This morning, church was about despair and hope.
The altar table was covered with the shards of a broken pottery vase.
There was space for grief and rage and confusion,
and also for healing and hope, and good singing, as always.

This poem happened:

On the table
the bowl is shattered,
the shards are scattered
across the torn cloth.

A city inside me is burning
and the sky is torn by fury
or by the hand of God
and who is to say
which of those names
we shall give it today?

Where shall we go now?
Where shall we find
the threads of the tale
when the wind has blown,
wild,
through the window?
Will the mystery matter
within the wreckage?

Still–

into the silence
a bird on the windowsill
sings a brief note
that sounds for the moment
like hope.