Articles

Purgatorio’s full of song.

Our Lady of Vladimir’s tears are said to be myrrh. When she weeps, the faithful sop up her myrrh with cotton balls, pocket them, carry them home for the miracles. Sufferers are said to be healed. They speak of a scent that engulfs them, a scent like ten thousand roses.

THE MOTHER WORRIED when her Catholic son married a Hindu woman. To protect him, she sent a plastic glow-in-the-dark statue of the Madonna for his bedside table. She included a note: Our Lady, Help of Christians, will always watch over you, Baba. A dutiful son, he set up the Madonna on his nightstand. Every night…

“I must take them to the cobbler,
they’ve only got slightly
worn-down heels,”

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.