Start with Spam, End with a Rosary

They gave me gifts.

It started with crowned Spam, in a lovely box that smelled like soap. (Yes, Mr. Airport Searcher, there IS a story behind that.) Other things followed. Stone, paper, ceramic, wax.

Then, on the final day, one of our team members gave me his rosary. When he pulled it out of his pocket and moved it towards me, I understood immediately what was happening. Before he could get a word out, I burst into tears. This rosary, it was made by his own hands. It was, as he told me later, the most important thing he had that he could give me.

What do you do with jade and chocolate stone beads, a silver cross on a sturdy brown string? What do you do with a line of prayers that have been someone else's? (He told me what each bead had meant to him. There were people, and the Shema, and other things I didn't hear because I was just looking, looking at this thing he'd put into my hands.)

The rosary now sits on my white wooden window sill. I told him yesterday I think it is (was) how he sees, or maybe touches, God. Bead by bead by bead, hoping along the way.

There are days when I think I see and touch God too. And days when I feel the world is nothing, watched by No One.

But now I have a rosary touched by prayers, through which I can hope along the way. It is waiting for new people and maybe a Psalm. It is waiting for me.


Me and My Friend and His Rosary photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Night Visions

I wake to darkness. This is nothing new. Sleep often eludes me in the deepest hours of night.

Turning to my left, I try to settle into the sheets, find my way back to slumber. My mind fills with visions, abstract. Picture after picture, until I feel I must be spinning. I will never remember all this, never be able to put it on paper. A desperate sense overcomes me, the way one must feel when grasping twine that is slipping away.

So I try to quiet myself and enjoy the parade... a vortex picture that looks something like a nest or a window to another world, green swirls that might be an ocean surging, a black whorl bleeding red into cobalt and purple... on and on. If I watch closely, maybe I will take some of these into the next day, find them under my pastels.

Then there will be the moment I wait for... after the picture is formed, like Adam-dust almost alive, I will choose where to shine the light and bring it to life, photograph the "it is good" and send it to cyberland, to you.

'Arise' in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat.

Communion

I went
searching
for grace
on the back
porch, found
it moldering
green, licking
slow biting
swallowing
the base
of a terra
cotta pot.


This post is offered for the Searching for Grace writing project.

Fisher

I came
to the riverside,
cool can of worms
undercover beside me
fleshy squirming warm
invitations to bite, but
the fish were eating
dragonflies, emerald
hovering, jeweled;
could not be fooled
by a hunger which
was mine alone,
gnawing inside.


Sometimes I write things with my eyes half open. That's how this went. And when I woke, really looked, I saw You in every line, my Fisher-of-Humankind, my Love. I thought of how You came to the Jordan amidst the crowds that day. I thought of "Take, eat, this is my body" and "the Word became flesh." I remembered the prophet Hosea, how his life was an expression of You, pining after us, hungry for us, ever hungry with an everlasting love. I closed my eyes with the thought of all this, in thanks for yet another surprise from words written without intent.

Consumed

The woods are aflame with autumn. Lemon yellows, burnt oranges, luminescent reds glazed with pink. Grasses bend amber, wave gold. Leaves drift and swirl on invisible eddies of warm air.

I search for words of praise, but find I am speechless. Instead, I close my eyes and become a wisp on the wind. Diving past the neighbor's dog, a near collision, then on again over the grey house... now flying with sparrows. Something inside me feels like fire, a sure melting, a merging with Spirit I sense in beauty. All this beauty.

Setting the world afire.