More on: prayer

When my children ask questions,
I try to answer them truthfully, which means
admitting to failure.

I was trying to pray. How I yearned to pray! But I was both fascinated and repelled by this man’s presence.

On prayer, air travel, and finding place.

Becoming involved in a poem, allowing the lines to unfold, not knowing if there’s going to be a surprise, a turn, or deepening—this is very similar to being with a patient or family as a chaplain when I don’t have all the answers. Part of my job is to sit with them in uncertainty. It’s a big white space.

The absence of growth / a prayer I hold onto and it seems strange / to want something inside to die this much

a dream that repeated: to find the good / you must uproot the pain

May the curious prayer of work keep me / in contact with the stone / / and who knows what else.

do these monks with their straight lines / and right angles have the only franchise?

Sometimes it seems inane. A woman visiting my church one Sunday morning came up and told me she saw a picture of me in a beautiful yellow dress. That was it, the whole prophetic word. Me in a yellow dress.

Prayer is silence, / spirit-bones and soul-blood fluctuant as breath.