On the day you are wearing your certainty like a cloak
and your sureness goes before you like a shield or like a sword,

May the sound of God’s name spill from your lips
as you have never heard it before.

May your knowing be undone.
May mystery confound your understanding.

May the Divine rain down in strange syllables yet
With an ancient familiarity, a knowing borne
in the blood, the ear, the tongue,
Bringing the clarity that comes not in
stone or in steel but in fire, in flame.

May there come one searing word—
enough to bare you to the bone,
Enough to set your heart ablaze,
enough to make you whole again.

The words of Jan Richardson.