Azure that morning. Later we learned that the flight paths
may have taken all three planes directly over our home.
Did they fly above the lawn, the forest in which the kids
imagined a perfect world away from adults, the path through the woods that led to their school playground?
Had I looked up, I would have seen those contrails in the
cerulean sky, never guessing such hatred could soar so.
This Sunday, we imagine the Good Shepherd coming for us.
Scanning the landscape to find us,
not to destroy or dismember or dis...
but to search, restore us and all that we've lost,
before that day, on that day, and after that day.
Centuries ago, from the borderlands of Syria,
--Aleppo?-- came a praying poet.
Ephrem saw the Shepherd who seeks us,
not merely on the pasture ground,
but from the skies. He praised:
"The Shepherd of all flew down
in search of Adam, the sheep had strayed;
on His shoulders He carried him, taking him up;
he was an offering for the Lord of the flock
Blessed is his His descent, his hovering!
Blessed is Your rising up!"1.
O Savior, fly down again. O carry us up from the smouldering Pile.
1. Ephrem the Syrian (306-373 CE) The Paradoxes of the Incarnation