Jim's Poem a Day 2026

Global corporatization, hyper-charged in America, results in dehumanization in every conceivable way. One simple error can result in weeks of waiting, hours of following up by phone or text after receiving   indecipherable letters and mysterious and troubling voicemail messages and warnings that you must respond *now* but the entire system is set up to be as non-responsive and frustrating as possible so that  the powers that be— banks, insurers healthcare  conglomerates, pharmaceutical companies hang on to your money as long as possible. They say they’re all about customer service, but the only thing they deliver is profit for shareholders while the people on the other end of the phone line are tiring and dying.

In the spirit of the imprecatory Psalms, which curse the individuals and systems responsible for violence, murder and war, to move us from righteous indignation to heartfelt lament and radical solidarity, during the next National Day of Bible Reading, let us remember the words of Psalm 10: O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

Now and then we have brushes with our own frailty and mortality, glimpses of what it might be like to be really old and near the end when we start to lose control of any and all bodily functions. It helps to have people who care. It helps to have competent helpers. It helps to have memories of love. 

The last thing I remember before I passed out was trying to will myself into not passing out, but it seemed inevitable as my vision began blurring and tunnelling and my ears began ringing, and I could tell that Mary was saying something to me and waiting for me to respond but the ringing made it impossible to hear and I was afraid that, if I tried to speak, I’d lose my concentration and pass out, but out I went just the same. But it didn’t seem like death, and it wasn’t. It was just a frail old human being struggling with being overheated and having a stomach bug. The thing I’ll most remember is the absolutely remarkable kindness that everyone showed me. It turns out that there is some grace in the world, and sometimes we may rest safely in its arms.

Thank God for being alive, for consciousness, for the gift of awareness, for human community, for the love that cuts through everything else and lifts and heals all that is ill or faint-hearted, for the beauteous summer day and the clouds and grass and trees and dogs and this moment of being grateful, even when things aren’t great! Set aside the quest to figure everything out, mortal, you cannot know nor can you ever know what you think you’re capable of knowing. Your task is this: to be grateful now, to be kind when you can, to sing songs that lift the soul and drift upward into the heavens where they sweeten the sun.

What is gone in the end  is fleeting to begin with,  is ephemeral as air currents, is eventually a memory of something that cannot quite be recalled but felt like the thought of breeze brushing against one’s skin without context of place or time or superimposed categorization or order, so maybe it’s not really so much gone as absorbed, lingering like music weeks after a concert when notes still resonate somewhere but  the tune is just out of reach.

I haven’t read a weather forecast but I know it will be hot just the same. Already on this early June day, the sun seems a more intense and slightly hazy summery yellow  than spring’s clear fresh sunshine. And the blue sky has faded a bit from purest azure to the shade of one of my pale blue work shirts that has been washed perhaps a hundred times or more. And the grass seems to be calling out for more water even though it rained not that long ago. It will be hot, but I can picture the moment when the heat will break and drops of rain will streak my face, as cool and healing as a forest stream. But today it will just be hot.

We all have stones that we roll up the hill each morning, only to see them roll back down  each night, day after day, week after week, and we say, by way of greeting, “How’s your stone rolling going?” And then we reply, “Not too bad, I guess—could be worse.” And we try to distract ourselves with trips to the beach or a museum, but the stone waits for us wherever we go, reminding us of the price of cheating death for another day.

I used to be on a path that led almost certainly toward ill health and dissolution by the time I reached my current age, but now the path stretches just a bit further into the future and I have options about what to do with this bonus time, earned or unearned by choice and grace and circumstance. I have stories to tell and songs to sing, and there’s still time to become less cranky so that, when I’m truly ancient and living in the old folks’ home, people might still want to visit me.

There will be storms—torrents of rain and blasts of wind supercharged by rising ocean  temperatures and ever increasing moisture in the atmosphere. And there will be storms— government-sanctioned violence and waves of corruption and vanishing hard-won freedoms  once taken for granted. And somewhere among the storms we will create a refuge where love heals wounds and resists the deluge of fear.

  No other day has been the same as this day nor will there ever be a day just like today. Only in memory do the hours, days, weeks, months and years fade into dull sameness. And memory is so frail and feeble in the end that it cannot be trusted or counted upon, so all we have during this day is this day itself untidy, unfiltered, unblemished, unvarnished, and entirely enough to give us all we need. Lean mightily into today! Praise and give thanks!

Spirit of life, spirit of creation and sustenance and annihilation, we know that our lives are circumscribed by time and occurrences that we cannot possibly know or understand beforehand, that our departure by death is as mysterious as our arrival by birth, that we can never fully comprehend where we come from or where we go or any of the other great paradoxes of existence. But we do know that, in the end, we lose almost everything— family, friends, careers, homes, memories all fade away at last. And we know that this very moment, and as it passes, *this* moment goes on and on, beginning before us and continuing long after us. We pause now to sense the only thing that is eternal: just now. We pray that, if we remember anything at all at the end of our lives, it might all the love we have experienced throughout our time here, all the love that has brought joy and grief and meaning to us, all the love that has lifted us up, held us tight, and carried us on. Even if we cannot remember our...

There’s more room for empathy  in baseball than in most other sports. There’s enough time to imagine things  from the players’ point of view. As each batter steps to the plate, you put yourself in their shoes and think about what it must be like to see a 99-mile-an-hour fastball coming out of the pitcher’s hand, heading toward the center of the plate and then breaking in toward your hands just as you swing the bat and make contact, and the ball sails over the third baseman’s outstretched glove into left field and rolls down the chalk line toward the wall. And you can feel what it’s like to be the left fielder grabbing the ball barehanded and throwing it with all your strength toward second base, where the shortstop catches it on one bounce and tags the sliding runner just before your foot reaches the bag. And the crowd groans and cheers and gets ready for the next play.

Today I am officially old. Unofficially, of course, I’ve been old for some time; signs have been there for all to see— presbyopia, baldness, forgetfulness strange spots on my skin, bones popping and cracking every time I stand up. I like to think that with farsightedness comes the ability to see the big picture, to not be so caught up in close-up things that I lose sight of what I couldn’t see when I was younger and more impetuous. But it turns out that one is not bestowed with insight automatically with age; rather, I have had to work each day at seeing more deeply into things, into the place where clarity is elusive but where paradox and mystery can be held with a kind of grace that is just there, like air and gravity.

While there is time  enough to live, there is little time  to spare on things that seem to take up  too much time, things that distract  or detract from living  into each moment  as it occurs.

My eyes still filled with sleep, I have not yet been able to focus  on objects in the middle distance, nor can I see small, subtle things, so the only way I know it’s raining is the motion of the ferns as drops fall on their leaves and they nod along in a gentle, arhythmic chorus.

Life goes on, sometimes  longer than is good or desirable,  sometimes not nearly long enough, but even when individual lives end, life itself continues apace; and always someone is dying, someone is being born, and everyone tries to make sense of what happens in between.

My final prayer well may be a prayer  for death to come at last to clear away confusion wrought by living far too long, beyond all sense and hope and joy, beyond remembrance, reason, strength and will to live. And when death comes, it comes at last a friend.

We sometimes speak of “catching our breath,” as if breath were something running away from us, Something eluding our grasp, always just ahead of us, rather than something that moves through us, something that sustains and centers us in this moment. We pause now for a moment of silence to sense our breathing, not to control or corral it, but simply to experience breathing in, breathing out, together, in this place of peace and love. [pause] May we remember to pause and be present to our breathing, to the spirit of life, to this moment just as it is. And in so doing may we return to this place  where we breathe in peace and breathe out love now and always, Amen!  

After a hard rain, an old mulberry tree behind the church fell down and took another tree with it amid a small stand of trees near the backyard property line. Some of the trees predate the church building, which is some 106 years old, and others are newer, scrubbier trees that have grown and thrived, largely unnoticed by anyone and cared for by no one. Still, we deliberate carefully before deciding to remove these trees because they are living things, more firmly rooted and at home in this place than we are, and more deeply connected to all other living things than humans choose to be. And so we breathe and pray.

The last drink I had was 28 years ago at a music festival in North Carolina, where I was absolutely miserable, sneaking drinks from a bottle of vodka, staving off the shakes and pretending  to be sober while wishing I was either dead-drunk or merely dead rather than just half-drunk and half-alive. All these years later, sobriety is still the greatest challenge in the world and also the greatest gift—an absence, yes, as well as a presence I rediscover each day, one precious day at a time.

I mistakenly stumbled into doing work this morning rather than writing a poem, and now my task is to shift my attention away from the the thousands of work things and toward the single blank page before me, awaiting words from the heart of the universe transmitted feebly and lovingly through the filter of my awareness of this one and only moment.

Because I was officiating at yet another memorial service  last Sunday afternoon, I was unable to attend the interfaith  community organizing group’s annual fundraising banquet, but I understand that the Sisters of Joseph, who have been leading the weekly prayer vigil outside the ICE headquarters on Pittsburgh’s South Side, rain or shine, for the past year, were there and danced the electric slide with the same joy and gusto they put into all of their social justice endeavors, proving once again that the revolution *will* include dancing.

It is the time of life for me to savor life instead of madly rushing from thing to thing, to lean into wisdom instead of merely hoarding knowledge, to learn to love life as opposed to resenting all the things of life. 

Our dog is easily spooked by loud noises like the sound of the nail gun used by roofers on the house behind ours the other day. Going out for a walk, we made it only as far as the driveway before she froze in fear and refused to go further, despite my cajoling. It’s kind of like the way I feel when I walk into a room full of people chatting happily.

We give thanks for the newness of this and every day, for the chance to begin, if not with an entirely clean slate, then with one clean enough to give us space to breathe, to ponder, to center ourselves, to embrace a fresh start. We give thanks for the eternal mystery of this moment in which everything exists and unfolds all at once— even memory existing only now, enmeshed in the present, surrounded by constant, continuous, everlasting change. Let us pause to sense the nearness and newness of now. May we be present to beginnings even amid endings. May we be open to all the moments of our lives. And may we dwell in breathtaking wonder now and always. Amen!

What wondrous symmetry there is in life sometimes! Immediately after the funeral, we received news of the birth of a baby and a photo of her swaddled and sleeping soundly, entirely new and utterly alive.

There are times when  nothing seems easy, when one gets through  by thinking of everything as either done or not done,  and checking off boxes, and that’s OK, but it’s also good to breathe in between things, breathe and be present before moving on.

There are ways  of using words  that point  to something  beyond words; certain skill is necessary, but even more important is being immersed in that which is beyond words.

Each leaf flutters  in the wind, every  branch bends, and  whole trees sway. Each part stays  connected to the others and to the earth,  open to sun and rain, a part of everything, apart from nothing.

Finding myself overwhelmed by all the things calling out for my attention, I cannot focus on any of them until I see a single spherical blossom of lightest purple outside the window. I gaze at it for a moment, breathe in, breathe out, and find myself again.