lenten journal: aftermath
In my reading this week, I came across these words:
If we’re not to lose heart in the aftermath of failures, we must take care how we tell our stories. — (Lawrence Weinstein, Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us)
His words helped me find these.
aftermath
the oldest use of the word
has nothing to do with
tragedy or arithmetic
and all to do with agriculture
the aftermath grows after
the first crop has been cut
something grows after failure
and heartache in the wake
of absence after grief
the stories are the soil
we retell (re-toil) or perhaps
the seeds of second chances
that add up to more than
the sum of our catastrophes
inadequacies and mistakes
after math comes story time
where the words can add up
to more than what was lost
Peace,
Milton
