"In the Name" by Pádraig Ó Tuama

“In the name”

-Pádraig Ó Tuama

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

In the name of goodness and love and broken community.

In the name of meaning and feeling and I hope you don’t screw me…

In the name of darkness and light and ungraspable twilight

In the name of mealtimes and sharing and caring by firelight

In the name of action and peace and human redemption

In the name of eating and drinking and table confession

In the name of sadness, regret, and holy obsession,

The holy name of anger, the spirit of aggression

In the name of forgive and forget and I hope I get over this

In the name of father and son and the holy spirit

In the name of beauty and beaten and broken down daily.

In the name of seeing our creeds and believing in maybe,

We gather here, a table of strangers, to speak of our hopeland and talk of our danger…

To make sense of our thinking, to authenticate lives

To humanize feeling and stop telling lies

In the name of philosophy, theology, and who gives a damn?

In the name of employment and study and finding new family

In the name of our passion our loving and indecent obsessions

In the name of prayer and of worship and demon possession

In the name of solitude and quiet and holy reflection

In the name of the lost and the lonely and the without direction

In the name of efficiency, stupidity, and the wholly ineffectual

In the name of the straight, the queer, and the sometimes bisexual

In the name of Mary and Jesus and the mostly silent Joseph.

In the name of speaking to ourselves, saying, “this is more than I can cope with”

In the name of touch-up and break-up and break-down and weeping

In the name of therapy and Prozac and full-hearted breathing

In the name of sadness and madness and years since I’ve smiled

In the name of the unknown the alien and the holy in exile

In the name of goodness and kindness and intentionality

In the name of harbor and shelter and family.