groaning into holiness

i am a bruised vessel

empty and cracked

waiting to be patched

searching for a scoop

groaning into holiness

born of the worn earth

i live in a field of cautions

setting out, stiff of heart

an uptight preacher of the Word

the irony borne on crumpled bones

asleep in hope  

beneath a wreckage of doubts

what am i to say to the weary-worn

forlorn of heart with thirsting souls

but that we encircle the table and have a drink

partake of bread

affirm our common bond

*The only face I see of God is the face of another human being.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -Human beings are not looking for just anything but for the absolute, even when they believe they are turning away from it, or when they unknowingly repress it in a search for material things. Every passion is an arrow aimed at the other shore.

  -Reading is completely pointless if it doesn't teach us to understand life, especially the burning passion of life itself.

  -The Gospel ...plunges us into the openness of the instant.

  -Attitudes are made up of ideas, opinions and prejudices which form a protective shell.  A new thought is accepted only when it has force on its side - that is, strength of numbers, when it becomes normal and can take its place in the overall system without danger.

  -...a spiritual message cannot possess the power of what is normal except by denying itself.  So it must use the weapons of the rebel. The warrior of the spirit, who knows that meaning is always in a state of suspense, expresses himself through paradox, humor and parable.  When, through fear of solitude or because of a flabby notion of charity, he comes to adopt the language of the tribe - a language which inevitably aims at permanence - his betrayal is greatest at the moment he is most applauded.  If he refuses to take the broad and illusory path of "communication" it is because our everyday wisdom, with its lazy language of adaptation, offends him.  He pierces our sleepy consciences and becomes in turn ironic, enigmatic, a kill-joy.  People start calling him paradoxical, destructive, or even crazy.  If he's actually preaching the Gospel, they'll say he is familiar with the data.  He ought to fit the text into the broader context.  After all, it was written in another age.  It would be dangerous if people started to realize that paradox simply unveils the hidden and crucifying reality within us, that truth is shy, that the path it opens up is endless, that harmony and calm exist only within the limits of everyday banality,

  -The warrior of the spirit is never perfectly adjusted to society.