Redemption

morning fog, Marcola

When scales fall from my eyes
day after day,
When I see with new light,
When I see how many of my constructs
have been wrong (all of them, really)
Should I be surprised that gratitude
grows as easily out of tears
as green blades after rain?

However justly I may have earned
all the isolation in my life
(however weird I was, and blind, and gross)
there is redemption:

None of us has ever owned
anything to cast us from the circle.
None of the condemnations ever
had any truth. None of us
deserve (nor have we ever)
to be anything but celebrated, loved.

There’s no account I need to go and settle,
no debts, no currency of wrongs,
no need to reconstruct an altered story —
I forgive myself, and everyone,
and wake to home.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2015

Authorship

redemption

Well, here’s the story of redemption:

You are redeemed, for you are here.
It takes attention
to choose you for a story,
to put you in,
to hedge about your life
with these meticulous details,
to give you motives,
give you a past,
give you this burning hope
that somehow
your life has worth and purpose:
It takes an overarching care
to author you. And look —
you’re here.

Know, too, that there’s no character
the author doesn’t love.
It is the way of things —
the way creation works:
The act of care that thinks you up
(pulls you, as her child,
right out of her head)
is always an act of love.

So have no fear.
You are redeemed
and always have been.
Just look inside yourself to see —
You’ll know.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2015