What am I doing here?

After John 5:1-17

What am I doing here,

this pool and its colonnades,

with all its filth, it smells,

its piles of human waste

and wasted humans, lame,

blind, sick, broken in body

and broken in spirit. I step

 

carefully, avoiding 

the humans infesting

this place, these people

desperate to be healed,

waiting for the waters

to stir, signaling the time

to heal. No waters stir

this day, but a man makes

his way through the crowd

of brokenness and disease,

the crowd parting like so

many droplets and waves,

this man stirring human

waters, reaching one man,

telling him to rise, take

his bed, and walk. 

 

The waters stir this day,

unlike any other day,

stirring

unlike any other day.

 

Photograph by Mitch Hodge via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Breathbodyprayer – poem by Matthew Pullar at Kingdon Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Corpus Christi: Three Sonnets on Communion – Malcolm Guite.

 

Some thoughts on autism – Bill Grandi at Living in the Shadow.