It’s more than the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz It’s more than doing what everyone else does It’s more than putting on a uniform. Courage is our name For those times When we, and everyone around us, want more than anything to give up, When we know we are losing, But we keep going, We keep...

labor Being Creator Himself, He knew something of the task. Raising nothing into something was not without labor. The gathering—mud and sand, bone and sinew—setting them just right, singing over the open wound where a shared rib was taken, was given, while each note knitting flesh left it clean....

the honeysuckle are trumpets announcing your arrival at the altar you built petals sacrifice themselves in praise and laughing near our parents an impossible shadow yawns from the base of a hydrangea bush the faintest shape of a shy groomsman outlined on the ground holding a bouquet in his branches our...

Just yesterday morning I was making a case for myself before God when this woodpecker started his racket, completely spoiling the sweet moment I was milking before the Divine. But now that I think about it, maybe that was the Holy Spirit who finally got bored with the tired routine of shy dove/wild...

some say the body is a church some say the bed some say the last word spoken is a church some say the child some say the turkey roasted on ivory platter some say the head some say the woman walking on the stars is church, some say fingers, steeples some say suffering is church penitence for greed some...

Some people live their faith as if it were a mathematical abstraction. You’d think they’d never seen a star Or held a hand Or walked with a child. They live as if God Was a problem They thought they had solved— As if the answer were enough. There’s a world out there, A world we were put into, Not...

Even now, with bone of my bone And flesh of my flesh Nearly knocking at the door, Milked in some mysterious Way of knowing my voice, Altogether new; Even now, I am haunted by the animals stalking past. With each, I breathed a name and saw the curved spines, Outstretched paws and knobby beaks. All splendor...

There won’t be another light scratched upon the forehead of a star. So walk today in kindness as though your eternity comes from a faraway soil sustained by the strangest in your midst. So listen as though madness is sense as if tomorrow swaddles in the belly of a teenager, her smoke rings the story...

they danced to the beat of a rhythm called good as flesh became cornerstone wine flowed, communion from a single bottle out of many, one on Sunday night the bass shakes the ceiling under sit those who in youth too knew feeling and for that they weep not for love or for joy but for loss of what was silent,...

be careful this beverage you’re about to consume is hot the same red wine you sip was poured out in the upper room with thirteen others at that distant candlelit table now you drink alone in my clean and bright bar with bloodshot eyes that once saw your two sons cross the stage to receive their diplomas but...