O afterwards: A benediction

Christian Century, May 17, 2005 by Jill Alexander Essbaum

O afterwards: A benediction

   And may the old life, that rotting flesh and treasure
   find in the good pleasure

   of Christ, a forgetfulness complete: that these sins, however
   humanly deliberate my misbehaviors,

   be blotted from the record of God, raptured like the night's thief,
   forever gone, newly clean.

   And may this new self shine like the moon shone, long ago, before
   she was rent by the devil's incisor,

   a whole, round body not meant to be broken in phases.
   And may she sing your praises

   like Golgotha sings of a tree: for there is nothing empty
   that cannot be filled. And may the sea

   and all things swimming it thirst no longer for Living Water.
   And may the Father

   know the Daughter, even as the end of the earth unfolds.
   And may I turn to gold.