Poetry

We come with our ordinary faces and leave wearing ashes— the sign of what we already knew but needed reminding:

We are dust. Beautiful, bewildered, beloved dust.

This mark is not shame. It is honesty. It is the church saying: we will not pretend you are not mortal, we will not pretend you are not loved.

Every year this threshold. Every year the question of what we will carry and what we will leave by the door.

This is not about perfection. This is about turning— the way a plant turns toward what gives it life, not because it is told to but because it is alive.

Forty days is not an accident. Forty years wandered. Forty days on the mountain. Forty days of rain.

The number means: long enough. Long enough to be changed. Long enough to know you cannot do this alone.

The wilderness is not punishment. The wilderness is preparation. The wilderness holds what the comfortable life cannot.

Bread is ordinary. Bread is ancient. Bread is what hands have made for ten thousand years before this moment.

And yet he said: not by bread alone.

Meaning: there is more than what sustains the body. Meaning: the word that sustains comes from a place bread cannot reach.

Nicodemus came at night— not from cowardice, perhaps, but from longing.

Some questions are too tender for daylight. Some hungers only open in the dark.

To be born again is not to forget what you were. It is to discover you were always more than you thought.

She came alone because alone was what she knew. She came at noon because noon asked no questions.

And there he was. Asking.

Give me a drink.

As if he were the thirsty one. As if she had something he needed.

Which is how love works: both giving, both receiving, both surprised by the depth of the well.

One more year. That is what mercy sounds like when it wears a gardener's coat.

One more season. One more chance for the roots to find what they have been missing.

We are all the fig tree. We are all the gardener's patient hope. We are all the soil being turned toward possibility.

He came to himself. That is what the story says. Not: he became someone new. Not: he fixed what he had broken.

He came to himself.

As if the self he was running from was also the self who was waiting. As if home was not a place but a recognition: I am the one who is loved. I am the one who can return.

Jesus wept.

Two words that hold everything: he knew what he would do and he wept anyway.

Because grief is not negated by what comes after. Because love does not skip the sorrow to get to the miracle.

He wept with them. Then he called the dead man out. Both things are true. Both things are holy.

There is a seeing that happens in the dark that light makes impossible.

The woman with the coin lights her lamp, but it is the darkness that made the searching necessary.

What we seek finds us first in the places we did not choose to go.

She broke the jar. That was the first thing. She broke what could not be repaired.

This is not waste. This is worship at its most honest: giving the thing that cannot be given back, pouring out what could not be measured, breaking open so that fragrance fills the room, and none of us will ever forget.

Unless it falls. Unless it falls and dies.

This is not a metaphor that makes death comfortable. This is the truth that makes death bearable:

that what falls into the dark ground is not destroyed but transformed.

That the wheat does not know what it is becoming. That neither do we.

They spread their cloaks on the road. They cut branches and waved them. They cried what their hearts needed to cry: Save us. Save us now.

And he came on a donkey. Not a warhorse. Not a chariot. A donkey, which is to say: my power looks different than you expect.

Which is to say: I am here. Which is to say: yes.

He took off his outer robe. He tied a towel around himself. He knelt.

This is the new commandment dressed in the form of a question: if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, what are you willing to do?

Not a burden. An invitation. Not a law. A posture. Get low. Get low. This is the way in.

She came to anoint the dead and found the stone rolled away. She came to finish the burial and found there was nothing to finish.

This is resurrection's first disruption: it interrupts our grief with impossible news.

Not: your sorrow was wrong. Not: stop crying. But: come and see. Come and see what happened here.

We say it even when we don't feel it. We say it because the season demands it. We say it because our ancestors said it when they had less reason than we do.

Alleluia is not certainty. Alleluia is a direction. Alleluia is the mouth choosing to praise before the mind has caught up.

Alleluia. Anyway. Alleluia.