To sit under my own fig tree without work without play without friends without family without strangers without enemies without neighbors and no one shall make me afraid.
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You shall have no other gods before me. – Exodus 20:3
Surrounder, Caller, Bringer, the unbroken and constant call of your names leaves no room for others to be before us, and yet we hunger for one more. Open the corner of our eye to see in the dim gray of our side vision another version, new and exciting, as the day we were born. Amen.
A Reality Not Your Own
I said, "I'm a bit concerned, the prophet says, Your wife will become a prostitute in the city." She stopped, a bit miffed. "Memories tend to flatten over time." I agreed. "This all sounds like a thoughtless wish for an empty bedroom." She added, "Or a famine of hearing the words of g*d." I realized, once again, "A large part of my joy is not being where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there. Wherever there may be." She smiled and said, "Welcome to the other side of popping into a reality not your own."
Innocence
Those who survive horrific car crashes in their youth know innocence makes up words like okay and fine and sure. Sometimes getting down on hands and knees and looking under the sofa for the baby in the stroller helps doubt. A daughter in a green-blue-and-black-striped bathing suit stands against the white sand perpetually outlined in light. Joy heard through the sighs of those who lose beloved pets wraps any words preachers say to loosely threaded posts.
Jonah sat down on the hilltop to watch Nineveh burn & whittled a stick for roasting marshmallows & instead of fire G*d sent a bush to provide shade & save Jonah from discomfort.
Questions for the Prophet
When will the plucked up fortunes of the penniless people be restored? Why is the weight of money so light that it always floats towards heaven? In which wing of life do the forums for humanity wait for something to happen? Why must all suffer the wilting of roses for the iniquities of the thorny few?
Structural Questions
How can buildings built by builders without plumb lines and levels stand? Why do some bridges only take me halfway across the duck pond? Whose joke is it to build a road that brings me only partially home? Why do beautiful bridges work moving faces from sadness to joy?
Perfect Edge
Knifing my way around the edge of the sqaure pan of brownies, I say, "Everyone wants the middle piece." She says, "I am not a middler," while grabbing two inches of crisp edge. I grab one whole side of edge, "A perfect relationship is found in sharing." She smiles, "We both love the edge." I say, "And eat the middle if there is room." She declares, "There is always room in the middle between us."
birthday day
today is my birthday fifty-six labyrinthine years following the thread
“Where do we learn to work like this?”
From Sisyphus and his endless, uphill rock-rolling where we end up tired as the smell of last night’s cod hanging in the kitchen or done like a dung beetle after rolling the last dung ball of the day. Imagine letting the ball fall and go rolling into the sea where ocean waves release upon the shore like the unclenching of a fist that has unlearned the slow steps of a pallbearer treading again and again upon the sacred ways, red as worn, sanctuary carpet in the morning light. To skip like a flower girl throwing rose petals left and right and into the face of the ring-bearer who carries his symbol of infinite love, careful not to let it drop and bust, a shattered jar of rainbow-colored gumballs, where chance could have them bounce and reel under a pew and disturb the slow, rolling of bones turning over in the graves of hard-working saints, long-dead and gone.
A Thread You Follow 