I said in my youth
"I want to be a saint"
dress like Mary
curse like Paul
pierced like Francis
flogged like Drew

An old man now
hurled into the muck of life
I curse and dress
flog and pierce
fashion saints in my image and grace

But what have I done with God?
Where have I chased God's face?

I'm a child, ageing
recalling years repressed
now sitting long distant
along the path I walk
in need of mercy
and halos about my feet



*Flannery O'Connor once revealed that her "gravest concern" was "the conflict between and attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times."  I feel that attraction for the holy, and my throat, too, burns with the air of disbelief.  It is hard to be a storyteller in an age that prefers statements and statistics, O'Connor admitted, and yet "in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells."  By what stories shall we be known?
-Scott Russell Sanders