Good Friday

It’s quiet this morning up on the bluff. It usually is, unless the creatures in the canyon get into a pre-dawn skirmish, but that’s a marker of summer and we’re just barely into the tendrils of spring.

There is no wind, even though I sometimes secretly wish there were. Jon comes to visit on the wind, and I woke up with him on my mind, which is right where he was when I went to sleep last night.

Good Friday.

What a name.

It’s supposed to be good, because we know the end of the story already — that we’re about to have the promise of forgiveness in a few days, and boy could we use it. I only went to confession once, and I lied the whole time because my sins were not age appropriate. Instead, I told the priest I had stolen some candy from the 7–11, even though I’ve never stolen any thing ever, because I was too ashamed to sit in the darkness and tell the truth.

I often still am.

The priest sent me home with a few prayers to say, and I hoped that the same prescription to treat stolen candy would work for lying to my parents about sleeping with a much, much older man. Maybe stop that madness, too, if I’m honest, but at the time I couldn’t be.

In later years I would learn that the forgiveness I’m seeking on behalf of others offers no respite for me. That Mary herself cannot…