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Slow Season
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Lord,
It is Lent
Moving slowly as it should
Forty days or so
In a couple weeks, Palm Sunday
Triumph and then the Triduum
Days of friendship
And of torture
For our Lord
For you
Ignominy
Then death
Then in the earth
Like a seed that has no merit
As no growth is expected,
Behind a stone
In fact
Lent closes over
That way
While we wait
Not knowing
We should wait for anything
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Half the world is at war
My God,
What do we do to each other?
What grace is kept
Withheld
Like a body in a tomb
We’d try not to open
For fear of the revenant
We’d find inside?
Forgive us, anyway
Save us, anyway
By something so, so precious
That in the world we cannot escape
That finds us
Even though we say
Get away,
I want no part of you
Before the rooster crows
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And what is grace
But something sliced
Through everything
That it is as good
As if
Dispensed only through itself
No keepers on Earth
Not the church
(don’t think it)
Or the world
(won’t think it)
God’s surprise
Surprised by peace
And then delight
Don’t think it comes in
Any other way
It is wild
If there is timing,
It only knows its own
It comes to save
Better than a plan
Or pre-requirements met
Don’t ask except
To ask of it
That is all right
It can act as if it hears
The one releases
It can hear
And for our malaprops
And misinformed
Hears us, anyway
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coda
My people cry
I must respond
They ask badly
If at all
I want to hear them, anyway
I will respond
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Something like it
Says the Lord
In songs
And other prophecies
And the amazing grace
Of love
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C L Couch
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Photo by Christina van der Merwe on Unsplash
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