January 18th

"And they said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.' And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.  Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'” Genesis 11:3-4

gathering up the straw

figures of our fears and doubts,

handing us pails filled with 

the pebbles of our prejudice

and the bile of our bitter hearts,

we start making the bricks

we need in order to build

a towering monument which

trumpets our arrogance to

everyone around us, and we

walk through the doors into

our false security and slam

them shut behind us to keep out

that riffraff called grace and hope.

(c) 2024 Thom M. Shuman

Venmo: @Thom-Shuman