Jesus takes my carefully planned calendar
and throws it out the window
where the birds eat it.
Jesus touches the hem of my clothes
and instantly I fall ill. Bedridden.
Jesus says, Woe to your puritan work ethics.
Didn’t my father say
you shall have no other gods?
I don’t think of my days as gods
but they are sneaky ones
I stuff to the brim with things I can say I did.
But not today. Not this week.
I am a body, broken. Immovable.
I lie, waiting for my own spirit to return.
Why, I ask Jesus, even though I know.
Enter my rest, he says, tucking me in
but I kick and whine like a toddler.
I’m not tired, I say as my eyes close
against my will. How is this yoke so difficult
when my burden is so light?
Sabbath
Show Comments ()
The latest from america
Will cutting humanitarian assistance help stem the flow of migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border? ‘America’ asked immigration experts to weigh in.
I was well into adulthood before I realized the co-author of my battered copy of The Elements of Style was also the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.
By remembering how a group of his students mended a fracture over a controversial book, a former college professor finds hope for national reconciliation.
This review by Andre Dubus III of Alice Munro’s short story collection ‘Open Secrets’ was originally published in America magazine in 1995. Ms. Munro, a Nobel Laureate and acclaimed author, died on May 13, 2024, at 92.