The Wedding Sermon

First of all, let me reiterate that I do not expect you two to go the distance–not that prophetic considering where you are today and the inauspicious nature of this ceremony of disaster.

Most weddings are full of shi…..ps, little paper boats people fold along seams, scribble on, and push out onto whatever river they believe in. They write platitudes for the pain, use costly words all wrong.

Then the little boats float off

Leaving you there at the altar, no more substantial than cake topper avatars

Not ready for this:

Loves fierce resolve

To begin and end/end and begin

Together.

You believe?

I ask the children who would win

In a foot race

Einstein or Newton?

S. says the wearing of wigs would matter

And I picture Newton trotting gamely behind

Losing precious seconds

As he tries to keep the wig on.

Gravity is something you might believe in

Or streams of consciousness

But not Jesus, my subjective friend

Whose fury you have misjudged

Like the smallest of figures in the distance

Moving inexorably toward you

Fire in his eyes

–Revelation 19

We Speak in Tongues

I have sometimes heard

The voice of God

remarkably salty

And full of fire

He is both

Placable and implacable in His anger

The first with sullen men

Then unsparing with his only Son

No siblings without the unendurable

No blind and lame set free

Without his blood for me

1 Corinthians 13:1 NIV

[1] If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

The Vigilant Ones

If I were to write a book of fiction for my children I would construct people for them, community, a family, let’s say, a big, sprawling, messy family

Maybe they would live next to some kind of river

Maybe the dogs would talk or the fish would taste like brightly colored jello confections.

Or maybe these fictional people, these purely hypothetical people, would just be back up

The silhouetted figures you might see on the crest of the hill above the sycamore tree as the sun sets

After the dam breaks

When they-you-we

Might need the vigilant ones

The most.

You are eternal

Years ago a man who fought fire told me that the hot center of it is black, vortex dark, a hole you could fall into and never stop

Falling

There is no fire without burning, I tell the children, each sun a metaphor for something

Something bigger than us

Something bigger than them

Than all the worlds of burning

Light reaching back to us

Saying something

Maybe in Morse code

Flashlit messages exchanged through neighboring windows by children in the night

You are…eternal

You are eternal

More than Cleromancy

2 Samuel 5:24 KJV

[24] And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.

I will leave you to imagine a woman who slakes her insomnia with Sarah arranging flowers around her beloved Daisy, each a sign of constancy, piety, love

While God speaks

Says such specific things

Who knew each tree before it

Was anything but

An inkling in the palm of his hand