Blessed are the Bankrupt

They sat where the wind bit bare hills,
not for shade,
not for spectacle,
but because the dirt was warm
and the Rabbi’s voice cut softer than the sun.

He didn’t climb the hill like Caesar.
No horns. No blood banners.
Just calloused feet
and eyes like someone
who’s buried a brother.

He opened His mouth,
Not to gape,
To judge slack-jawed at
their lack
But to teach them –
Of treasure in jars of clay.

He opened his mouth,
and flipped the world inside out.
Said,
Blessed are the poor in spirit
which is to say:
you will overdraft faith,
You have fingered your pride,
bringing silence where prayers used to echo.
Yours is the Kingdom.
Not later. Not after.
Now.

The Spirit pours into emptied cups. 

And blessed are the mourners,
the undone,
the sleepless guardians of urns and empty beds,
the ones who hold grief like a relic
because love once breathed there.
They’ll be comforted,
Anesthesia?
No.
Like arms strong enough to catch
the whole falling of you.

The Spirit is new every mourn. 

And then –
God help us –
he blessed the meek.
The ones who don’t clap back,
who take the slap
and swallow the clever line that would’ve killed.
He said they’d inherit the earth.

Not by conquest.
Or scheme.
By weathering it all without becoming
what cracked  them.

Tell me again
how weakness works.
How the bruised will wear crowns.
How the quiet ones
will one day
own
the whole of the grit.