In the stories I return to, people love each otherindirectly. Offering coins, their moonlitfaces. Not receiving too much credit.Like the man at work today who answered“How are you?” with “Blessed.” I thought,that’s not an answer to the question.Afterward, I spent the da

In certain folktales, she appears with Mary,pierced through with the scissors and needlesof girls who worked, forbidden, on Sundays.She is marred with knives, and scarredwith scythes wielded disobediently.I imagine Christ’s gentle hands, healinghis battered Saint, pulling nails from her flesh,

From the Rev. John P. McNamee, a poem for the Christmas season