Articles

Silence is a deprivation all its own. It is a vast desert where one’s chitchat and puffed-up sense of self go to die. By fasting from myself, I gave my soul a fighting chance to pass through the empty desert and enter the distant garden. As I slowed down and listened to the poetry of Scripture, my soul found the rhythm of being beloved. It was lush, green nourishment. The word of God was a feast all its own.

Our ideals may seem broken and fractured, but they can be remade into a more beautiful reality. As the series progressed, the flowers gained back their glorious colors, celebrating the richness of life while showing the growing pains that come with finding a new form.

One total amniotic presence, it will call to us, it will be

the turn of the day,

What is scared is what is present. Sacred. What is sacred,
clumsy finger. You walk alone like an executioner.

the psalmist attributes such steadfast grace
chiefly to the Holy One, who bestows

compassion so tightly bound to justice
that any effort to rebuild the world
requires both be lived in proper measure.

It’s no big metaphor

that our good aims have sunk to bad slapstick:
boat on the blink, the skipper doubly pissed

Eventually, all color

contracted into the tips of the cigarettes.
Small fires, big dreams, the business of spiders
and the bait slowly sinking.

I sat in synagogue Saturday morning staring up at the stained-glass
star above the bima, first through my left eye, then my right.

That is actually what I thought. That a small bird had fallen from the sky and thumped my back, and when I looked at the ground I expected to see the bloody entrails of a tailorbird, but no, it was my hair, limply coiled on the dirt, already coming undone in the breeze.