How Not to Be Thanked

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you. Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"

 - Luke 17:5-10

We did these servant duties

the feedings and healings and knitting and praying

the giving and cooking and fixing and cleaning

and then we tied these obligatory faith tasks

to neoprene white weather balloons hydrogen-filled

launched them into the stratosphere and beyond

to see where the ghostly wind might take them

soaring over cities and oceans and stadiums and slums

we let them go from our slavish egos to became part of 

the seasons and the cycles and the ways of the global organism

so they were no longer us or part of us and no longer

tied to our oxygen-weighted lungs and brains and blood

we imagined they might rise up to God and burst from glory

and fall back to earth and shower the love-dry human fields

with drips of kindness and drops of compassion

and our entire selves might rise and burst and water and praise