Mark 5:29

At once her bleeding stopped, and she felt in herself that she was cured of her affliction.


absorbent cloth and sphagnum moss
are known clotting agents
damming blood from outside in

soon a scab can be trusted
to crust over an open spigot
protecting connecting inward out

as long as these usual ways
work we will wait
sometimes pick mostly wait

sometimes life comes backward
without any idea at all
our bones know a new deal

down in those fountains of blood
to touch or be touched
is neither here nor there

our inside another’s outside
spark a connection
beyond intention


To paraphrase a song originally written in Spanish by María Grever, “What a difference a touch makes.” The song’s history and some notable recordings of it are available — http://www.songswithearlierhistories.com/what-a-difference-a-day-makes/

Parenthetically, a case can be made for every good love song (not-codependent or abusive) being a theological statement about the romance involved in the partnership of G*D and Humans. Remember the Song of Songs.

Years, twelve of them, had dragged on and on, each experienced as longer than the previous one(s), individually and cumulative.

Now, in an “euthys”, a difference, a BANG!.

What could have been a Raider’s of the Lost Ark face-melting scene turns out entirely different. “Instead of death, she found life. In the new Israel, where salvation [healing] reigns, no one is personally unclean.” [LaVerdiere, 1:138].

This shift in power is like a tidal bore forcing rivers to run backward. It is a picture of a reversal needed in today’s church that leads to engaging the poor honorably, enlarging their self-perception, and challenging the hard-heartedness of complacency by those doing a little better or much better. How would you name a church that intentionally chose this unnamed woman as their totem, their icon, their saint to ground their reason for being, their identity?