“Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
By Ken Woodley
LOVE’S SKIN GROWS OVER THE BONES OF A BROKEN SOUL
On the midnight panes of my shattered places
dirt had been carelessly shoveled.
An afterthought.
Words spoken beneath clouds that had never stopped looking like monsters
were filled with ashes and dust.
Then even they left,
leaving only silence behind.
Until God spoke.
With lips, tongue, eyes and everything
God could think of.
God knelt and smoothed the dirt of my grave,
making little rows for the seeds
that God began to plant,
explaining what was inside them.
No more tears.
Just rain.
And God didn’t keep me waiting.
Something green grew up through the soil.
Other colors followed the skyward urge.
God lifted my broken landscape from the gravity
surrounding places so empty they had been left
unguarded by those who had broken the reflection
I’d been born with.
Weightlessly sang the flickers of light
until all of their pieces fit my voice
and I tasted the first rays of sunrise from God’s tongue
upon my lips,
swallowing without regret.
I wore only the light
God shone from within me,
luminous and laughing joy
at this surrender of my fragments
to the oneness of becoming
something more than I
—more than anyone but God—
ever imagined:
Loved.
Ken Woodley 