Ordinary Round Moments
Joanna Campbell
- I cheated again at Centering Prayer.
- Instead of repeating one sacred word, I contemplated the weight of my prayer beads. Or rather, their lightness, how they rest in my palm like a cloud.
- Each wooden bead is a container for hundreds of prayers. The cumbersome words are an unfinished painting.
- There is an eye on each bead.
- Really, these are knots. They are the connective tissue from when the wood was part of a tiny branch—the place where the branch met the body of the tree.
- I roll the beads between thumb and forefinger. Often, there are no words—only the hope I am pushing toward something.
- I try to ease into uncertainty.
- There is a squirrel storing acorns inside our house.
- My brother-in-law has Stage 4 cancer.
- A woman will likely be executed tonight in Georgia. Not even the Pope could sway the clemency board.
- Seeing Jesus in the eyes of everyone we pass is an act of resurrection. Rarely do I practice this kind of medicine.
- Buried beneath my anxiety is a young woman, deeply shaken by the sudden deaths of friends.
- At a recent ordination, love rolled inside the sanctuary like a pinball. Give your clever talents over I heard in a hymn. They spilled out as tears.
- I could not hide my face.
- I want to be like the woman who sings at the oddest times.
- Today, my loved ones are alive.
- I need things to push against in order to give shape to a day.
- The catch phrase, life is short, catches me in all the wrong ways.
- Dang it.
- I may already be living my dream.
- I listen to a favorite song and hear familiar words for the first time, words like cool water, elegant and true. I make them my own, and they move between the beads.
- Roll and push and touch our perfect bodies with your mind. Touch our perfect bodies with your mind. Hear this broken meditation and touch our perfect bodies with your mind.