Let them say we wasted the perfume

There are times
when there are no words.

And I, whose life is laced
with letters and lifted by language,
am the one telling you this.

There are moments
when all the poetry
curdles in the mouth.
When tragedy steals oxygen,
and horror gnaws
through every metaphor
like moths through linen.

Mary knows this.

She does not explain.
Does not theologize.
Does not waste time
crafting a sermon for the moment.

She moves.
She breaks.
She pours.

A jar of nard,
earthy and costly and absurd,
shattered open on purpose —
not for healing,
but for loving.

She touches him.
His feet,
scarred by distance,
filthy with pilgrimage,

She lets down her hair
in a room full of men
who have no idea what she’s doing,
only that it makes them uncomfortable.

Her body becomes the prayer.

She does not try to fix
what is broken.
She does not argue
for a better outcome.
She does not budget.

She weeps,
as the scent fills the room.
Not just a hint of it.
Not just a passing breeze.
But the kind of scent that sticks —
in the folds of fabric,
in the corners of memory,
in the very pores
of the one who is about to die.

He would carry it with him.
Through betrayal.
Through violence.
Through the long, cruel descent
into the machinery of empire.
Perhaps, even on the cross,
with blood in his mouth
and sweat in his eyes,
he could still smell it.

That scent.
That act.
That love.

What good is perfume
when you are about to be tortured?
What use is beauty
when death is sharpening its blade?

That is the voice of reason.

That is Judas,
keeping tally,
counting coins,
calculating worth.

But Mary is not making a point.
She is not proving anything.
Because sometimes love is not practical.
Sometimes love is foolish.
Sometimes love is a song
played on a burning violin
outside a gas chamber.

Someone once wrote of the dance,
the impossible dance,
that happens at the end of love.

Of musicians —
prisoners —
forced to play
as their people
walked toward smoke.

Music stitched into massacre.

And still,
the notes rose.
Still, the bow moved.
Still, that complicated beauty dared to exist
in a place
where beauty had been banished.

What kind of love
plays the violin
in hell?

What kind of love
wipes feet with hair
while the noose is being tied
in another room?

This kind.

This kind of love.

This aching, scented, gritty love.

Those who sow with tears…
will reap with joy.

This is a psalm for exiles,
for survivors,
for the ones who plant seeds
not knowing if rain will come.

They sow anyway.
Weeping.
Empty-handed.
Half-believing.

They sow
because love is what remains
when nothing else is left.

They sow
because we are not machines,
not cogs within an imperial wheel,
but creatures made of longing.

They sow
with tears on their cheeks
and tremors in their hands,
but they sow.

Mary is one of them.

So are we.

We live on the brink.
Grief on grief,
fire on flood,
policy on cruelty.

Some days,
we resist.
We write.
We march.
We vote.

We stand our ground.

But other days —
and this too is holy —
we weep.
We anoint.
We sit silently in pews
and let God love us.
We hold hands
without agenda.
We bake bread
and eat slowly.
We light candles
we aren’t sure will matter.
We sing songs
no one asked for.

We dance.
Even if it is foolish.
Even if it is wasteful.
Even if it changes nothing
except the weight in our chests.

The world will ask
what the return is.
What good is art
when bombs are falling?
What good is kindness
in the face of genocide?
What good is a little church
with soup and prayers
and stubborn hymns?

But maybe Jesus needed the perfume
more than he needed a plan.
Maybe the thing
that held him
was not Peter’s words,
but Mary’s touch.

Maybe what gave him courage
wasn’t certainty,
but the memory
of being loved
without condition.

No speeches.
No strategies.

Just a woman
breaking open everything she had
to say
you are not alone.

The church is not a think tank.
We are not here to impress.
We are not here to optimize,
to deliver results,
to be relevant.

We are here
to love.

To pour perfume
on the dying.
To play music
in the rubble.
To dance
even when the dance
is funeral and lament
and protest
and lullaby
all at once.

We are here
to remind one another
that beauty still matters.
Not as decoration,
but as defiance.
We are here
to say, with our bodies,
that love
is never wasted.

So let them scoff.

Let them say
there will always be more.
Let them say
we are too soft,
too sentimental,
too out of touch.

Let them say
we wasted the perfume.
Let them say
we were just dancing.
Let them say
we lost.

But let the scent remain.

Let it fill the rooms
they can’t sterilize.

Let it rise
from our hands,
from our cups,
from our singing,
from our weeping.

Let it linger…

Until we remember
who we are,
and whose we are.
Until we remember
what we’re for.
Until we become
the foolish, fragrant,
burning music
that refuses
to stop playing.

Until we
dance each other
to the end
of love.

And beyond it. 🦢