Braeden is HERE.
"I choose to Be Here in the Church because...somewhere in the deepest part of me I know that He is who He says He is; the rest of this is what naturally and logically follows. Plus, it's kind of fun being the actual counter-culturals.
Being Here in the present moment is better with...
1. The way that birds' eyes are kind of beady and expressionless;
2. When somebody rubs your back a little when they give you a long hug;
3.Grapefruit."
What would you like to share with us?
A Poem, originally written December 2020
Braeden
Holy Family
Three pews ahead and to the right,
a man, his draped arm and broad hand
around a woman’s back, her leant shoulder
pressed into his side; and sconced tight between them
their only child, first child, a girl.
Three heads from behind:
his atilt in
vigilled listening; hers bowed
in what is either prayer or solicitous smile to her child;
and that littlest cradled in her mother’s warding crook—
a scene from Nazareth renewed, a holy family.
Three pews behind and just outside of their
nimbus-glow of clear and unseen light,
I, quiet-eyed and hymnal-handed, sit,
a crumpled cap and canvas coat beside, with
one sleeve draped emptily to the floor.
A narrow turn of neck, and so the child,
epiphany-faced, faces me and smiles, and in her
beatific eye is an invitation.
But
I am not a father.
And I am not a virgin.
And for some time I have not been a child.
At last she turns away, her vision fixed on the mystery
unfolding before her, as her parents’ lodestone hearts
hope for their heavenly haven.
But my southbound heart
dreams only of a draped arm and a broad hand,
and a pressed shoulder—
a mystery from three pews behind.