Even After All This
I am still stubborn enough to love God,
refuse to declare myself orphaned, abandoned, alone,
even though there are days now when I can’t find my Holy Certainty.
I try hard not to let that pile of dead leaves in my yard remind me of those who have fallen in sickness , violence and death.
I am stubborn enough to remember the earth is turning and singing in its turning, and that things are designed that way,
to die and come back, like the leaves.
Even during these days when the Blessed mother seems to hide her face and the Great Mystery has apparently gone silent.
You have to know where to look, in the fallen leaves or in the heart’s pain.
It begins there.
I persist in believing in rebirth,
in believing that Love is stronger than grief, stronger than willful ignorance of good;
that we have snatched the possibility of life again, and again, and again,
and we can do it, again.
The worship of hatred carries its own death sentence and the worship of Love its own reward.
I am stubborn enough to believe that Life loves life,
and that the longing in my heart is a message that love is stronger than grief, or despair, or fear or anger, or even my childish resentment.
I am stubborn enough to believe that the slant of morning light on my door was not created by me or invented by my neighbor, and that this afternoon it will not be invisible because there are those who want me to be in darkness.
I persist in believing in the turning. Again. Still. And should all this be gone one day, it will happen again. Again, and again. I am stubborn enough to love God.
Still.
© Linda Beatrice Brown