Marking a Decade

In the Whirlwind

(written for the community of Saint Francis Xavier, NYC, upon the Tenth Anniversary of September 11^th)

I am the Love that rises,

always rises…

I rise with the sun, and

I rise with the moon…

I rise to draw down like gravity,

toward the center,

and I rise to set free,

loosing hope upon my people.

I rise to the new day and

I rise to the challenge.

I rise to see born the yet-unrevealed-

what-waits-to-be-known.

I rise when I weep

and I rise to laugh.

Nothing is stronger

than this essential constant:

rising.

I am always and everywhere,

I am for everyone and I am

in everyone, and nothing

can ever separate you from me.

I am

the Love that rises,

always rises.

c. MperiodPress, 2011

About it...I can tell you that I did not want to write anything specific to the event of September 11th, but rather something that spoke of a straight-on God... A God that does not abandon or betray, a God of every moment, a God of "hope regardless" whose hope is love. It filled me as I wrote...filled me "center-down-deep" like a Spiritual does...that is the sound I heard while writing...the loose-jointed passionate ache of truth--the truth that there is evil and that there is good. The truth of death and the truth of life, and according to our faith, the truth and freedom found in rising... whether rising like buildings being built; rising like getting up when knocked down; rising like the sun or the moon rises; rising like floodwaters or hope; rising as in resurrection...

The title is tweaked from a line of another poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote "Conduct your blooming in the noise and the whip of the whirlwind."

Made in the image and likeness of God, may we conduct our own blooming straight-on and exposed...no shade of fear, no cloak of doubt...in the whirlwind circumstances of our own time and place.