PSALM 7: CONFESSION

Photo from Unsplash.

Photo from Unsplash.

Look at those who are in labor with wickedness,
who conceive evil, and give birth to a lie.

They dig a pit and make it deep
and fall into the hole that they have made.

Don’t play God, we hear,
but we make our own births and we make our own
deaths
in setting God aside 
we are undone
by our doing
we make things
poisoned from the start
under our own power
for our own want.
We can’t craft oceans
or mountains or a cedar
or the rising of a star
or the way fire turns to glass
and so need to sit for a while and listen
to the tides and the wind in the heights
and the creak of branches 
and be 
crucibles

Cara Ellen Modisett

Cara Ellen Modisett is associate rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton, Va. and a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. A collaborative pianist and essayist, former public radio reporter and magazine editor, she graduated in 2022 from Virginia Theological Seminary.

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DESPERTANDO LA ESPERANZA: ORANDO EL OFICIO DIARIO EN UN HOSPITAL PSIQUIÁTRICO