Girdle for the Grieving: a Prayer
The terrible birds of righteous retribution killed so many little ones in order to destroy that symbolic foothold of the modern world, where the bared teeth of the demon were made fuzzy by the plaque of indignation. A deed done by those who see their own smallness as more holy and more blessed than the worldy achievement of a wealthy people, more worthy, enough to take punitive retaliation against innocent workers in that world, killing them and destroying the dreams of their own families.

Death came to people with personal hopes and desires to love their families. They became collateral damage in wars fought by titans from behind walled citadels, protected by shadows and the wings of iniquity.

Reverend Mother, your legendary care for the doubting Thomas, Dropping your girdle for him to realize that you had actually left this life,
      is
            A majestic myth.
                    Your blue band of belting became
The foundational relic of the Cathedral-reliquary of Notre Dame de Chartres.

                  Renaissance reconnaissance redoubled the myth in so
                many artworks called
    Santa Maria Gloriosa, Vergine, Madre, Regina, Assunta.

            Your window, the Belle Verriere at Chartres, transfuses the prayers
of so many pilgrims at that same glorious place in European France,
                  motherland of culture and murderous politics,
                  with the power of the poor, the healing of the humble,
                and a luminous, lightsome grace.

                Let your mantle fall again on the grieving people who lost so many
            dear ones at the central market of our new world order
at the gates where the twin towers once beckoned all and sundry
    To the pinnacle of worldly pride and prescient wisdom.

We need the loss to be turned into grace. Your gentle example of steadfast love and loyalty wounded to your very marrow at the sight of your own son’s death on a cross built for political expediency by titans who saw no value in his words or works. Your insights into the very meaning of love and life are balm to those who look for it. Help us to seek the blessings which come from the relics of your reliance on God in the face of total destruction. Drop your blue wisdom on our troubled world, again.

Madonna del Pilar, Theotokos of Kiev, Lady of Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Walsingham, Medjogorje, Krakow, Auschwitz, Beijing, Nagasaki, Atocha, Cebu, and Queen of Heaven with tearful anomalies on the faces of plaster statues and in the hearts of simple men and women. Help us to be simple enough to see the veiled value of Faith and Hope while we try still to live in love.