A poem and a prayer based on 1 Kings 19
I walked out into the Oregon High desert as far as I could go.
Stumbling through tears
Each step an irrevocable choice to go to an end–to end what had already ended.
I lay down under a juniper dizzy and sick with thirst.
My back an angry soreness of tension and burden.
My mind exhausted from moving in a tiny circle of pain and loss, paddling with ineffective feet on a path I did not choose that lay before me.
I gazed up at the blue expanse of open sky:
“God, take my life, I am no better than my ancestors.”
I tried so hard, my heart cries out to heaven, I tried to be better.
To rid myself of the filth and hypocrisy,
the death rags of sin and pride and rebellion,
wrapping themselves around us generation after generation.
I struggled to birth something truly alive, to nurture a new and different way of living.
It ended in stillbirth and blood and loss.
Do angel wings whir like winnowing snipe?
When the end comes, will my soul leap to flight as the Ferruginous Hawk?
The Meadowlark’s song hangs in the air, rich and heavy with promise.
Sandhill Cranes invite angels to enter this lesser realm overrun with sin and death,
greeting them with song and dance.
Get up and eat, angel’s voice whispered in the sighing breeze, get up and eat.
I sit up and gaze around:
There’s nothing here! There’s nothing provided me!
I seek and do not find. I ask and do not receive. I knock and no one opens!
Affronted into reproving silence, the angel pauses.
My gasping breath, choking back tears, is all I hear.
I lay back down, sigh and roll over.
Snipe winnowing.
Bobolink praying a burbling cacophony of mating and living and dying.
Get up and eat the words which I put into your mouth.
What words, O God! What words?
“Make the preaching of the Gospel your life’s work, in thorough-going service.”
Words tumble from Paul to Timothy into my mouth.
They are bitter words, filled with sacrifice and suffering.
Salty ears of defeat and life blood poured out for the indifferent and the mocking.
Yet I swallow and am filled with the utter fullness of GOd.
Red-tailed Hawk circling above, riding the warmth of earth transferred to air,
supporting wings and talons and piercing eyes.
The call! The cry! The summons!
A sighing breeze moves across the landscape, shivering the juniper tree and whispering:
What are you doing here, Marie?
I had within me a burning desire to speak a word to the weary.
But your people will not listen, they turn away.
I spoke of your love, I spoke your truth, the Spirit filled my heart and I spoke again.
But burning words of mockery and disinterest set fire to your altars.
Slander and disdain and arrogance put your servant to the sword.
I have no one at my right side, no one who defends my just cause.
I am alone, bereft, beaten down.
I have failed you, failed the mission, failed Love.
I am so sorry,
so, so sorry.
I cover my face with hands dirty and scarred and worn, wrinkled and cracked.
hoooooooooo, the warm breath of earth’s exhalation caresses these hands.
Breathe deeply, draw in the Spirit, heart and head and soul filled with victorious vitality,
won through defeat of pride and ambition and plans and success.
I follow a crucified Master.
A God-man rejected and scorned and humiliated and betrayed and abandoned.
Victory won by sacrifice,
love compels, impels the offering, dispels the fear.
Meadowlark sings again, liquid refulgence of sunshine and space:
Resurrection! Resurrection!
Go back the way you came.
And sustained by the food of the Word,
she walks for decades back into the world that prefers darkness but calls it light
and hates the true light, despising those who point to it and see by it.
Sustained by the food of the Word,
she anoints successors who carry the word, not her word, but a word entrusted to her,
as God gently, inexorably, mercifully, patiently draws all to completion.
Flourish Catholic 