Giver of Life and Land, Who demands our obedience Against the evil ways of destruction Of the prior inhabitants, we wonder If the land and what we own Is really ours, or perhaps our very Thinking that it is becomes the Path to our own destruction And folly which you warned us Against. Make us mindful and Aware so as to give. Amen.
Monthly Archives: July 2021
Deliver Us
We live with the mediocre in our lives, afraid of being killed or of being left behind, unable to define the far off poles between which the conventional stands in the middle. We ask for no great shakes, determined to seek the easiness we believe was promised to us long ago by those who walked long distances with a practiced pace and on calloused feet. Salvation should, the story begins, be easy, with no hindrance in our seeking for definitions of the God who seeks and waits as we actively search for the desire that will deliver us.
Starting Point
The place where I started can be found among chewed pencil stubs marking the moment between moments marked by pencil scribbles noting the time when boring entered my lexicon. I first said boring the time when I was born, apologetically to my mother as she screamed. I have since apologized to my mother for all the times when I made her cry. Secular folks are not the only ones to cry, begging for a sign that reads, Smile, Sinner. There are signs smiling all across this Land around which we circle seeking our home. Sometimes going around in circles I never find the place where I started.
Out Beyond
A chasm with no bottom A cage with invisible bars A blank billboard A mediocre commercial Two pairs of proofs One gut feeling Concrete sidewalks Cindered paths Christ's prayer God's decree A day's evening A night's morning Rilke Clifton To be Not to be
Readings
I said, "The one hundred pages due yesterday are now, finally, done." She said, "And here I was enjoying a quiet morning with no numbers." I said, "You quip while I try to enter the deep satisfaction of being caught up." She replied, "Looking upon the bronze serpent lifted up for all to see always saves the least of these." I said, "Don't be getting all biblical on me in my moment of small satisfaction." She said, "I just finished my reading of Simone Weil who wrote, 'the solution to a balance between the individual and the collective is precisely what people are thirsting for today.'"
Sacred Salt
"Sacred salt sparkles on our bodies." - Denise Levertov Not the salt found in blood, semen, tears or mucus, dried from wounds or sickness or deprivation but the salt that Jesus asks us to be, Be the salt of the earth. To be sprinkled and spread, lightly, ocean spray settling on barren and untouched skin, to sparkle on bodies who cry out to be flavored with delights and to be tasted while shouting joy to the heavens acclaiming, I am alive!
glass jars
loneliness speaks to loneliness unable to move open the curtains that hands so carefully closed the night before to remove the light from outside that spoke of a quality of abundance found in glass jars holding small treasures
“…Whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed…” – Romans 13:2
God of kings and queens, of pontiffs and presidents, of duly-elected and dictated, who changes those at the top to fill the pages of history books, turn the flow of authority so the multitude no longer need to resist to survive. Amen.
Saturday Morning
The girls hold a breakfast picnic of chocolate chip muffins and orange juice on the sidewalk, recently covered with chalk rainbows, stars, suns, flowers and creatures which mirror the peace of a summer's Saturday morning.
enthroned
something brilliant & a joke with no punchline played over & over repeated for centuries in the hope that the dead really do come back to life & a different resurrection story can be told to a people made rigid & inflexible from tales told on late-night shows where sneaky heretics reveal that god-as-light really does sit on a throne
A Thread You Follow 