A rare snow coats the mid-south this morning. It invited me to a party I too-rarely attend, held by a fireplace. There I soloed the still-dance of reflection as flames fluttered their rhythms.

   You are invited. Sing silent prayers for those who cannot find silence.     

 My prayers included #321012. The prison system stole his name in favor of a number. Glenn Sexton is the prisoner to whom I have ministered for 9 years. A court death-sentenced him in 2001. One might think that Death Row's row of 81 prisoners might find silence in the 23 hours a day they occupy solitary cells. Instead, noise drenches their steel & concrete cages.

   But, Glenn is used to noise. Abandoned by his parents at 6 (literally left alone for three days.) He lived in 19 homes before escaping to a house of his own: a cardboard box beside a factory. He was fifteen. Pray peace for Glenn.

   In her early teens Gwen was expelled to Nashville's streets to sell her body to predatory men. Now fifty-going-on-ninety, her body wrecked by decades of addiction, abuse & smoke, she struggles for every breath. Pray peace for Gwen

   In the hospital or hospice where you work lie your patients. What moments of silence they find may be interrupted by PA systems, noise from the nurse's station or abrupt, predawn interruptions. They too wear numbers. They too wear uniforms almost as humiliating as prison jump suits. Help them find silence. 

   Kate Gray may be unknown to you. When her next book of poems appears, buy it. If you seek light-hearted rhymes to send you skipping pick another poet. If you seek inspiration that touches your soul & transforms it choose Kate Gray.

   She begins "Incantation For the Man Outside" with Mark 1:35, "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." Then:

   "There is no silence like the night by the train station/ after trains leave, after moonset, after Venus moves/ in an arc across the night to a spot blocked by Earth.

   There is no silence like the brown bag, crumpled, supple,/ drenched, the doorway filled with sack and trash, the way/ the viewer's eye reduces the weather-beaten man to drink.

   There is no silence like the one in the tongue/ where words wait for tooth and breath and nerve,/ where threat floods the brain, knocking thought out.

   What silence can there be for him when all sound is threat,/  when outside is razor wind, when piss rims the nose, when inside/ is forbidden, or inside the mind, a movie plays too loud.

   The din stretches dawn to dusk. Pray./ The morning is still very dark. Pray./ Pray, make silence safe."

   Here, by the fire, I pray silence for you.

-Rev. Erie Chapman