Apparently, I only post on Easter

Jill and I read the first two chapters of Mark at the vigil last night. I drove her and Zoen home at 9, and came back to write this. I read it just after midnight. Sam had just read chapter 15. It's for everyone who was there, and everyone who might read this. I thought about listing your names, but there are too many. But I held a lot of them as I wrote this. Consider this, then: your name is in the dedication.

Silk-Patched Canvas

Reflections on readings of the gospel of Mark, Easter vigil 2013

I wove these thoughts for you,

in the colors of words

because I hoped that when we cannot find hands,

you could hold on to the sound

of my voice in our dark.

Once, I would have flung hope at you,

set faith on the table and slid it across,

clicked shut my briefcase as you read the label,

asked you to pay in four law installments.

But when they were lynching Jesus,
him swinging low on the tree,

even he demanded to know why he couldn't touch God.

Earlier he would have said to

open your eyes,

especially the ones

you haven't thought up yet.

Come out of your closets.

Wiggle through dirt,

up from your coffins.

Burst through your seeds.

All you need is ears.

And then he would have told you

to keep him a secret.

And then later, he cooked dinner

and dropped off the keys.

But something else happens

when your wrists are opened,

and they're about to dump your body in a hole

only empty because you're not in it yet.

That was his blood day,

like now are our muddled days,

hands cold with old ashes, and

grasping for spring.

So let me tell you a heliocentric story:

green will rise again.

You don't have to believe it. It's true.

But let me also tell you another,

one you'll have to mull over

before you take it home:

I love you.

Each and together.

I hold your names like a yolk on my tongue,
pressed soft away from teeth.

This then, is my promise,

not the blood of atonement,

but this salvation: 
it is not finished at the burst 
of my eventual failure.

.