"Rend Your Heart and Not Your Garments"

Ah! happy those whose hearts can break
and peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
-- Oscar Wilde

"Diane's Broken Heart," Braldt Bralds 

Metanoia

One of the best definitions of repentance I've ever heard: Looking in a new direction for your happiness.

More on Getting Real

It occurred to me that I should perhaps explain the process of examen of conscience, for readers who may not be acquainted with this practice. (Which I think describes a lot, if not most, of my fellow Lutherans.)

What it isn't is the sort of stereotypical confession beloved of television and film, where some sweating individual is crouched in a confessional enumerating a long list of sins: "I confess that I was impatient with my mother when she started telling me how to do dishes even though I'm 45 years old and can do dishes, thank you...I confess that I had an unclean thought while looking at numerous Renaissance paintings of penitent Magdalenes, trying to find a good graphic for my blog...I confess that I ate the chocolate fudge pudding I was going to put in the food bank basket at church..." Nope; not like that.

Examen is part of Ignatian spirituality, and it's remarkably contemporary in feel. The steps of examen may vary slightly, depending on who you're talking to, but ere's one pattern for examen that I've taken from Lisa Dahill's helpful book Truly Present: Practicing Prayer in the Liturgy (Augsburg Fortress):

You start by invoking a sense of God's loving presence, and praying for enlightenment as you seek to understand the patterns of your own thoughts and behaviors, trusting that God wants the best for you and wants to lead you into healing and wholeness.

Next, you express gratitude to God for the good things in your life. Some of the good things may be obvious, big-picture things. But as you examine yourself, you may discover little, easily overlooked points of grace in your life that you can also thank God for.

Your next step is a survey of consciousness and actions...what attitudes and motivations and thoughts and deeds in your life seem to draw you closer to God, and what things seem to pull you away. I journaled this; I drew a line down the pages and did some focused exploration of both dynamics. And perhaps there are areas of your life where you feel God's absence despite your desire to feel God's presence; this is the time to come to grips with that experience.

Your next step is what is traditionally called contrition, but is perhaps more accurately described as bringing all your feelings about what you've just discovered about yourself to the table before God. You may indeed feel contrite; you may also feel frustrated, or relieved, or angry, or defensive, or thankful for insight, or any number of other things. Just as the Psalms lay bare all our human emotions, this part of examen is our opportunity to "let it all hang out" before God.

Finally comes hopeful resolution: Lifting all of this up to God in the trust that God is working a new thing in you, isn't finished yet, and is going to keep reorienting you in a Godward direction.

So, anyhow, that's what I've been working on. And it was a bit like a performance review at work; a few surprises, and actually one positive one pointing in the opposite direction than what I had anticipated...but pretty much hearing in my heart and seeing on paper what I knew already. The anticipation of spelunking deep inside myself was far more uncomfortable than the actual process, which was quite gentle and peaceful -- sort of like my recent dental adventure, come to think of it.

But then The CEO, who'd been helping me through this process, pointed to one systemic attitudinal issue I'd finally had to name to myself, that keeps tripping me up over and over again when I'm dealing with other people.

"So," he said, sounding very rabbinical, "what are you going to do about that?"

I was jolted out of sigh-of-relief mode: "Um...hmmm?"

"That. You know what I want you to do, don't you?"

I had a sudden flashback to those old Saturday Night Live Mr. Bill Claymations: Oh, noooooooooo!

"How about a do-over?" I asked weakly. "Clean slate and all that? Tabula rasa?"

He shook his head.

I whimpered a little. "I'm not used to this."

He looked right into my eyes, and then through me like a laser. "I know." I thought I detected the faintest of smiles lifting the corners of his mouth, but he was still serious enough to make me squirm.

"'Kay," I murmured.

"I'm sorry -- I didn't quite hear that."

"Okay."

"Good. You can start anytime."

The picture below is of me, thinking, "He's right. I know he is. But...oh, noooooooooo!"

"The Penitent," Jules Breton 

The Big Getting Real

I'm beginning a thorough and serious examen of conscience before Ash Wednesday. I'm a little afraid -- as I told someone today, things are going to get ugly -- but I want, and need, that YOU ARE HERE marked out on my spiritual roadmap.

Talk about annual performance reviews -- I'm getting one from The CEO.

Sacred Space

Christianity is a faith of paradox, and one of the paradoxes we live with as Christians is a Lord who in a very real sense is a Friend and an Elder Brother; accessible to us, relating to us as individuals, abiding with us personally and in community...but who is also, according to Scripture, the very Word of God; the image of the invisible God; the One in whom through whom and for whom all things were created; the One the great chorus in Revelation sings is worthy to receive blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

It's understandably difficult for us to wrap our heads around this fully human, fully divine Jesus. So historically Christians have tended to overemphasize one Jesus over the other. In the Middle Ages, Jesus was a rather distant and frightening figure; his goodness too good to endure, his suffering too terrible to contemplate. The Eucharist -- God's gift of grace and spiritual nourishment to the people of God -- often became something too precious for common people to partake; "Take and eat" became "See and adore." Saints seemed more human, more able and willing to involve themselves in human affairs than the intimidating Christ of the popular imagination; they increasingly became the middlemen and -women in human interaction with the Divine.

The Reformation came as a needed correction to this loss of the Gospel message. But in the centuries to come the pendulum began to tilt in the other direction, helped on one hand by biblical deconstructionists who approached scholarship with the attitude of "This can't possibly be right," and on the other hand by Pietists whose emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus and insistence on minimalist worship tended to, for all intents and purposes, dethrone the Cosmic Christ and turn the salvation story into a private me-n-Jesus-under-the-blanket-with-a-flashlight drama, in a cynical and superficial culture (including Christian culture) that has lost its grasp of concepts like sanctity and holiness and mystery.

What today's Gospel lesson said to me as I was reading and rereading it, was that we can't have one Jesus without the other. The very human, flesh-and-blood Jesus we meet earlier in Mark -- the teacher, the healer, the individual who reached out to other individuals, the Jesus who had to contend with blockheaded disciples and intrusive crowds and hostile religious leaders -- is also the Jesus of the Transfiguration, a figure so glorious that his closest friends fall on their faces in awe.

I believe that we are living in a time when people are hungering and thirsting for connection with the numinous, the holy. They want to, as one Catholic cleric put it, celebrate the Mystery. Popular culture can't help them. Sadly, many Christian churches these days can't help them either.

One of my ministerial mentors describes church as "a place where God happens." I think all of us who belong to faith communities need to think about how we create sacred space -- space where God happens -- in our worship services and small groups. Sometimes we need Jesus to be our friend -- but sometimes we also need Jesus to be "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." The mystery of our faith is that Jesus is both. But is that truly reflected in how we live...how we speak...how we worship?


"The Transfiguration," Titian 

The Codeman and the Chairman

My dog loves Frank Sinatra.

I tell this to people, and they smile and nod, and I know they're thinking, "She's just a leeetle bit nuts."

But I'm telling you, it's true. When our local public radio station's Saturday morning jazz/swing/blues program plays Sinatra, my dog is right at the radio. One Sunday evening when 60 Minutes did a feature on some newly discovered Sinatra videos, my dog sat right in front of the TV, ear cocked, entranced, for the whole segment.

Tonight, during the replay of the Olympic figure skating exhibition, Sinatra's "My Way" was one of the musical accompaniments. My dog, who had been snoozing in his little doggy bed, popped to attention and listened to the whole song; then settled back down and fell asleep as soon as the music stopped.

The dog has a thing for the Chairman of the Board. Believe me or not.

Something I Learned Today During My Theological Training

A Catholic priest, a Lutheran pastor and a rabbi used to have lunch together every Wednesday at a local cafe.

One Wednesday, as they were eating and talking about their work, the subject of mortality and legacies came up: When they died, what did they want the people in their congregations to say about them as they passed the casket at their respective funerals?

The priest said, "At my funeral, as they passed my casket I'd want them to say, 'He was a faithful servant of God who gave his all to the Church and served the people to the best of his ability.'"

The pastor said, "As they passed my casket I'd want them to say, 'She preached the Word rightly; administered the Sacraments rightly; was a good pastor, a good spouse and a good mother.'"

The rabbi said, "As they passed my casket, I'd want them to say, Look! He's moving!'"

[rim shot]

Actually, I learned all about the structure and themes of the Gospel of Mark. And a sort of condensed, triple-espresso review of the history, purpose and structure of the liturgy. My head is spinning. And more to come tomorrow.

Friday Poetry Blogging

Winter Promises

Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks,
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,
purple neon flawless glistening
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk,
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew
will never wilt, roses weighing down
a bush never touched by black spot,
brave little fruit trees shouldering up
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit:

I lie on the couch under a blanket
of seed catalogs ordering far
too much. Sleet slides down
the windows, a wind edged
with ice knifes through every crack.
Lie to me, sweet garden-mongers:
I want to believe every promise,
to trust in five pound tomatoes
and dahlias brighter than the sun
that was eaten by frost last week. -- Marge Piercy

For those of you who enjoy fantasizing over garden catalogs, check out Garden Bazaar . And if you're an heirloom-variety/OP vegetable geek, look over at my blogroll and check out Bountiful Gardens. The catalog is black and white, but it's loaded with all sorts of wild and wonderful heirloom veggie varieties. I can also vouch for their excellent customer service. Happy garden dreams!

In Retreat

I just finished a Stress Day From Hell, in the context of a Stress Week From Hell -- I had my annual performance review this afternoon (positive but extremely anxiety-provoking), followed a few hours later by an equally anxiety-provoking forelock-tugging, hat-in-hand presentation to a local agency that helps fund one of our programs at work. So I'm thrilled to be taking a vacation day and heading off to my quarterly lay ministry retreat tomorrow and Saturday. Actually, I'm just heading down the road a few miles; the location this time is so close that I'm commuting...a fact that may have some of you scratching your heads, thinking, "What sort of retreat is that?"

Well, sometimes I think the same thing. Sometimes I'd love to spend a weekend at a real retreat house, somewhere far away, in solitude and silence.

But our retreats are like concentrated seminary. We're spending the weekend engrossed in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark -- an intrepid seminary professor is coming all the way to the general environs of Outer Podunk to teach us -- and we're also going to learn about the purpose and structure of the liturgy from one of our regional pastoral mentors, an excellent teacher who's just a delight to listen to. We're going to worship; we take turns helping with this. We're going to break out into small groups and talk about Life, the Universe and Everything. My pastor's going to be a resource pastor at this event, which will be kind of cool; the resource pastors preside over our retreat Eucharist and then just hang out with us. We're going to eat, a lot -- dietary asceticism not being a value at these shindigs, thanks to the various church ladies and gents who tend to feed us to the gills.

I admit to enjoying an occasional weekend away from the old homestead. Those of you who travel muchly, perhaps unhappily, might find it either hilarious or sad that I can find delight in sitting up in a hotel bed in my jammies, channel-surfing, or playing with the whirlpool function in the bathtub, or people-watching in the public areas. I'm just very easily amused.

Tomorrow, though, I'm heading home at 9:30 pm -- which will make both my dog and my mother very happy -- and heading back to the theology corral bright and early Saturday. I might even manage a blog entry or two in the middle of all this.

Holy Crap!

Check this out: "21 Percent of Americans Holy" .

The very best part of this Barna report: When asked to define "holy," the largest percentage of respondents -- also 21 percent -- said they didn't know what it meant.

Well, alrighty then!

I Have Become...Comfortably Numb

Thank you, God, for the good gift of DRUGS.

I'm speaking many hours later, after my 8 am appointment with dental destiny.

Amazing, what they can do nowadays. I admit to being a little bit afraid this morning, because I wasn't going to be knocked out for my procedure; the last time I had oral surgery, as I blogged earlier, I was so wacked out on Demerol and Versed that the only thing I remember of the whole thing was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on the radio. Now, when I confirmed my appointment, the nurse had assured me that this extraction would be quick and painless, and I'd be able to drive myself to and from, but...I wasn't looking forward to this day.

The medical office had a nice saltwater aquarium -- clownfish and striking little neon blue fish and a big, friendly fish that actually seemed to be watching the action outside the glass. For some reason, in my life the nicer the waiting-room aquariums the worse the experience I've had in the medical office, so this pleasant underwater scene did not comfort me. A young woman came in; I figured a student from the university down the street; she had the look of someone in pain, someone also not particularly thrilled to be sitting in this office at ten minutes to 8:00.

Finally I was ushered by a nurse into the exam room. I got settled, and the doctor -- a kindly, avuncular older man -- gave me a hefty dose of numbzit. I sat alone for 15 minutes, doing the Jesus Prayer; then the doctor returned, tapped my tingling chin, started doing stuff inside my mouth while the nurse handed him things I couldn't see because I had my eyes closed. In what I think was a clever bit of parlor magic translated into dental work, he started counting; he stopped at two, started again and stopped at two again, then asked me an innocuous question that of course I couldn't answer; while I was trying to figure out how to respond the doctor suddenly announced, "It's out!" And that was it. And it turned out that a root canal wouldn't have been doable in my situation anyway, which also helped allay my fear that I hadn't chosen the best alternative.

So far I've been able to handle a late lunch of yogurt, baby food (strained bananas and plums rock...no wonder I was such a fat little kid) and lukewarm tea. Tonight I'm attempting chicken soup, from a big batch I made last night.

I wouldn't say that this would be my preferred way to spend a day off from work, but it wasn't quite as awful as I had imagined. RIP, old molar. Welcome back, strained fruit.

Yes

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been “Yes and No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:18-20

Something my pastor said yesterday in his sermon has stayed with me through today.

Because of the way the world works, because of all the NO's we hear from the time we're tiny tots...how difficult it is for us to trust in Christ's YES to us. We stand cringing, our lips quivering, waiting for the accusatory finger and the angry voice...but instead we hear a YES.

Rushing the Season

I think it must say something about someone's personality if, instead of looking forward to Christmas, s/he looks forward to Lent.

That's where I'm at right now. It may still be the Season of Light, but I'm thinking about the ways in which I am going to observe Lent this year.

One way is by providing some Internet space for people to share their own Lenten journeys, ask questions, and provide some encouragement for those who perhaps aren't being supported in their Lenten observance by their faith community or family or friends. I've set up what's called a dialogue group on Beliefnet for this purpose. If you are not already a member, you do need to register (fairly painless -- you can uncheck all those annoying please-let-us-junk-up-your-e-mail-every-day-with-our-marketing options, and also keep your profile blank, if you'd rather not invest a lot of self-disclosure in that website other than participating in this group) to participate in the dialogue groups. Once you've done that, go to the left-hand sidebar, find "Community," find "Dialogue Groups," find "Christianity" -- and you'll see my group; I use a different nom de plume/nom de guerre over there, but you'll figure it out.

Many people pick a spiritual book other than the Bible to read during the Lenten season. I think this year I am going to read Unfettered Hope: A Call To Faithful Living in an Affluent Society by Marva Dawn, a theologian whose work I've appreciated before. I am more acquainted with her books about the theology of worship; in this book, Dawn tackles the issue of living not only more faithfully but also more hopefully in a society where the various "powers and principalities" tend to create an atmosphere of chaos and despair. I think this book will fit in well with the countercultural thrust of Lent -- a time where, while the rest of the world does its own thing, we keep our eyes focused on Jesus as he in turn "sets his face toward Jerusalem," and like Mary Magdalene in Godspell we ask, "Can you take me with you?"

I'm slowly working out some of my other Lenten disciplines. I want to engage in some quality examen time beforehand to identify some of the issues in my own life that keep me lurching into the ditch on my walk with The CEO, and integrate confronting those into my disciplines. And a lot of it I think is going to stay between The CEO and me.

And, of course, I'm giving up a tooth for Lent.

(That was a joke. Sort of.)

Have a Cookie

My recent flu attack derailed my monthly cookie baking regimen, so this weekend I found myself owing our church raffle winner two months of cookies. (Constant readers will remember that, for the past two years, I have raffled off a year's worth of home-baked cookies.)

I decided to mix up my raspberry bar recipe , but make it a little more February-esque by using black cherry preserves instead of raspberry jam. These turned out quite good; the preserves (a found item in the German section of the new import aisle in our local supermarket) were on the tart side, and the flavor in general was a little more complex and interesting.

What to make for the other batch...pawing around through the family cookbook drawer, I found an Ideals cookie book from the early 70's that one of my aunts gave me when I started getting interested in baking. I'd never tried too many recipes from this particular book, but I did remember one successful, easy-to-make cookie that would make good use of some cream cheese in my refrigerator. So...here is the recipe, submitted for your approval. These cookies are not keepers -- not that that will be a problem -- and should be kept in the refrigerator if you happen to have any left after a day.

Lemon Cheese Balls
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 3-oz package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 TBS lemon rind
1/2 tsp lemon extract (I really dislike the taste of most extracts, so I squeeze some fresh lemon juice into the dough instead; maybe also a little spot of real vanilla)
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 cup coarsely crushed cereal (cornflakes, Rice Krispies, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and cream cheese; add sugar gradually. Add lemon rind and extract or juice. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and gradually add to mixture. Chill dough several hours. Shape heaping teaspoons of dough into balls and roll in crushed cereal. Please on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 12 minutes. (Cookies will not brown.) Makes about 3 dozen.

Carrying and Being Carried

Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Many years ago, after an ice storm like the one that recently hit my part of the world, I fell down my front stairs one morning as I was heading to work. One moment I was gingerly making my way sideways down each step, and then the next moment I was at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the sky, the wind knocked right out of me. For about a minute, I couldn't move; I was numb. And as I lay there on the ice, looking up, wondering how badly I'd injured myself, I felt an additional fear: There's no one here to help me.

Sometimes our paralysis is intellectual or emotional. Writer's block; many of us are familiar with the terror of facing down a blank computer screen. Or maybe, faced with a tough decision or series of decisions, we are so overloaded with information or options or possible outcomes that we simply can't take a next step; we feel our minds crashing like an overstressed CPU. Sometimes our paralysis is caused by a cocktail of physical, mental and emotional factors. But whatever the reason, we find ourselves like the woman in the infamous TV commercial: I've fallen and I can't get up.

This is the situation of the young paralytic in our Gospel lesson. Except -- he has friends. Faithful friends. Persistent friends. Resourceful friends. When they hear that Jesus is in town, and they arrive at Jesus' location only to find a huge, jostling crowd already there, trying to get close to Jesus, they resolve to do whatever it takes to get their friend the help he needs -- even if it means climbing onto the roof, digging through the tiles and lowering their friend through the hole.

It's interesting that I found it hard to find artwork for this post that actually showed the paralytic's friends. Artists seem to prefer focusing on the drama of the paralyzed man suddenly picking up his mat and walking. But if you read the text, the friends aren't just bit players in this story. It's their love, their trust, that Jesus commends.

Not all that long ago I was the person flattened on the mat. Not by anything serious -- I know people going through crises that make my own life seem like a stroll down Easy Street by comparison. No; my problems were more on the scale of being nibbled to death by ducks; every day one more thing -- a health issue; a work setback; an anxiety about my mother; dealing with hostile others. I started greeting the morning in the cynical spirit of Dorothy Parker: What fresh hell is this? I felt myself shutting down. I couldn't move emotionally or spiritually, and even had a hard time making the trip out of bed every day.

And that's when my friends showed up. Not in concert, mind you; most of them don't know one another. And I'm sure many of them weren't all that conscious of the aid they were lending me. But all of them, in their own ways, helped pull me up on the roof and then got me to a place where I could see Jesus. And that was a gift I desperately needed.

I run into a lot of Christian freelancers online who have been so hurt or disillusioned by the Church that they've resolved to go it alone in the world. What I tell them is: It's just too hard. You need other people. Yes, they'll drive you insane sometimes, but you need them.

And it works both ways. I know that I am the least happy and whole when I am suffering a bout of curvatus in se -- self-absorption, solipsism, all me all the time. Sometimes I need to be confronted by someone flat on the mat to startle me out of myself, to help me remember who I am and why I'm here.

Jane Siberry has a song, "Life is the Red Wagon," whose chorus goes, "You pull me/I'll pull for you." This is how it is, to live on the earth. And this is where we meet Jesus, the powerful one who was also the weak and vulnerable one, who heals us when we're not able to pull and blesses us for the pulling.


Artwork by James Tissot

The Chik Turns One!

I'm terrible at remembering birthdays...so it's no surprise I forgot that this blog was born Feb. 16th last year! Wow. Hard to believe.

Tea'd Off

Well, now that I got my Winter Olympics editorial off my chest, on to kinder, gentler things...namely, tea.

I've never been an enthusiastic tea drinker; I enjoy the very pale, flowery green tea served in Chinese restaurants, but I've never been able to replicate the flavor at home; and I can only drink black tea if it's been majorly amended with milk.

But one of my bosses introduced me to white tea at this year's office Christmas tea. White tea is made from the very youngest tea-leaf buds, when they're coated in white fuzz. It's wonderful; I love it. Since then I've tried the Stash white/green tea mix, and that was good, but my current favorite is Choice brand Organic White Peony tea from my food coop. I enjoy it plain, with some barely-sweet snack like shortbread on the side. (And, by the way, there are no peonies in white peony tea, because peonies are poisonous. So don't be picking flowers out of your perennial bed and trying to make peony tea out of them.)

If you don't think you like tea, try white tea -- tea for non-tea-drinkers. It's a nice warming treat on an extremely cold morning.

Saturday Five, With Bonus Rant

Yeah; I'm slow. Anyhow...

Which of the Winter Olympic sports is your favorite to watch?

The freestyle skiing events.

Do you speak Snowboardese?

Dude -- gaffers should probably not speak Snowboardese.

Define Nordic Combined. Don't look it up. Take a guess if you must.

Aha! I know this. It's cross-country skiing combined with ski jumping...right?

Curling. Please discuss.

I love curling, because it is the only Olympic sport that I could conceivably ever do myself. Since I'm built more for strength and endurance than speed and agility, I'd be the one pushing the stone down the ice (I have to admit, I don't know the lingo); I'd let someone else do the thing with the broom.

If you could be a Winter Olympics Champion just by wishing for it, which sport would you choose for winning your Gold Medal?

Again, I think I would only be believable as a curling competitor.

Now for the rant. I have had it up to here [LC gesturing right up to her 5'3" top of head] with all the scoldy, frowny-faced commentator hand-wringing over Lindsey Jacobellis, the American snowboardcross competitor who, just seconds from winning the gold medal, wiped out while making an exuberant grab for her board. She was "hot-dogging"; she let down the team.

Is it just me, or do you think that if Lindsey were a he and not a she there would not be this sort of judgmental broughaha? That Lindsey would be praised for "going for it" and exemplifying that ol' Olympic spirit even if it didn't work out? Ya think? I recall the same sort of criticism being leveled in the past at female figure skaters attempting quad jumps -- they were just showing off, they weren't being team players...I once heard a commentator even opine that a female quad jump would be a "freakish" move that shouldn't be allowed in competition because only some steroid-pumped female anomaly would be able to achieve it. So much for Citius, altius, fortius.

Then, to add to this nonsense, a local newspaper sports columnist recently opined that many women's Olympic sports -- including hockey -- were "novelties" designed to harvest medals for the United States and fill up television time, and not legitimate athletic pursuits. This from someone whose idea of women's athletics is probably ordering his wife to the kitchen in the 25-foot Beer Relay event while he rests his posterior in his La-Z-Boy.

Feh. As far as I'm concerned these "experts" can all biff themselves. Which may not be the correct Snowboardese term, but -- dang -- it felt good to type.

Friday Poetry Blogging

The Thread

Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently,

pulling at me-a thread

or net of threads

finer than cobweb and as

elastic. I haven't tried

the strength of it. No barbed hook

pierced and tore me. Was it

not long ago this thread

began to draw me? Or

way back? Was I

born with its knot about my

neck, a bridle? Not fear

but a stirring

of wonder makes me

catch my breath when I feel

the tug of it when I thought

it had loosened itself and gone. -- Denise Levertov

"My Sheep Hear My Voice..."

"My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand." John 10:27-28




Artwork: "The Good Shepherd," Eric Gill