Moments of Prayer

         

Shattered footsteps fill the courtyard as brother Thomas contemplates god by his garden. But was he contemplating the ever lasting glory or the unadulterated purity of his lord and savior. No, he was cursing him and his name for making him lose another in his string of lost lovers, friends, family, and even simple cohabitants. This time it wasn't another of his brothers that he had loved dearly that had passed because a bit of moldy cheese or unripe turnip, or the violence of a swedish raid. No he did not feel the pain of loss from any external force but a pain much akin to the pain he felt when he was sent to this house of god. He thought of all he had lost to be here, the woman of his dreams ripped from him, the lands that were rightfully his taken for some lord in velvet, the responsibility that had been rightfully his to care for his mother whose letters became less and less frequent until a week ago when her letters had stopped he presumed with her heart.  This lack of word held his heart like the locks of hair that he had once worn before he had been sent to live and work and be reformed by the mighty hand of god at this place. The mighty hand of god? How mighty could a man be who sent his own servants to damnation for loving the creatures of his creation or even each other? How could he strike down an infant with a fever who yet not knows how to be wicked and his only sin that of the ignorance he was born with? How could such a king of kings send boys to war with each other in his name both calling him their father, lord and king?  How could he establish a timeless race of men and then ruin it with a short sudden death that they must all face? How could this god do any good by his painful intervention?