{"id":37394,"date":"2017-01-12T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=37394"},"modified":"2018-03-07T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T22:49:07","slug":"baptismal-prayer-a-poem-by-james-tighe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/baptismal-prayer-a-poem-by-james-tighe\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptismal Prayer: A poem by James Tighe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wash me, Lord, my naked body<\/span><\/p>\n

dunk me in the river<\/span><\/p>\n

in the blood, if need be<\/span><\/p>\n

bear my sins away<\/span><\/p>\n

absolve my fears in the waters of forgiveness<\/span><\/p>\n

rich as a mother\u2019s milk<\/span><\/p>\n

May a robed choir sing<\/span><\/p>\n

from both banks of the river<\/span><\/p>\n

and may the faces of all the dead convocate in the sky above<\/span><\/p>\n

and smile down on my ignorances and perplexity<\/span><\/p>\n

Rinse me, Lord<\/span><\/p>\n

assuage my self-inflicted wounds with ablutions<\/span><\/p>\n

bathe me in water as in light<\/span><\/p>\n

like a mother cleanses her perfect newborn babe<\/span><\/p>\n

As I grow toward the Light<\/span><\/p>\n

give me a voice to sing<\/span><\/p>\n

hands to build and caress<\/span><\/p>\n

a pair of eyes that sparkle in the sunlight and moonlight<\/span><\/p>\n

even when they\u2019ve gone blind<\/span><\/p>\n

Give me a mind with which to contemplate and be prayerful<\/span><\/p>\n

a body that bears up<\/span><\/p>\n

is buoyant upon the oceans<\/span><\/p>\n

which are reservoirs of tears<\/span><\/p>\n

of everyone who has ever felt the pain and delirious joy of living<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me never learn about a woman\u2019s love<\/span><\/p>\n

if I am not to experience it in this lifetime<\/span><\/p>\n

Please give me a body<\/span><\/p>\n

that both lives and dies<\/span><\/p>\n

May every death<\/span><\/p>\n

be as glorious as a birth\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wash me, Lord, my naked body dunk me in the river in the blood, if need be bear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":37401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11904],"tags":[9716,83,1094,5,642,4,4782,3,753],"class_list":["post-37394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-james-tighe","tag-baptismal-prayer","tag-james-tighe","tag-local","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-oxford","tag-poetry","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017-01-10-Baptismal-Prayer.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}