Two people in white robes stood by them.
and said, “People of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up toward heaven? “
—Acts 1.10-11
There are those times
when you have lost what you loved,
when you gaze up into the empty box of the sky
and the emptiness comes down around you
like a blanket, a bell,
and your gaze can’t pierce
the thick silence inside the bell.
Even the deepest faith doesn’t round off
this world’s sharp edges, its losses and traumas.
Holiness often lives in the blank of sorrow,
the empty chair.
It’s all right to stand there and gaze.
Before the wind begins to shift,
before the bright strangers speak.
they know. They hand us a tissue.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
May 20, 2020