Most Holy Judge:
for what we plainly know
but cannot bring ourselves to confront,
forgive us and be merciful to those harmed by the fallout.
The truth does not need prophets yet you send them anyway,
each one an invitation to understand and repent,
to make way for what is needed.
But we say: be silent.
If you do not speak, O God,
it is because we have refused to learn.
Worse: we have substituted your voice with our vanity,
saying, “Here is all we know, and beyond it there is nothing.”
The arguments we cling to at the expense of one another,
the hells we walk through to avoid being guilty,
the grief in which we plant our identity:
each one stubbornly silencing.
“Yes, I know. Keep silent,”
and you do, leaving us in the whirlwind’s dust
to wonder whether the fires of heaven are your judgment or
your grace to weld back together every truth we have wrenched apart.
on 2 Kings 2:1-12
Rachel, Thank you for sharing your words today. I can’t assume that you are thinking and feeling what I am, ie, the sadness, disappointment in what happened ( and didn’t happen) in the Senate this past week. It seems that there were people who tried to help “ provide” an invitation to understand . I picture “ the halls” you refer to. It pains me to think about statesmen and women walking in those halls; having to pass a capitol guard or another peer ; feeling such sadness that a plea for humanity was disregarded.
In any event, your words help give me an “expression” that I have not sat down to write about..
Your words support my feelings at this very sad juncture.
~ Thank you.