The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one 
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something undone.

Today’s edges
are so sharp

they might cut
anything that moved.

The way a lost
word

will come back
unbidden.

You’re not interested
in it now,

only
in knowing
where it’s been.
~Rae Armantrout from “Unbidden” in Versed

I wish for you the blessing
of a room where strangers sit
breathing unashamed
into a chosen silence

Not the gasping breath
of travelers on a crowded plane
or the tenuous wheeze
of the waiting room

May you know the power
of those who have decided
to submit to the silence
to enter the mystery
be consumed by it
and emerge transformed

May you belong among those
who inhale the stillness
as if it is keeping us
because it is
keeping us alive
~Bethany Lee, “To Enter the Mystery” from Etude for Belonging: poems for practicing courage and hope

The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been, but you are…
Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.
~Frederick Buechner in “Wishful Thinking and later” in Beyond Words

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed…

Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles
are achieving for us an eternal glory
that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
-2 Cor 4:8-9, 16-18

I believe like a child
that suffering will be healed and made up for,
that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions
will vanish like a pitiful mirage
…that in the world’s finale,
at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass
that it will suffice for all hearts,
for the comforting of all resentments,
for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity,
for all the blood that they’ve shed;
that it will make it not only possible to forgive
but to justify all that has happened.
~Fyodor Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov

Twenty-five years ago,
a day started with bright sun above
and ended in tears and bloodshed below.

This is a day for recollection;
we live out a remembrance of
the torrential red that flowed that day;

A quarter century later,
our streets both near and far-away
still course with the blood of innocents,
so what have we learned from all this?

That terrible day’s edges were so sharp
we all bled;
still bearing the scars,
we need comforting.

So do not be afraid:
you are not alone.

We breathe and weep and love
as we remember that day,
emerging inevitably transformed.