Good Friday in the Season of Plague

Today is the day to be still with death.

I wait in that stillness of early morning

Listening to the song of spring birds.

Sitting at the portal of promise that appears yet closed.

Questions, like rocks bar the way.

So many little dyings buried in the soil of yesterday.

Hopes miscarried, tenderly wrapped in colorful shrouds of faith,

wait inside the surface of Now.

I wonder if and when they will be empowered to rise again

from their winter pots of sorrow,

Like the daffodils, scilla, and tulips bursting with the fragrance of hyacinth.

Flowering goddesses of delight who dance around me in this morning’s breeze.

How do we mortals hold quietly the beauty-full paradox of today, this dying time.

So much suffering we are given to carry.

So many stories of violence being written as the death angel passes over us.

Compounded tracks of horror upon the most vulnerable

Exacerbate the pre-existing conditions of a world at war with herself.

What else must I do but stop and be still.

Let the Grandmother, Mother, Friend and Lover in me

Grieve the passage of death.

Praying for the Circle of Grace to flower again.

Carol Kortsch

Good Friday, April 10, 2020