psalm

Verse and song

labyrinth at Chartres cathedral

Holy Thursday Pop-Up Foot Clinic

Listen while two feet soak.

embers and ash

Ash Blessings

No need to profess a thing.

tree-buds-horizontal

Plague Psalm 19

Bees needle our sin-stung flesh in your hive
Yet some kind of sweetness
still touches the tongue.

tree-buds-horizontal

On Gratitude

But there was love, love, love,
dripping from our hands.
We both gripped the sharp edge,
and it was painful

tree-buds-horizontal

Two Poems by Joe Gross

Sometimes
multiplication
of loaves
just means
splitting
one loaf
between
two people.

tree-buds

Poems for the Cruelest Month

All of the intensity and unpredictability of this season, the surges of hope and terror, the stirring of memory and desire—word images, symbols, and sounds arranged in rhythm, engaged in elegy and mystery may be our best bet for helping us hold it all.

Image of bubbles beneath the blue-green water with a misty blue sky above

Baptism

The still surface lifted by morning fog
as if a bed sheet
that I’m beneath, in the silt, hair reaching,
skin frog-throat white

Mary Oliver and her dog, Perry. Photograph by Rachel Brown.

Joy Before Death: Following the Path of Mary Oliver

From Buddhism to science to the end of life.

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Stolen Apples

an elegy for Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Field of weeds where slaves were buried on the former Lomo Alto Plantation directly behind an HBCU named Prairie View A&M. August, 2015. Photograph by Randy R. Potts

The Devil and #SandraBland

The devil didn’t harm us in our little encampment.

cloud_witnesses

Cloud Of Witnesses: A Sermon

Feidin Santana and not passing injustice by.

In bloom peach tree orchard in western Colorado.

Belief

A drama in three vignettes.

Killing the Buddha

Satan Is Real

He’s the only thing real in Utah.

by Maqroll via Flickr

Satan Is Real

He’s the only thing real in Utah.

blindboys

Blind Boys

A revelation at the Austin City Limits music festival.

buddhalovesme

Buddha Loves Me, This I Know

Some folks act just like they hate ya/ But all dogs have a Buddha nature.

via Flickr, by gwen

Searching for Bach

The cello sounded like heaven. Or whatever heaven sounds like when you’re twelve.

Hildegard von Bingen.

Tongues of Fire

A Pentecost revival song.