by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
“Well I thanks you for my birthday message.
I am thirty-five years old and still have all my teeth.”—Flannery O’Connor, Letter to Betty Hester, April 2, 1960
Little did I know, I’d have just four more. Birthdays never meant that much to me until I stopped having them. Now they seem a sweetness every humanoid should savor, a day for cake and contrition for all the things you done and didn’t get to and might not ever, given the call we all get but really don’t expect to out of this party we call life. The knife I use to cut my cake is sharp. Like my eye and my pen. My stories rife with folks who need a light to see themselves by. Maybe candlelight is best, a birthday song reminding us all we won’t be here long.
(83) Three Poems For Flannery O'Connor's 100th Birthday—Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
"God did not
promise that our lives would be easy,
or pain-free, or without enemies, or unshaken by tempests.
But God did
promise:
in the belly of the beast?
God will be there.
Because God
was already there,
with us,
for us,
each of us,
all of us,
always.
And so the
blessing of God,
Who is both the storm, and the shelter,
ready you, bless you, and keep you,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Rev. Lizzie
McManus-Dail
(Inspired
by Saint Julian of Norwich and the benediction blessing she gives every week at
her church)
