Why Preachers Pray
Was it Cassandra's crimes made her ignored?
Rejecting light, rebuffing reason's sun,
Torn and raving, she saw what had begun
To spoil, stir up, distress, to bring the sword.
(The startled chorus flinched at her raw word,
Attended in diffident respect as one,
Hearing madness and knowing all peace gone,
Still listens to anguish from broken beauty poured.)
What hard deafness our sordid sins have sown!
They see our crimes. When, mildly, we commend
Cool virtue, they see all our lives And, knowing us, suspect that we pretend.
What's left to us, but living to make known
The Love alone which deafened ears may mend?
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Harold O. Koenig has a B.A. Liberal Arts, St. John's College Annapolis, MD and M.Div., Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA. He was ordained an piscopal priest, 1977 and entered full communion with the Holy See, 12/26/94. On 1/28/12 he became "Life Promised," in the Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic.
Mr. Koenig ran a flock of up to a hundred ewes for twelve years. He can (or "used to could," anyway) shear a sheep and work a beehive, and has helped plant and tend a 15 acre vineyard.
He spent 5 quarters as a chaplain in the C.P.E. program at Massachusetts General Hospital, with a concentration in the pediatric service and in chemical dependency issues.
For three years he volunteered more than 20 hours a week as a Reserve Deputy in the Albemarle County (VA) Sheriff's Office. He also had a half hour Sunday Morning religious radio program on a Charlottesville station for more than four years.
He lives alone, in the midst of unspeakable chaos, in Ruckersville, VA and rants interminably on Facebook. He makes an excellent mint julep and a passable Margarita.
