Via Negativa

The penitent must perform certain acts besides prayer—
good works and pilgrimages— to receive an indulgence. 
 
Even after forgiveness through confession, you're told
more is needed to restore the soul; hence, the indulgence.

This can sound confusing, even a little bit medieval, especially
when taking into account modern meanings of indulgence.

Even more confusing are those Catholic prayers called ejaculations:
utterances to direct the petitioner's mind to God, not as indulgence—

Eternal rest grant unto us, o Lord. Mother of Mercy, pray for us.
Queen of peace, pray for us. Do you ever feel prayer can be indulgent,

that it deflects attention away from the present, in favor of an
afterlife? Is there any shrine that isn't even a bit indulgent?

Another hospital has been bombed, another school, another
shelter. Mother of orphans, pray for us even as we indulge

in the privilege of leisure, a good cry, a walk by the sea. 
Works of mercy and charity, acts of indulgence—

what's the purgatory of the soul, if this life already cycles between 
trial and suffering? O my heart, desirous of grace and indulgence.

Yes, there are likely more times 
that color is only what tinges the curtains, 
the paint in these rooms, or the eyes 

of your lover. What else is there to think of ?
When you look at a broken bridge, the fire-
ravaged mountain, a flooded town, 

yes, they are what they are, but they 
are also all the ways in which you feel 
fraught.  In the impossibility of turning 

away from circumstance, you want 
to look for a sign, any sign, that fills
the hours with more than just 

endlessness. Perhaps it holds out two 
hands, and some possibility of choice.

Do you watch the color of the sky and how it looks 
from the top of the hill where you live, how quietly 

it moves and gathers damson plum and purple
verbena, the grey of doves' breasts, the breathing 

of pine forests at night? I know how much we've 
all suffered, are suffering still, though we barely speak

of it, or of anything else these days. This evening, 
I went into the yard because I wanted to coil 

branches of snipped rosemary into a wreath.
When I finished, night had fallen. I could barely see 

to the end of the road. My fingers were scratched, 
but suffused with such fragrance. Even after 

I washed them in the sink, the haze followed me
beyond sleep, touching everything in its wake. 

~ after Diane Seuss ("Coda")


The best donut in a box of store-bought donuts
is not glazed but plain, like a plain-spoken poem. 

In the farmer's market, the best donut is the one
which doesn't smell like apple cider or pumpkin 

spice. It's the one that isn't dusted with sanding 
sugar or a cinnamon-cardamom mix. If it's sweet, 

its sweetness lingers like the space where a hole 
has been made in something that used to be 

whole. In other words, whole doesn't always mean 
unbroken, and broken doesn't always mean not good 

anymore or of no further use. Sometimes whole is a body 
that rose and was punched down once, twice, on the counter 

or in a bowl. Whole means strands of gluten broken 
down, souring in fermentation, then knit back together 

to form an elastic structure. Tap it with a knife or your
finger. It's crisp and golden outside, soft on the inside.

~ Doctrina Christiana en lengua española y tagala, 
1593, Manila


What is it to trust something or
       someone? We learned about empirical 
evidence,  about proof provided through logic 
       and materials, and the ways they've been 
documented to behave in experience. Any 
       departure from what we've come to call 
the norm makes us uncomfortable, even 
       suspicious—For doesn't the sun rise 
in the east and set in the west? And yet 
      there are waterfalls which appear to cascade 
upwards, and hills where vehicles in neutral 
      ascend rather than descend. For centuries,
catechism meant suffer your fate in this vale 
      of tears; collect reward in the afterlife.