Likening the Miracle

I read "Likening the Miracle" at the annual LDS church cultural arts presentation. This rare opportunity to mingle with other poets, composers and musicians left me feeling energized and motivated to keep writing. Best of all, I felt connected to them with a common purpose: to create something that is "lovely, praiseworthy and of good report".

This poem resulted from some personal struggles. One particularly difficult Sunday, I listened to an inspired Gospel Doctrine teacher discuss the story of the woman who exercised faith to be healed by touching Christ's garment. The teacher shared several historical details: how the woman might have been shunned because her illness made her "unclean", how she had most likely never married or even felt the comfort of human touch for twelve years. After living so long with shame, the woman could have been reluctant to ask the Savior to bless her with the laying on of hands. But she found enough faith to reach out and touch the fringe of his garment.

I'd heard the story countless times but was stunned by how it became a metaphor for what I was experiencing. After being unable to write poetry, I was happy to feel motivated again and a theme about the atonement gradually emerged.

Most people experience a kind of Gethsemane at least once in their lives. I hope those who read this poem come away with a reverence for the reality of the atonement--how our Savior's willingness to endure excruciating spiritual pain enabled Him to understand and heal our "unseen wounds".


Likening the Miracle

"For she said within herself,
if I may but touch his garment,
I shall be whole." Matthew 9:21

I never hovered
outside village crowds--
unclean in my bleeding,
banned from even a dream
of touch
or embrace.

My hand never drew healing
through rough-woven folds
that clothed the Messiah
as carpenter's son.

Yet my living is spent
in search
of prescription;
wearing the dust
of windburned journey,
I finally kneel
then reach
for a reddened robe.

And He who bore
Gethsemane's unseen wounds
will yet pronounce me
whole.