HOUSE BLESSING

Arts and Culture
Written By Scott Robinson

Image courtesy of the author.

I count the interlocking candy canes

Around the border of the Christmas throw,

And wonder how compact a life can grow

Before no narrative at all remains.

Go into your cell, Abba Moses coaxed,

Your cell will teach you everything.

                                                           Does each

Crack in the rock, does every trickling breach

Speak truth? Outside this cave, are all verhexed?

I learned today I can no longer make

Haus-Segen, with their stars and birds and flowers,

A prayer or scripture verse to lend its powers

To bless, or heal. My hands forever shake.

Had shepherds sought along some vista’d way,

Would they have missed the cave where Jesus lay?

(Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch words:

Verhexed: spellbound, bewitched

Haus-Segen: house blessing.)

Scott Robinson

Scott has one of those résumés that give HR people a migraine. He grew up amongst the glacial hills and lakes, and long, cold winters of Central New York. He has worked at Renaissance Faires, as, variously, an actor, musician, and a Tarot reader, and at one faire he met his wife, Allison. He taught college music for ten years, then studied to become an Interfaith Minister, in which he concentrated on hospice chaplaincy. He is a professed member of the Third Order of St. Francis, a religious order within the Episcopal Church. He has recently begun the study of Druidry, as part of his quest to "free Christ from his Near Eastern captivity." He has early onset Parkinson's Disease, which is making him less inhibited every day, God help us. He lives in Philadelphia.

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