Churches Again

A long morning passes wordily, insights tumbling like black bears through bracken. Is it possible I read too much? The Man for Whom the World is a Living Text observes that the Man without Shoes is nearly always shod. It's okay: or it will be. I breathe and each breath is a lifetime and each lifetime a gift for which breathing is sufficient thanks and praise. What happens happens and I promise you I am here for all of it. However deep the river gets, no law requires you to drown in it. Saint Francis was beautiful but also an aberration: be not haunted by his example. Knowing is possible absent speech, yet relationship is what binds us to living, and so speech by definition becomes us: this, too, is a law. Absolved of the specific fate of praying alone, I begin to visit churches again, including the one in which I was married. Waves lap a rocky Irish shoreline as sunlight creeps up a steep Greek hill? Our gentle love-making anchors a quiet in which the soul is free to profess its divine love at last. We are lambs, we are shepherds, we are children, we are parents. In the cycle I make by giving my word, the Lord declares me Family.