Liturgy in the Glow

The notification chime interrupts, a digital bell in this tiny cathedral of my kitchen. God, I scroll. Past cats in sunbeams, memes about bread and fish, arguments about whether love is a verb or a chemical reaction. The phone vibrates again. A stranger asks for help in pixels and hashtags. I hesitate. I type Amen. The battery fades to ten percent like an evening candle guttering in wax. I imagine the algorithms as monks in long habits, praying at impossible speed, their chants garbled into clicks and swipes. I long for the bell of a real chapel, for incense that smells of patience and velvet evening air. Yet in the glow of the screen, I see the world: a mother holding her child, a refugee gripping a paper document like a small psalm, a friend laughing through a text as if heaven might exist in the curvature of a smile emoji. I close the app. The phone sighs, and in that exhale, I hear the faint, infinite, unexpected hymn of ordinary grace. This article appears in September 2026.