You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward
lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness.
I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed
through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean
rising darkly around her, fierce with cold,
rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders.
--Leanne O’Sullivan, “Leaving Early”
Today’s message takes a less formal and more prayerful tone. Or rather, not a prayer as much as an ode, written from the deep respect we should be called to show those who continue to labor for our neighbors--the health professionals, the grocery workers, and truck drivers, the police and firefighters and first responders all, the teachers and ministers and all who minister to all that is soul and body and need. It is often easy to forget that these servants too have anxieties just as we do, these too have families just as we do, these too have all the issues and concerns we too face. And so, to those who continue to bless us with their service I offer this blessing:
Your One Care Full Act
May your one carefully unseen but not unnoticed act of kindness
become a balm to that
that we cannot voice,
nor dare to know how
to begin to voice.
We know too little
though demand within
to know all
and have answered all,
as if our hearts
were big enough
to contain all.
We know too little,
yet at this ledge we coil
and plunge deeply
in want
beneath the waters
Of the bottomless unknowable.
To trust to care
to those also in deep anxiety
is truly done in faith.
Your one care full act
renews, redeems, and restores.
May you be blessed
even as you, unseen, have blessed.