prayers more or less informed

Hard weeks we've had, and Stillwater has lent to what Psalm 23 assures. As I commented on Jon's recent post, the passing of Muhammad Ali brings new spirit into poems (and neighborly witness otherwise) like "Ramadan", which reads with greater relevance this time around.

Josh, to make up for the difficult phone lines, tune in here and all that's alluded to--Psalm 23, by definition, and in the case of this week's poem, Luke 8 and 11. These are great healing chapters, and while 'demon possession' isn't evidently a malady we've suffered, I thought about it today at church (when admittedly the Gospel lesson was different).

Any community has its 'tough nuts to crack', and to ensure that I don't use that idiom lightly, I love Hamlet's imaginative sense of self-limits, that "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams" (II, ii). Hamlet puts on an 'antic disposition'--a semblance of craziness--after encountering the ghost of his father, and reasonably this plan buys him some time to exact the revenge his father makes him do. I've just finished an interesting book by Lisa Klein entitled Ophelia, where that victim of Hamlet's play (and scheme, arguably) has a renewed chance of finding grace in the disgrace of human plots, Klein having Ophelia survive the play and renew herself in St Emilion's convent, even if pregnant with Hamlet III. It's a pretty good read.

So, the unnamed figure of this week's poem is--for the record--not a 'nut'. But he is someone who has benefited from the healing of the Holy Spirit, tendered in ways we'd scarcely understand. I've entitled it "today's lector, lo and behold":

The wild kid at church (what makes him wild?

what you’d perceive) read in his own world,

aloud, mouthing each word that beguiled

the church elders, banderoles unfurled.

He plugged away, learning less about

how to shush up in sanctified space

than how to make meaning inside out;

the pages turned boisterously, with grace.

And when the Lord’s Prayer called up the kids,

the maverick walked mildly, bridging hands

with soon-to-be friends—his manner rids

them of demons, as none understands.

Ears strain to hear through wavelets of noise,

then train your hearts toward wild equipoise.