“We desire according to the desire of the other.” - Rene Girard Anti-septic joy-killers look for those who have honest relationships with their own hearts, while willfully seeking to back persons who wallow in well-financed ignorance and thoughtful thoughtlessness. Mourners remember, others ignore, the name of the last one lowered into the ground. Call on the people of the margins, those who suffer suffering, until the wizard behind the green curtain is revealed. Only then may we return to the place where we can desire for ourselves.
Author Archives: threadfollower
Listen to the Story
Listen to the story that comes to us from outside ourselves. The junco still ruffles in the leaves before our open eyes while the wind brushes snow up against all else that stands.
Essentially Expendable
To be saved is to be provoked; to believe that a message is true if it saves your life. How can you be comfortable and still thirst for more comfort? Which is worth more? A twelve hundred dollar band-aid? Or a six hundred dollar band-aid? Signs and standing ovations applaud and promote service workers to the rare air of being essential. (Essential really means expendable.) We need healers who walk in the ancient ways.
Your Choice
Sensing the poignancy of the moment I speak into it, "There is a tension between exerting control and letting go." She looks up from the book she always reads and says, "Perhaps it is time to tend to the craft of making faithfulness." Not wanting to be undone, I say, "The challenge is to see the text for now, avoid cliché, and live in the moment." "Nice," she laughs. "Heaven can be on earth if we dare to make new connections." I pause. Intrigued. Thinking aloud, "Radical intricacies come and unfold in this time and in this space." She turns back to the book she always reads, "Your choice: performance or completion."
Magic Summer
Adults sit on folding lawn chairs set in a circle around a fire along the south bank of the Rock River. Their laughter, the cicada buzz and the occasional boat throttling mixed with children shouts from joyful jumps off the dock into the water create summer for me in my mind. But not until Grandpa poured his Old Style into a clear, tall glass; not until he handed me the salt shaker to tap a few times into the foam; not until the salt settling at the bottom began to work the magic of bubbles in beer; not until I saw alchemy before my very eyes was I then free to run and leap into water endlessly flowing by the party.
Peaceful Pointing
Peace is a nice goal and all but does not help making peace for all. A Minister of the Word stepped down from the Pulpit, bowed his head as if to Pray and began to cry. They didn't get it from me; Faith formation starts in the family. The Bible is just a little tale of tension between Creation and human ways of de-creating. God points to the Man. The Man points to the Woman. The Woman points to the Snake. The Snake, with its tongue, points to God. Nothing new under the sun.
Avoiding Why
The force of moral imagination is not enough to push against the comfort of the couch and the chosen show to binge for an hour or four, nibbling and crunching one popcorn at a time sipping bubble-impregnated, kiwi, fructose drinks. I remember all those youngsters on the clown's show trying to underhand toss a ping pong ball into one, red bucket after another. Bucket one. Bucket two. Bucket three. Bucket four. Bucket five. Bucket six. Ball in bucket. Success! On to the next bucket. Unfortunately, ping pong balls bounce. Too many times the ping pong ball bounces out. Life now amounts to bucket avoidance by limiting exposure to difficult words ending in 'y' like volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, while embracing eat, drink and be merry.
Only Ands
With the mirror of possibilities all scratched & warped facets added by unknown toilers in glass faces blurred twisted kinked crooked & wry so that eyes become ears & smiles morph into sneers nothing is more important in this inviolable time than for talking heads to quote commentaries on commentaries on interpretations of realities. Stay as far away from the truth as viable knowing that it will be incredibly difficult to avoid spinning with at least one true partner when the dance floor is filled with thousands or more floating versions moving in time to the latest sound from the Titanic's last gasp band combo. (One truth: Always play to keep the people calm.) Unite unite unite is today's plea a call to all that dare - or is it deign - to glance into the glass with silver on its back in hopes of catching some gold reaching into the binges we prefer & have grown to love. But remember, with God, the one who almost touches Adam, there are no buts only ruts well-furnished by the less serious lifers & for those who reach further only ands.
Winter Questions – 4
What can be done with our buildings empty and no For Sale signs in windows? What will become of the sanctuaries storing our assembled sacred stuff? What needs to be done now to be ready to open today? What moment becomes the moment when we do not look past each other?
How I Talk With My Aged Dog
yous comings to bes with mes is the bees knees im going to say say anyway because say always needs to be said you look very cute in your pink sweater look at you looking so self important and special o look at you again doin some sausage rollin stretchins just being a stretcher mcgee just enough of this just enough but not too much you know this oh thank you for deigning to give me a licky
A Thread You Follow 