Ephesians 5:13 NIV
[13] But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.
Become light, old man,
Let us all become light
Untethered
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Category Archives: child advocacy
Ah-buh-nim
The little boy in the picture wore the most adorable overalls
And brand-spanking-new shoes
He approached the chicken in the unfamiliar garden
With the utmost deference,
The pears still hung on the trees, each carefully wrapped in old newspapers to shield them from pestilence
An unseasonably warm day to worship one’s ancestors and
The food at the restaurant was good
Something about historically accurate food
In the last few moments before
The two little red-headed children
Reported
All they saw–aggressor-accomplice-victim
The little boy in the picture wore the most adorable overalls
Lazarus
He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend
what it is
he has seen and heard
He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces
Do they have
Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or
Know every word by heart?
Are all the lambs among them and
can we see their scars?
Who can end this waiting
By calling us out
Out into life
My Covid Story
Around Thanksgiving I got Covid. I work in a doctor’s office, so eventually all of our staff got the disease as did our immediate family.
Symptoms and severity sorted out by age. The youngest two had the mildest symptoms, the oldest–me, ended up in the ER for a day, facing a diagnosis of damage to my heart and lungs.
First, let me say, that I am mending. I am the recipient of miracles and healing.
But the 24 hours leading up to the ER visit were really scary. The day in the ER was a gift. The oxygen machine they sent me home with was a gift.
And my current pulse, O2 stats, and general health–belong to the grace of my Ransomer.
Jesus gave me miracles, as He has done my whole life.
Covid is a really scary disease. It leaves some scars. It leaves fear and memory of the pain and uncertainty.
But Jesus is bigger than mountains. Jesus is bigger than tiny killer viral agents.
And Jesus never walks away from us.
I know I have been saved and given the gift of my life back.
I will do what I can to praise the One who saved me.
And I will use these beautiful lungs to pray for all of us.
That we feel him there with us,
No matter what.
The Namesake Dilemma
I have been waging a Sisyphean campaign to draw scrutiny to a large business deal.
One of the companies involved has clearly secular goals which are in frank opposition to the stated identity of the other.
The other bears the name of a good friend of mine. My best friend–
It troubles me that in recent years this second company seems to be more concerned with monetary transactions than honoring the name applied to its legal entity.
It is a good reminder for me–if I want to mark my life, my identity, my business, my things, with the name of my Beloved, well
I better make sure
They all really belong to Him
And we both know
He is my best friend, my boss, my king
Savior, Redeemer, Lord
God’s strong right arm.
Revelation 12:17 NIV
[17] Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
H. Turcicus
Oh howl, my intemperate soul–
Until it was too late
I did not realize who it was
Singing on the porch each night.
Thought it was a frog or a night bird
Not this perfect little cup-sized creature
I have no place to go to speak my grief
Only the knowledge that it is me and my kind who have
Ritualized the extraction
out, out
of each small, indelible singer
Leaving us to mother
Regret instead.
Silverfish
What happened to me, that in a moment of gargantuan hubris, I smudged it out? So what if it lived in the books or the play things? So what if it preferred the damp and closeted nocturne?
The moment before it was a glinty, wriggling alive
Then it was just an undoable regret
A life I should not have taken
We all have them–
Our ghosts, the ones we wish we could
Bring back whole
A parade of The Returned–
Uriah, John the Baptist, Stephen, Joan of Arc
Leaping and unfettered procession
Amidst the boundless sea of
The Redeemed
these trees of life
Splendor through the fence
I could be a quark or an hurtling star,
A duck or a chicken
Living on one side of a beat-up plank fence
With knots in it, and scooped out holes
Signifying they all used to be trees
and the fence and the yard and the girl are just
Another kind of spaceship
Prone to sunset
Nothing can stop the Splendor from breaking through
Every hole in the fence.
Talitha
It’s not rocket science, I tell myself, still present with my former self in the iterations of the supplication–old and unglamorous skills get unfolded like the swords beaten into plowshares.
Or the plowshares years later, back into
Swords where there might have been a daughter or two
You know I would have took that many and more
Or tried to sow or shape them from whatever you can make into a girl
Not dragons, not the teeth of dragons
But words stronger than all of my
Misgivings
Isaiah 55:11-12 KJV
[11] So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. [12] For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Who protects the wary?
John 5:3-4 KJV
[3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
My first question for you is–do you believe there was an angel who came down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the waters?
So one person each time could be healed?
Crazy, right?
But no crazier than believing that Jesus healed the man who had been at the pool so long, who does not turn out to be the most grateful healed man.
I have skirted the issue of the angel at the pool for years, choosing instead to focus on Jesus and the man and the religious oligarchs who made it hard for Jesus.
I understand that angel complicates everything–messenger of God who brings some healing, brings some hope only
In a certain season.
Carrying Light 