Authors /
Marda Messick
Marda Messick is a former ELCA pastor living in Tallahassee, Florida.
Good Friday, The Veneration
If desired, a wooden cross may now be brought into the church and placed in the sight of the people....
Holy Thursday,
The Stripping
The Stripping
The Celebrant returns to strip the Altar and chancel of all ornamentation, recalling the stripping of our Lord’s body at the crucifixion....
Public Radio,
Sunday Morning
Sunday Morning
“Sunday Baroque” on the radio,
making pancakes with the last
of last summer’s berries, we stop,
silent, as Allegri’s Miserere fills the house...
At the testing site
She was waiting in mask and gloves
for the next in line
in a trailer at the COVID testing site,
her rhinestone sandals not visible
but I knew her...
Conservation cemetery
A year since, I couldn’t find you—
“you,” that is, the hard bits,
the stardust and grit of you
left beneath the sparkleberry tree....
ALS: How it was
The diagnosis.
The C9orf72 gene.
The telling, the children, the mother.
The hiking stick, the cane, the rolling walker.
The lift chair, the gait belt, the ramps....
Easter, 2020
First Easter without
(he died in the summer)
and alone
although
in her driveway my neighbor
offered at arms’ length
a loaf of new bread...
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