Normal

In an odd ways this feels like Easter again.   Holy Week always feels like the scheduled time to consider endings and beginnings and the triumph of new beginnings.  Harold Camping*s prediction caught more people this time around than 1994. I think media saturation has a lot to do with it.  Whatever the cause, there was no rapture this time either.  In an interesting way, the possibility that Jesus was coming again on Saturday at 6 PM, made the conversation about Jesus* Second Coming (a major tenet of the Christian faith) more real. Now we are back to normal.  I think for a few, it may look a little different.

Today we return to normal.

Some people never left

Normal.

Of course the idea of normal

Has always been

Our creation.

Good, bad, just the way it is

God-given, God-forsaken:

Normal remains

In the eye of the beholder,

The throat

Of the speaker.

Over the weekend:

Floods, tornadoes,

Volcanoes,

The cleanup in Japan

Continued still,

Continues now.

New tears and cleanup

Today

To the south of us.

New prayers as well.

This is normal

When we think of it

Really think of it

None of us are ever

Left behind,

Bereft.

We are in it

Together.

This is normal.

Today I return to survey the garden.

I cannot yet drive to the garden store,

So I assess what God has planted.

I pick four lilies of the valley, fragrant,

Two purple columbine, intricately made.

I declare this normal and wonderful.

I declare this good.