Water erasing stone,
Color uncovered with each intimate drip
Sandstone? Granite? Clay?
Always shifting.

Life shaping faith
Beauty revealed with each piercing drop
Belief? Truth? Hope?
Oh, how it keeps shifting.

Life sanding stone
miles traveled
conversation, laughter, grief
all sacred sanding, dripping, cutting.

Absolute? Sorry. Safe? Please.
African refugees
and Muslims and holy characters of all walks
sorting, sifting, shifting me and my deepest held belief.

Kneeling on a roof in Delhi, bearing witness
to a thousand rasping coughs offered to heaven
as one desperate prayer,
ascending with the eternal incense
of countless cooking fires.

Simmering in the Carolina sun with Waleed
warm words and a tender heart
intimacy, intimacy with Allah
present the way Aquinas could only hope
for all of us. For me.

Certainty may resist dripping
but the cost, the cost.
Forced, formal, cheap, and cold.
A fearful response to the stunning destruction
of being created.

What if your faithfulness is foolishness? Who are you,
if you miss
the beauty of every drip?