Awaiting Answers
By Al Staggs, Chaplain and Performing Artist,
Santa Fe, NM
Why the refugees in Darfur
must barely cling to life,
and why the dispossessed in Iraq
must live as if there is no life,
cannot be answered or explained
in any satisfactory manner.
Why the older woman who
was once so full of life and dignity
is now only a shell of her former self,
and why those whose lives are lived
in suffering and anguish because of the
diseases that attack their bodies
must continue to breathe their painful breaths,
I cannot say.
There is meaning . . . there must be . . .
though the meaning and the answers
cannot be provided by any
theological statement that I can find.
The meaning and the answers
must wait in agonizing and prolonged suspension
for another day and another life
when all must be made clear.
The whys remain as we
hold on tenaciously, precariously
to our eternal hope.
