The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come uponContinue reading “Advent with the Prophet Jonah: Day 5”
Category Archives: Devotional
Advent with the Prophet Jonah: Day 4
Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you comeContinue reading “Advent with the Prophet Jonah: Day 4”
Advent with the Prophet Jonah Day 3
Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay downContinue reading “Advent with the Prophet Jonah Day 3”
Advent with the prophet Jonah: Day 2
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailedContinue reading “Advent with the prophet Jonah: Day 2”
The Rage of Being Flesh: Advent with the prophet Jonah
But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?” “I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”(Jonah 4:9) Advent devotionals do not usually start here, with the prophet Jonah angrily beneath his vine, wanting to see Ninevah destroyed and his vine restored. But I’m beginning hereContinue reading “The Rage of Being Flesh: Advent with the prophet Jonah”
Poem after a line from Auden
Prayer, like poetry, makes nothing happen,if “make” means controland “happen” means an instant, an event.No incantations with prayer, no spells;nor with poems. You leavescratching your head,ambivalent to what has transpired.Sometimes forced, sometimes fluid,never simple, unless void of allmeaning save the surface.But prayer and poems both deal in depths;they refuse surface and befuddle the hurried.And poems,Continue reading “Poem after a line from Auden”
Excerpt from “Plague Year”
But we venture on. Newness at least is inthe air, on Capitol Hill, in the fruit jumping out of trees. We cannot slow thisif we wanted to. Shopping aisles charge ontowards Christmas, while my heart craves Advent.I could use the dark, the waiting, to bendsoul’s joints back into shape, could use the longsilence to learn againContinue reading “Excerpt from “Plague Year””
My Monastery
Order unravels quicklyfrom sleepy first breath tooutbreak of chaos.I cannot controlthe unfolding of the day, but Godof the singularity andmultiplicity teachessingle-heartedness ifI take this momentto listen.
Broken, new
Everything breaks,is broken, orsticks underfoot like porridge.Voice grows tired, andheart turns wildat the endless, savageprice of love.Crushed underfoot,I learn Eden and Golgothawhile I wipe the floor again.Body breaks, is broken,tomorrow is new.
The Gospel Reading
The day had gone on long enough.First the Pharisees and their questions,then the intruding children,then the camel and the needle’s eye,so that, when they cried out,”Who then can be saved?” it wasas much from the weariness of the day’s debates as the thought that riches could keep an earnest man from heaven.And so, right whenallContinue reading “The Gospel Reading”
The Consolations of Writing 