The Holy Hour was a server short,
Pressed into service by the Deacon there,
Into a cassock, arms and neck contort,
The surplice, over head, messed up my hair.
It’d been five decades since I had last served.
Carrying censor as the thurifer,
I wished I’d paid attention and observed
Past servers but my mind was just a blur.
We sang the Salutaris while we knelt,
And prayed in adoration for a while.
The polyester cassock itched my neck,
Then a thought made me break into a smile:
I felt quite strange, a brown-wool Carmelite
In starker Dominican black and white.
Tim Bete is a Discalced Carmelite Secular and a member of the Community of Our Mother of Good Counsel in Beavercreek, Ohio, where he has served as a Formator, on Council, and as President. His writing has appeared in media outlets and anthologies, including Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart, Catholic Philly, Catholic Exchange, Integrated Catholic Life, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Apostolate of the Little Flower Magazine, and The Carmel Clarion. He served on the faculty at the Catholic Imagination Conference and appears on the Carmelite Conversations Podcast, which he also helps produce. Tim has published four books, including The Raw Stillness of Heaven and Wanderings of an Ordinary Pilgrim. You can contact him at http://www.TimBete.net.