The Cross will be my place of beauty.
You relish its ragged, ruthless horror,
revel in its hideous cruelty.
You think to crush me with its awful weight.
No! I won’t allow it. I will break
your vicious power with my submission.
I choose to make this Cross my own
by shunning anger, outrage, bitterness,
and offering instead my free forgiveness.
Even you, I will forgive, and promise paradise
to all who glimpse the truth amidst the thorns,
who catch the strains of love among the cries.
I’ll wrap my mother and my friend within
a seamless woven robe of love and care.
I look, and I find beauty even here:
beauty in the hacked and splintering wood,
the dead set nails and spiteful thorns,
and my life’s blood poured out to feed the earth.
And you will see your bullying brutality
somehow flickering, faltering, failing.
I choose beauty.
