I test the waters for the next book club read.
The Winner of the National Book Award is what 
I select for principled perusal. Brooklyn serves as 
base for an order of nursing nuns who care for elderly
shut-ins, disabled invalids, needy families, abused wives, 
children in predominately Irish Catholic environs.

These are no ordinary women, these women of God 
who do what no priests can bring themselves to do.
With minds, ethics, and a determined will of their own   
they take control when others won’t, can’t, or prefer 
to look the other way. They handkerchief away the mucus
from a patient’s nose, wipe the pale bottoms of
invalids, empty their commodes. They change and
wash soiled underwear, bathe, dress, feed the sick,
dispose of coughed up phlegm. 

Nothing escapes their eyes, from small sins to infidelity, 
negligence to cruelty, inattention to desertion.
I convince myself I align with them for the good they do 
until I read what Sister Lucy says in a series of quotes:

“Never waste your sympathy. The poor we will always
have with us.” This she says without kindness or resignation. 
But her final quote stuns me with disbelief as I read and reread 
searching for her intention:

“If we could live without suffering, we’d find no peace in heaven.”

I sit, ponder, wondering if I regret having read so far and now
wanting to abandon this prize winning novel. I resolve to continue
and encounter more sins, some committed by nuns, all committed
in the same hour of the day. 

I research the title and discover the Ninth Hour, or the Midafternoon 
Prayer, is a fixed time of prayer of the Divine Office of almost all 
traditional Christian liturgies, consisting mainly of psalms said around 
3 pm, about the ninth hour after dawn. Is this the magic hour? The 
bewitching hour? The truth hour? The uncaring hour?

And in biblical times?  The feast of Passover, when they once 
slew sacrifices from the ninth hour to the eleventh corresponds
obliquely to this hour of mystery. It is also the hour in which
the nuns commit their greatest sin, one of playing God, that will 
prevent them from entering the heaven they believe in.

Armed with this knowledge, I still cannot accept the biting
message on Sister Lucy’s tongue.  I would rather live in peace, 
without suffering and never think about Sister Lucy’s heaven 
whose entry price is unaffordable, unacceptable for me.
                        

The price of luxury goods, 
like reality and truth, has soared.
Not easily affordable, like truffles,
they are considered rare commodities,
close to priceless, well-hidden 
in the midst of camouflaged
trappings and leafed layerings,
sniffed out only by 
scent-honed hunting hogs.

To take what is unvarnished, 
untarnished, in its natural state,
and redefine it as something 
malleable, twistable, theoretic,
unpopular, is an art, one that
few possess, but many admire. 

And that is why we read fables
to our children. The moral
at the end gets them closer
to truth than sworn testimony
and allegiance to falsehoods
masking veracity while attempting
to bury what will one day betray
their efforts and strip them bare.
                        

If you’re in the business of stealing 
tomorrows from children, 
recognize that the sacrifice of 
their young blood will never
appease the unholy
power of gun worship.

If you’re fine with leading
lambs to slaughter along
with their shepherds,
change your party flag
symbol from pachyderm 
to an AR-15.

If the god you pray to
craves power and might,
revenge and ultimatums,
realize that the more
powerful and mighty
the god, the more
violent his worshippers.

Pray, worship, vow allegiance,
but choose your gods wisely
and do no harm.