Proper 16 Year Two, Wednesday

[Acts 10:1-16]

The morning's headlines: whether read online,
in hardcopy, seen on the t.v. screen,
or heard read by radio's concerned lectors;
However taken, there's a comfort in
the rhythms of tragedy and human interest,
a secular liturgy of headline, story,
perhaps an editorial or two,
more at eleven. Even this litany
of horrors soothes us, as all ritual does;
At least, we are assured, we can depend
upon creation's gradual degradation;
The daily clippings of a world gone wild,
petals plucked from a garden gone to seed...

Look up from the pages of a world so stained
that the worst atrocities have grown mundane,
expected, comfortable even-- Look up to see
the light descending like a dazzling sheet
pulled by its corners taut over the frame
of an earth fresh-sheared and ready for the fuller...
Imagine: can it clean the news-print stain
from your fingertips; it will be said again
(as it once was, at the start of things, by God)
of all creation, "It is very good."