incense burns in the small chapel with bowls of blessed water at every entrance. holy reverence is palpable - safe - prayers rising to heaven on clouds of fragrant smoke. but do you know us - what we wish for? do you cry rivers and oceans of salty tears for goodness not used or does the one quick tear disappear when you look away? can this be real - symbolism - miracles - the true christ in the hands of the priest - on my tongue? how did black dark nothingness become all this? my brain cannot comprehend nothingness - surely there was a tiny bright light - one small white star - something moving and alive. smoke rises. once there was no fire - no words - no church - no stained glass windows letting in golden light - no color.

as i look at you in the heavy gold cross - represented in a single white piece of dry bread - i struggle with religion. sometimes i think you would shake your head at the notion of being captured in solid gold - quietly standing before us as a neat and meticulously maintained wafer in a glass compartment. i don't feel you that way. i think you wanted to come to us as the dusty, sandal-footed traveler with unkempt hair and unshaven face who touched those we wouldn't touch - tasted fear and longing - felt pangs of hunger in the desert as you prayed for reprieve from the anguish you felt - knowing you would hurt and bleed and die at the hands of the ones you wanted to save. jesus christ - the last great hope for mankind to stop the ugliness and return to love.

i don't know how you wish to come to me but i think it is in living a simple life close to the earth - the fresh bloomed tulip with petals closed to the night - perfection i had no power in creating - to hush and listen to the glorious singing surrounding me - joyful sounds of exuberance and desire to fly and dance and spiral through morning sky - slicing through fat white clouds with faith to trust what lies on the other side. i think you want to come to me in loving my children with no limits, no conditions, no beginning or end - just depth as deep as the heavens and the human heart. i think you want to come to me in the love of my husband, knowing the battle i fight to stay solid and be accountable - having nothing to do with love or soul-bending connection - but with my need to run to solitude and freedom and search the limits of my spirit. you come to me in dog smiles and children's sticky fingers reaching for me - in the moments i call out to you to help me tolerate pain and disillusionment in the eyes of my beautiful cocooned children who are transforming before my eyes. you come to me in hellos and goodbyes - need - desire - joy - hunger for justice - redemption. how can you be placed in such a neat small cubicle? it should be messier - bloody and hanging with sharp edged pointy things and bits of broken hearts and lives and glistening pieces of sun and moon and stained glass windows. you are in all of life - dirty immaculate broken hanging on my lips like words unspoken in the cracks of my shoes the crust in the corners of my eyes the drool on a baby's chin - the cry of ecstasy and birth and grief and the newly risen moon and the last rays of evening sun.