whatever partakes in god

death, birth, God

is safe in God. But what is the safety of God?

My mother called me one night to tell me a child I only remembered as a rambunctious four-year-old had jumped off a bridge into the ice of the Minnesota River in February.

What can one say to that? Nothing. No lips should move, just hearts.

I woke up at four in the morning the next morning to brush my teeth, and saw on my phone my friend had shared pictures of his freshly birthed nephew. He was a perfect little potato, with his thin blond eyebrows invisible above his little slits of eyes.

Well, here you are. Welcome to a world someone just left. We’re not always sure what it’s for, except perhaps for that part where we leave memories in each other. So many of them are painful and terrible, but many of them are good.

“In the midst of life we are in death,” says the Book of Common Prayer Order for the Burial of the Dead. “It’s true the other way around,” said Crawford.

Who are you, God, who is in all of it?