Methodist Zen

To my right sit two siblings and then our mother in lipstick.

Beyond her, rows and rows of heads,

Adult mouths moving minimally as they read their assigned short paragraphs in unison

Invoking now the quick, now the dead,  now the strange remembered name of Pontius Pilate,

And finally, to brief music, homage to a world without end.

Some of the children tentatively sing along, “Ah-men, ah-men.”

Now satisfied, the heads quiet themselves and settle in to listen,

But next week I know they will once again recite, as if hypnotized,

Their koan of the quick and the dead.

I also know, in the Methodist Zen tradition, it will never be explained.