Professional Prayer, by David Slater

This is a dangerous profession,
breaking bread and proclaiming it Body,
opening the Word and calling it Life,
sending infants to a watery grave,
and calling it resurrection,
asking those with a 50% chance of regrets
to promise “forever,”
burying the dead in the sure and certain
hope of eternal life.
Trading in words and acts that can, and often do,
transform is unnerving.
You ask yourself: did my eloquence, my sincerity,
my understanding nature produce this?
Of course,
Not.
But the Almighty has few untainted saints on either
side of the pulpit.
And so, for the sake of the other sinners,
chooses to work through the likes of you.

Ribera's St Peter

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