Myles and miles: from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday

In the Mile

High City,

Jamel Myles,

a nine-year-old boy

was bullied for four days straight

because he said he was gay.

He killed himself last Thursday.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka,

workers were digging

to make a foundation

for a new building

when they discovered

a mass grave,

bodies strewn haphazardly

in a town bullied by war.

And Pastor Andrew was bullied, too.

Depression.

Last weekend, he ended it all.

Why? Maybe he felt unequal

to the demands.

Maybe he was buried in criticism.

Maybe the expectations of consumers without

crushed his spirit within, already crippled

with self-loathing.

And 50 years ago protesters and police

squared off downtown Chicago.

On the radio this morning

an eyewitness said they saw

people being thrown like sacks of potatoes

into the backs of the “paddy-wagons”

(that’s what he said)

after being struck over the head

with nightsticks.

And McCain passed Saturday,

an imperfect—but noble—man, deceased.

And today the flag over the capitol

was raised prematurely

(days before the funeral)

by a man who would sooner

grab a woman’s “pussy”

(that’s what he said)

than spend more than

a nickel’s worth of respect

on someone he abhors—

a token of remembrance noted,

the smallest bit of grief felt,

as if dignity has become a duty,

and petty bullying our passion,

financial wealth our pursuit

in a state of spiritual poverty.

Midweek, McCain (may he rest in peace)

will lie in state in Arizona,

thence to lie in the nation’s capitol on Friday.

Those who know the priceless worth of a life,

any life, will be there to pay tribute to his honor,

until Sunday, his body will be laid in the grave—

just so, Lent passes quickly,

from Ash Wednesday

through Good Friday

to Easter Sunday.

Where are the statesmen and women, I wonder?

Have we lost all sense of civility?

God knows each soul, made in

God’s image. God, the final guard

of the heart’s sacred space.

I think of names I know,

names you’ve never heard,

people you don’t know,

just scores of history’s anonymous trillions

who have confided in me, looking

for someone to care.

They tell me they are unloved

because they are unlovable.

I see their faces now.

I hear their voices,

tense, straining

for just a little tenderness.

I have heard them weep

because they’ve been bullied

by bullies who also feel unlovable

and so unloved.

And I ask—after my contemplation

on Saturday of Hawking’s insights

about black holes—

can we only consume and kill,

is futility our only destiny,

extinction fated to expand?

Can the Matter and

what matters escape entropy?

When will we learn to care,

when will we cross

the miles

of desert?

Here in the middle of this

Lenten repetition,

when will

Myles’s Thursday

become Christ’s
Maundy Thursday

where no words remain

but the ever unfinished

command

to love

and hold

each other’s feet

in love

to wash

and look into

each other’s eyes

in love

to see

the face of God,

who descended

to our deepest black hole

to free each beloved soul?

………….

Myles and miles: from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday

by Troy Cady