Bright Friday

My view for morning prayer this morning.
Two old trees
Who grew side by side
Through sun filled days, and
Hurricane nights.
Their arms intertwined
Like an elaborate arrangement of veins and arteries of one being
Against the morning gray.

Empty and bare
Unless I continue to look
Until a passing breeze
Moves a single tiny leaf
Post heritage of springtime
Still hanging on after all its fellows are gone.
But wait, look again and there are more remaining
Perhaps a couple of dozen across the sister trees.
Tiny helpless shadows in the face of the sky.

And I realize:
These alone and useless to appearance
These past their prime
And past again?
They are like the last, the least, the lonely,
True weak and wanting
The small and the helpless of this human family.

Whether it is the business of anyone else or no
It is ours as Christians to be theirs
To give all in understanding
Support
Presence
Compassion,
So that they might live in dignity
And know something of love
As long as they live.

The least are God’s own,
And God focuses our sight on their
Places and faces
If we remain long enough to look.

---

Thoughts worth considering

“Connection is why we’re here.”

~ Brene Brown

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”

~ Helen Keller

---

Probably not the way we see it in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts

---