Gems

a gem of a flower

pincushion protea

***

a gem of a thought

“When devout Christians believe that only Christians of a particular doctrinal stripe have access to God, that, for example, God hears their prayers only, they stand in cosmic immodesty.  The Christian Bible more than once makes the point that God’s ways are not our ways, and that the mind of God is vastly different from our own minds.  Thus, when Christians categorically state that Jews, or Muslims, or believers in other faith systems are outside the provisions of God, they utter arrogant nonsense.  A respectful agnosticism is called for when often there is offered in its place a self-interested certainty.  If God is the God of all, and not just a tribal deity, then God has made provision, not necessarily known to us, for the healing and care of all his creation, and not simply our little part of it.”

Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Overcast on Ash Wednesday

 

Bare branches mere bones of

sorrow etching crosses black and

bleak against a heaven that has

forgotten how to smile.

*

Sky knits a seamless shroud;

the air is thick and still with

heaven’s grief for all the sadness of a

world of stitches dropped and patterns

gone awry; silence in my sagging pines.

*

Has God forgotten us? misplaced his

once delight in wind that tiptoes

through my chimes? in mischievous

white clouds that spill their joy into my trees?

*

My only answer is a Presence

brooding over all the tatters of this

wilted earth, pulling me to Silence

that has held within its womb

all that is, from dawn of time until this

solemn Day of Ash; bare-branched

crosses stretching high into the sky;

smudge of ashes burning on my brow;

enough; the Presence tender holds my

dust, rocks me in the empty trees.