Sacrament

Each day we complete a banal and sacred ritual,

A domestic compline in our homely chapel:

A bath, not baptism, but holy cleansing,

A Eucharistic meal of fruit and water,

Sacred readings not of Gospel or Quran,

But of Dr. Seuss and Chicken Little,

And a divine touch more solemn

Than that by which the hemorrhaging woman

Brushed the garment of Christ

And became whole.

A small hand, innocent of worldly ugliness,

Pure and unblemished by wrinkles,

Yet gnarled and chafed

From over-zealous nail biting:

I take it in mine, and I am complete,

I know love, and I comprehend grace.

Sitting by my child’s bed at night,

Reading her a story,

Listening outside her door as she finishes her bath,

Holding her hand as she falls asleep,

We enact a holy rite.

Chafed hands and bitten nails

Are a strange sort of sacrament,

Not unlike baptism in uncomfortably cold water,

A wedding where the cake never arrives,

Or the Body of Christ present in stale bread:

Divine mysteries manifest in fallible, human constructs.

But I like things that are human;

I’m happy with the marred and incomplete.

The sacred liturgies, even the Holy Gospel itself,

Set forth the way I learned it as a child,

With its flawless, Elizabethan cadence

And its majestic prose,

Is not quite so awesome

As my child’s small voice, reading to me about Rover.

Light-filled corridors infused with incense and statuary,

Are not quite as sacred

As my child’s rickety bedside.

When Thomas touched the hands and side of his Lord,

He could not have been more inspired

Than I am, when I hold my child’s slight hands in mine.

I cannot know if God or heaven are real,

But Paradise is in the gentle touch

She and I share each night.

There is no need for transcendent glory

When we perceive the immanent splendor

Of sacred touch
And mundane rites of human life.