Letting the Camel Go

The last two days I’ve listened to Gary Paterson the Moderator of the United Church of Canada preach.  And there were lots of poems within the preaching, tossed up delightfully for us to catch.  This was one of them.  I had to share it.  I’m imagining the breathlessness of the moment when you set the camel free, sending it off across the expanse of your life, the moment when it disappears over the horizon, the bare, free moment, surely gift itself, and then, . . . the burning bush, a greening flash in the ordinary day.

Is there a camel tied up in your life? a bare, free moment? perhaps a small, sudden vividness?

Lightening the Load

The first thing we have to do
is to notice
that we’ve loaded down this camel
with so much baggage
we’ll never get through the desert alive.

Something has to go.
Then we can begin to dump
the thousand things
we’ve brought along
until even the camel has to go
and we’re walking barefoot on the desert sand.

There’s no telling what will happen then
But I’ve heard that someone,
walking this way,
has seen a burning bush.

Francis Dorff, O.Praem