Living Dead: A Plea

How odd it is to live dead.

Baptized. To enter the grave

where death is swallowed up

and you whisper: “New Creation!”

You, God, see to it that the old

has gone, the new has come

and the song on my lips changes.

Going on about business as usual is

a sad state, overrated, pointless.

But today, I understand that

dying to self and rising

to new life in Christ

is the stuff of meaning,

the stuff of history, the point.

And as you stir a prayer

within me, piercing and cutting

my heart with a double-edged sword,

I die. Some notice. Some do not.

I hope all will.

I want them to die. Just like I have.

Just like you have.

So that they might walk dead, too,

no longer in darkness but

in light and in life and have their own

new in-the-beginning moment.

Help me to die again tomorrow, Lord,

to self and all its trappings.

And the next day. And the next.

Raise me anew into life everlasting

which begins now.

And the next day. And the next.

Amen.