Stripes.

His children were still asleep when he left for work this morning.  He kissed his little boy in the early light, pressed his lips to his little girl’s sandy hair, and said, “I love you” in a whisper no louder than the morning breeze.

His wife, even more beautiful in the faint morning light than she always was, took his hands in hers and kissed him by the front door.

“Have a good day,” she told him.

“As long as I have you to come home to,” he told her.

He kissed her one more time, and opened the front door.  The air that greeted him was crisp and cool, and he took a deep breath.  He began the long walk to work, amid the busyness of the city’s streets.  The front-door shops seemed to rub their eyes and yawn and stretch to welcome the day.  Food sizzled over open fires as the two-table restaurants opened for breakfast.  He breathed deeply of the smell of frying eggs.

A street dog scampered alongside him, and he nodded a hello.  The dog stayed with him for a full block, before finding a more interesting scent in a small pile by the roadside.  He nodded good-bye, and he lifted his eyes to a sight that pleased him every morning.

She stood at the front door of her shop, which was also the front door of her home, sweeping yesterday’s dust from her steps.

“Good morning.”  His voice was pleasant, but the smile in his mouth didn’t quite reach his lips.  It didn’t go with the uniform.

“Good morning.”

She paused as he walked by, resting her hand on the broom handle.  She couldn’t help but let her eyes linger as he walked by.  That uniform looked great.

He arrived at work and let the captive smile go free to greet his coworkers.  He enjoyed his work, stressful as it could be, because he liked the men he worked with.  They could count on each other.  They were a family.  He knew that was a rare gift, and said a prayer of thanks every day.  He and his coworkers always shared a joke and a laugh with each other as they went about the business of their day.  It was one way of coping with “The Element”.

“The Element,” he called them.  As in, “The unseemly element”.  The riffraff.

And he dealt with society’s most unseemly Elements, in a long succession, every day.  Their faces, though many, seemed to take on one, generic face.  Dirty, suspicious, and afraid.  He administered his role to them equitably, though, and even with some pleasure

He approached the stone wall where his tools hung awaiting his able hands.  The handle was cleaned meticulously every night (a thoroughly relaxing experience), and he enjoyed the sheen of the shining leather in the morning sunlight.  He lifted it from the wall and approached the small, open-air, walled area he liked to call “The Workshop.”

A man sat at a desk, pen in hand, ready to give instruction.  The Element stood in the open area, looking as it usually did: tired, dirty, and to him, quite guilty.  This one looked particularly bedraggled, and he chuckled a little to the man at the desk.

“He looks like he’s been through it already!” he said.  “What can we do for him?”

“Forty minus one.” the man at the desk said blandly.

“Forty minus one.” he repeated.  

He smiled, and set about his work.

Good Friday

The rain fell lightly on their little covering as they prepared their Good Friday feast.  Donuts and instant coffee made a ragamuffin eucharist.  The turnovers didn’t transubstantiate, but the people did.  As they opened their hearts to friendship, they became the open arms of Christ.  As their eyes welcomed in the stranger, they became the embrace of Jesus.


A messenger of God filled the rain with her laughter, and hands that once held prison bars held Innocence close as she said, “I love you.”  Forgiveness whispered back, “I love you, too.”


Angels danced in the street to the music of an infinite grace.

Sunday Morning.

No light could be seen from inside the cave.  The cold air held the scent of rock and moss and the lingering odour of bitter herbs.  The silence was palpable, hovering in the tomb like a spirit.

A body lay on the stone shelf, its unnatural stillness betraying the illusion of deep sleep that can fall upon the dead.  For all the beautifying shrouds so carefully wrapped around the body, and the precious blossoms placed upon the swaddling cloths, this was a corpse.  His friends had done their best to dress the wounds, in some unreasoning and unspoken hope that even in death they might heal, but the reality remained.  It was gruesome.  He looked as though he had been mauled to death, and the truth was not far from it.  It took hours to dress his wounds, long enough for tears to give way to the quiet business at hand.  Finally, his mother had wiped the blood from his face.  She caressed his pallid brow, placed the last shroud upon his face, and kissed him through the veil.

There was evening and there was morning, and evening and morning.  The third day.

The cold air of night lingered inside the tomb, and the ground was cool to the touch.  All was still, but for the movement of a beetle, and so silent that its footsteps could be heard as it skittered across the wall.

Then, in that silence, a breath.  

Lightening, or something like it, lit the cave for barely a moment, and cast a deep, black shadow beneath the feet of the beetle.  

Another breath.

Air filled the lungs that had sat breathless since Friday as the death shrouds fell from the man’s body.  The man sat up on one elbow and took in another draught of crisp, morning air.  He smiled.  The scent of the cave delighted him, especially the scent of myrrh emanating from his burial shroud.  It reminded him of home.  He stood, and he seemed to be clothed in robes made of light itself.  He turned and looked at the burial shrouds.  He smiled again, noticing the faint imprint his form had left on them.  The shrouds were wrinkled from the absence of his body, and he remembered something his mother had told him about making his bed.  He folded them neatly and placed them on the stone shelf.  The blossoms he arranged in an impromptu bouquet.  The beetle came to inspect them.  He smiled, turned to the sealed mouth of the cave, and walked through it.  

His face welcomed the sun, and his eyes took in every colour of the garden with more vibrancy than he had known in years.  Each sound became more clean and clear, each birdsong more a melody.  The world was alive, and felt as resurrected as Christ himself.  And as he walked from the tomb, in the cool of the day, the stone rolled back from the tomb, seemingly of its own accord, and the morning sun stole into the cave like the dawn of the first day.

He looked, and saw that it was very good.