Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Stranger by Yulia Ackerholt

Lent is a season of reconciliation, a season for reconciliation - of many kinds. I might need to be reconciled with God... I might need to be reconciled with my neighbor... I might need to be reconciled with my church... I might need to be reconciled with myself... I might need to be reconciled with...

If I am serious about reconciliation then I must be serious about naming where there is alienation in my life because that's where I'm in need of reconciliation...

This poem pours out of an alienated heart... perhaps it will lead us to know our own alienation and to seek to be reconciled...

Lost One Soul

I lost my soul in a fit of temper
I threw it at somebody's head
and slammed out
without a second thought

Then I dumped it in a wastebin
along with a love I said I was finished with

I sandpapered my spirit
with a million
bitter barbs
and sent it into orbit
and substituted
guilt instead

My soul went cold
with memories of old friends and kin
who never expected
to be neglected,
and resolutions
I'd eluded

Then one day
I went to feed it
and it was gone
and now I hear it howling
in the wind outside
in the nights
in the hills

and I get the chills inside

and hide
in something that's not important
and it's four in the morning
before I can get warm enough
to weep enough
to fall asleep

- Sandy McIntosh, in Jamaica Woman,
Pamela Mordecai and Mervyn Morris, editors