The Jesus Prayer

Yesterday, I spent much of the day saying the Jesus Prayer, running the olive beads of a rosary through my fingers. I'd expected quietness, a plain kind of solace. What I got was a nervous energy and a compulsion overlaid with a subtle fear.

Usually, I would read this a signs of the Bad Spirit at work but this didn't quite do as an explanation. I remembered the scriptural root (Luke 18:10-14); such words begin with our insecurity, the memory of the hurt we have done, looking to the love of God and shivering in our skin.

When serenity is not at hand, we're still called to pray. We just start from our uncertainty and our sense of culpability, face to face with the most fearful thing of all: His love.

Mister Crow

                   flies gather
                               at the dead weight of him      
                                                                                 quietly
                                 they touch with tenderness                (black feathers)
                    they shade the Sun's bruises
                                           they make preparation

             while the still eyes                 for all that
                     are wide open                                                   
                                    scanning the space he criss-crossed
                                                           and wrote over

                                      black pearls
                                        mirrors to fall in

                                      they fix on nothing
                                        they take it all in
             
         and turn to                           
                                 the bright dark
                                 the swallowed breath

                                 held before      the question
                                                            was shaped
                                                    and thrown