"The Shepherd" by Eugene Zak (1910/11), photographed by ngclark, on Flickr

Peter
by Madeleine L'Engle

Lord, I love you.
I have tried to feed your sheep.
Shepherds have a lonely job.

I have gone out searching for you
into the tumult of the midnight sky -
the swirling life of stars too many to count,
and have been defeated
by the rush of the wind.
And now you ask me to look within,
away from the vast and echoing sound without.

So I go down and in,
into the deepest, narrowest,
darkest, most brilliant
places of the heart.
I am battered by its beat
throbbing in my veins,
tension, release.
In the small space between the beats,
the rhythm
yours, not mine,
yours is its time
to keep me here, in time,
in, deeper, deeper,
to the beating of my heart.

So I end where I began
and once again I start
to learn that my disgrace
is ripped, is torn apart,
and mended by your grace.

from A Cry Like a Bell