While rhetoric, protest, and prayer are all valid ways to express an inner longing and are tangible ways to bring positive change, they are not the only (or maybe even the best) tools.
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Dear Reader,
Excuse me, but do you have an extra voice?
I've been using mine but it appears not to be working.
If you're not using yours, perhaps I could purchase it from you.
How much is it worth to you?
Undone
Silence.
The water bowl receives our gaze,
But we both stopped seeing it long ago.
You were kind enough to wash.
Rinse, rather.
But now that is done.
My trophy cabinet looks up at us
Empty.
Trophies still settled out on the path
Waiting to be dusted up.
My eyes lift involuntarily.
I find yours,
already ready.
You hold my gaze.
I am not condemned.
You exhale,
My choices go too.
You smile softly,
Nod knowingly,
Not to excuse, but to confirm,
We both feel it.
You bow your head to me,
Lift my left foot from the clean and clear water,
And begin to dry.
The Audacity
The Audacity
I come from an audacious lineage.
A woman, bleeding—
forced her suffering into the open.
Syrophoenician—
words like crumbs that still carry power.
Two Mary’s—
testaments to radical devotion.
Hair unbound,
scent filling the room and tomb.
Bold.
A demographic whose grafting in
incensed the religious who inherited their belonging.
A kingdom built on holy scandal.
Are we still that scandalous?
Or have we become the two sides of the coin in the fish’s mouth?
Flip the coin again.
A woman.
First witness to the resurrection,
now barred from the pulpit.
The Good Samaritan,
tidy morning exegesis—
while we rationalize
border children in cages.
The poor and sick,
He reached for—
yet we move back two pews to avoid
their unwashed smell.
He healed on the Sabbath,
when He could have just waited.
We codify our acts of mercy—
like we’re doing taxes.
He kneeled in the dirt,
wrote in the sand—
while we assume the vulnerable already have a voice.
Our tongues have turned to brick.
Silent—
raising up hollow cathedrals on all of the words we’ve refused to say.
Snuff out fires we call tests, instead of warnings—
ignore congregational bruises under Sunday sleeves.
Indifference—
putting up walls that He tore down.
It’s not too late for us to return
to clearing the temple,
calling out whitewashed tombs—
washing each other’s feet.
We were never meant to guard the Gospel,
we were meant to run with it—
not with empty platitudes,
but with love that doesn’t look at the clock—
that learns the names we mispronounce,
and passes bread to hands that haven’t earned it.
As we run towards Him,
embracing our lineage—
let’s resurrect the audacity.
Will you have it?
—M.A
Collateral Damage
Your son is dead.
The building fell as he walked past.
It was a tragedy.
We are sorry.
But terrorists were inside.
.
Probably.
Black Dove Society 