Letters to fosters

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The little girl was in her elementary school class when she encountered another student

You a foster?

I’m a foster!

She said it with joy and enthusiasm, like it was secret society of children with super powers

Which it is, actually

You are Superheroic

You are survivors

Thrive

Tell your story

I am here and I am listening

Isaiah 49:19-23 NIV
[19] “Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. [20] The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.’ [21] Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?’ ” [22] This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their hips. [23] Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed. ”

Isaiah 49:22-23 KJV
[22] Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. [23] And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord : for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.

The Persistent Widow

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There was a high likelihood that Jesus’ mom was an impoverished widow when he told this “end times” parable.

I like to believe that as the embodiment of Truth with the memory of all human stories fully at his disposal, Jesus never needed to resort to fictional narratives in his parable.

He actually knew Prodigal Sons and Good Samaritans, saw women searching for their lost coins and managers who abhorred the idea of digging or begging.

No one in his parables feels any more real or vivid than this widow.

Her cause is real

Her judge is useless

Her status is negligible

And yet, she prevails because she never gives up

And if she doesn’t give up, then what excuse do we have?

Pound on the gates of Heaven

Ask God for eternal things…

Eternal treasure, like the kind you might find in a field and buy with all you ever had.

Luke 18:1-5 KJV
[1] And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; [2] Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: [3] And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. [4] And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; [5] Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

Matthew 13:44 KJV
[44] Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

The Parables

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Jesus knows that his beloved followers will need things to hold onto as they undergo the crushing persecution and ostracism of the first years (300ish) of Christianity.

So he gives them stories—stories so vivid and memorable and simple and beautiful that they can go back again and again to these stories to nourish them in the dark places they will find themselves in as followers of The Way.

The parable are rooms we can live in, stories we can inhabit, people and places and symbols we can return to again and again

As we wait in dark places

For the Return of the King.

The Keeper of Time

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Why must I know what day it is in order to prove that I am cognizant?

Time is a shape shifting chameleon

Once a sundial or a watch of the night

Now it monitors the heart

Attempts to forecast the rain

And makes us feel the limits of the box we cannot bust out of on our own

Meanwhile

Eternity, the Infinite

Has already won.

You tell yourself

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You tell yourself it will do no good

To acknowledge the child who floated in the beads of the ultrasound or the mantras of the obstetrical attending—

It is for her best not to know

Or the terrible error in calculating

The time it takes to unpack and repack a Pilot

A truck, an Accord, a house, a life

You tell yourself

It would have happened by now

The Icarus Moment

The violent fall

When an ordinary man walks into light eternal

Only to become it

We will all be changed

Some moments last for all

Eternity

I used to live in a country

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I used to live in a country

Where people ate the soul and flesh of both men and animals

Fish dinners too terrible to recount

Little bears with amputated paws

So when you tell me

The living have lost their

Eyes, their lungs, their tongues, their voices, their unborn children

I will believe you

Even though I do not want to

Doppelgänger

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Sarah? He asks on the street by the Rucker library

I look bewildered. No, not Sarah

You look so much like her!

Dark? Pretty? Young?

We never met

But recently it has been happening again—over and over

So many times

In Spanish and in other tongues—

Fatima? Esperanza? Rachel?

Who are they now?

Grey! Rumpled! Doughy!

We are a sisterhood across decades and barricades

The Sarahs by the library of now

Beauty behind, light ahead

Peter Sullivan who has spent 38 years in jail for murder has conviction quashed | UK News | Sky News

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The Court of Appeal ruling ends what’s thought to be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history.
— Read on news.sky.com/story/peter-sullivan-who-has-spent-38-years-in-jail-for-murder-has-conviction-quashed-13363928

https://www.google.com/search?q=diane+sindall+1986&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari#lfId=ChxjMe