Washed Clean

Now I am washed clean.  I have stepped out of the bath.  I smell with the perfume of fragrant oil.  White clothes, clean and fresh, cover me.  The dawn is breaking outside, and the first fingers of light spread across the sky.  I feel new, made whole. My life has meaning.  The darkness has been washed away.  I have seen the darkness of death, the gloom of despair.  I have stood on the brink of the void of nothingness, but I am alive.  Nothing can terrify me now, neither death nor prison, neither earthquake nor sin.  I am Christ’s and Christ is mine.  Nothing can separate me from his life and love.  His Spirit is with us, refreshing, comforting, insistently urging us to live.

– John Gaden (1938–1990), pub. 2010 in Welcome to Anglican Spiritual Traditions, Vicki K. Black