Prayer

The Jewish Passover; Christianity’s Easter; Islamic Ramadan; Hindu’s Holi; the Wiccan Ostara; the April festival referred to as Buddha’s Birthday; and countless others.  One aspect of the holiness inherent in these holidays focuses on that most human of experiences: winter has released its grip – the earth is becoming green again.  No matter where you make your home on this planet, there are the hard and fallow seasons of the year, and others where fertility and renewal are ascendant.  The angel of death passes over our community – and then we rejoice at our survival.

America and the world are slowly moving through the cruelest and most unyielding of winters in recent memory; the pandemic drove us indoors to hunker down in isolation, desperate for that invisible storm to finally pass us by.  We are presently going through our second Covid spring – and with vaccinations becoming more widespread, we have reason to pray (however you interpret that word, and whatever your family’s tradition) that spring will bring us reason to celebrate.

Charles Coe’s writing is filled with celebration: of family, memory, history; of the beauty surrounding us and those inner clearings we retreat to for a sense of peace.  Poet, educator, singer, blogger, raconteur, he published his third collection, Memento Mori (Leapfrog Press) in 2019.  Running all through the poet’s work there is praise for endurance, continuity; but the challenge is how can we endure while still keeping our hearts intact in an often-brutal world?  The answer, his poems seem to suggest, involves more than stubborn determination; you have to find a way to love the world despite its failings, despite the obstacles placed in your path.  It’s by no means an easy discipline, but necessary nonetheless.  Sometimes the insight contained in a poem strengthens our resolve.  When I first read Charles’ simple and simply beautiful poem, “Prayer”, in the recent collection, I felt he’d managed to transform the ordinary into a Red Letter day.  Holy.