Maggie was ordained today, and for many reasons i was glad (because she's smart, and funny, she works hard, she has an innate sense of justice, because she fosters community, because she is a writer, because she knows simone weil, because of her arrest record, because she knows and perhaps is strange)

but the thing that impressed me the most in the service, and a service i was v. late for, was the use of this poem

John Donne

HOLY SONNETS. VII. At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ; All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow, All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ; For, if above all these my sins abound, 'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, When we are there. Here on this lowly ground, Teach me how to repent, for that's as good As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.