Oh Stars on High

Oh Stars on high

Send this petition

From a travel-wearied child,

To your queen of Heaven:

Mary Immaculate.

That she may intercede for me

Amidst my calamities.

Oh my God,

I am dead in my life,

Filled with a monotony

of fleeting pleasures:

The flicker of the screen,

The over-sweet nothingness of

High-fructose corn syrup,

That false intimacy,

The selfishness of the atomized self.

Here:

I eat but don’t taste

I sleep but don’t rest.

My days pass by, busy, and far too empty

For they are often filled with myself alone—
Which is a thing too small indeed.

It is a comfortable but dead existence.

Call me to something more, oh Christ

Call me to the mountain of death: Golgotha

To be and become amidst the thorns cutting your feverish skin,

The rough-cut rips over your scourged back,

The scarring pain numbing your hands.

Let me know your sacrifice,

To climb down from the mountain different,

To see your love and be forever changed:

My face radiant with sunlight joy,

My heart aching to show love,

My soul bettered by a great humility.

Oh Christ, cause me to see truth,

To feast with body and soul

 On the true bread of heaven,

Bread small and brittle,

Full of a tiny beauty,

That parallels the chickadee,

With its minute steps, its many falls.

This bread breaks with the snap of bones,

And fills more than any feast.