Gloria illis qui vivunt (Glory to those who live)

Sister Gregory in second grade

explained how to avoid hell

through faith and acts

to ascend at the end

to heaven's glories.

In high school the priest at mass,

a diminutive Franciscan poet,

spoke his gentle homilies as we

jaded adolescent boys slumped

into the oak chapel pews.

My father, a former seminarian,

once told me that some knowledge

might lead me from religion but

that more knowledge eventually

would lead me back to God.

Having heard them and others out,

and then engaged with life's tumult,

finding in it what worked for me,

I am content to live both in the now

and in the memories of what I've been.