Cardinal

Find a neighborhood that needs your song. Perch high so they cannot resist looking up, out of their tamping troubles. Pierce the pall with your urgent epistle, your scarlet missive, your flagrant yes! this! Perhaps one or two will allow you to unpin their hopes from nearby moorings, let them fly to you where you will gather them, fling them wide, your tune unfiltered, sweetest … Continue reading Cardinal

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Savior: Come and save us, O Lord our God. We rode the creaking van through rough non-streets of a squatters’ suburb. Once-villaged families sidle up to a city that is itself more sprawling village than metropolis. Here it is monochrome: red clay homes humping up from red clay ground, hope fashioned … Continue reading O Emmanuel

O Dayspring

O Dayspring, splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. You call me from the city scape and hearth to a spacious inner landscape, horizon unobscured, where I can watch the slow crescendo of the dawn. The steadiness, the sweet return of morning’s child, hope’s advent, mysterious, winsome one wins over the … Continue reading O Dayspring

O Adonai

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire and the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai; Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm. When I dare approach with closed lips and open heart, a new sense is awakened: love. Still and real, textured with presence, heavy lightness, true. My ambitious mind attempts description, … Continue reading O Adonai

Advent: Joseph

Annunciation to Joseph Steady, old boy. You can believe your eyes. Admit it. This is not unfamiliar, this mystic hope that shimmered in the shadows that day as the sawdust settled under your restless feet. You can believe what her ears heard, what she told you, how the messenger revealed the mystery’s shape hidden within her innate devotion. You can do this. The raw material … Continue reading Advent: Joseph