, Our Lord, on Christmas Day

Christ, our lord, on Christmas Day, here in body dwelling, came, our God, to be a man came to pay our ransom – All the angels preach the news Heaven’s wrath is ending. A baby sleeps in stone and straw Glory in the Highest! – Born a peasant, owned a king by the magi-envoys. Payed […]

Adam’s Vigil

He sat at night beneath the darkened skies; if earth’s first man, its first in failing too. Regret, in shadows, closed him ‘round, and drew the salt and sorrow from his sinful eyes. E’en now he heard the echoes of her cries– Eve’s shuddered breaths– that wounded him and threw that past, and awful madness […]

A Night of Rowing

Tonight we cross the waters black as coal. We row beneath the stars we blotted out. The only sound—the sloshing of the waves, relentless echoes of the knife-like pain. We row alone like exiles in the dark. And now you speak who know my troubles best. You feel with me the wounds that plague my […]

Today

The trees look sad today, lonely on the hill. The wind played yesterday, but now the air is still. And the leaves have gone away. Will you let your faces fall where the leaves have died and fade? Your figures still stand tall though you cannot offer shade. You shall yet bless us all. […]