I have a dear pen pal whose autocorrect rendered “lesson” as “Leon”
…as in there is a “Leon in here somewhere.
We all need a Leon in there somewhere–nerdy a bit, but still lion fierce.
The friend who will not go
Always there
Leon.
the lovely stranger
Tells us all
If this thing in front of you
Doesn’t give you joy throw it
Away
I kinda wonder about the ordinary scrub brushes thrust into the most terrible places
Do you discard them too?
Replace them with newer ones without the dark history?
Maybe keep them away from the crap
Which tangentially reminds me of
Poor Thomas Crapper–
Bringing us into modern hygiene at the expense of the family name
Don’t worry, Thomas
Your job may be thankless
Your name synonymous with
Well, crap
But I won’t forget you
Joy may be a too-strong word
For preventing public health catastrophe
But somebody gotta do it, TC
Somebody for all the rest
While the crucifixion of Christ is overwhelmingly unbearable, the deaths of ordinary humans are awful enough.
We are all certain things when we die.
The cessation of breath is a terrifying thing. Add to that helplessness and pain–most of us avoid death the way you would avoid the edge of an unforgiving precipice or an unguarded incinerator.
John the Baptist’s death is no exception. He died as a direct result of powerful people’s sin. He died in chronological and geographical proximity to Jesus.
The howl of the unfairness of it all is unmistakable.
Which is why I stick close to men like him. What if John had not questioned Jesus? What if his grief and doubt had not been recorded in the Gospel?
…I would have fewer answers for my lesser questions…and one fewer member of my support group.
And a narrower understanding of Jesus–no Santa Claus god. Jesus commands us to focus on both who He is and what He does for us on the most primal level.
He gives us back the one thing we can never get back ourselves–eternal life.
The death of every human may seem inevitable, but who we trust with the forever after makes all the difference.
To John the Baptist and every ordinary me.
I have told my kids (on too many occasions) that I would love to see a spy movie in which the main character’s spy skills are demonstrated by the character’s thorough-going appearance transformations.
He would become she, young and handsome would morph into old and frail, fat to thin, and tall to short…by assigning entirely different actors to play the part in unbroken succession.
Then it occurs to me that is what Jesus did–He came in disguise. Clues for this theory are in the Gospels–the transfiguration (why take only three disciples?), the times when He prohibits the healed from blabbing about their transformations, the healing of Jairus’ daughter (again, only three disciples?) and then those times after His resurrection when people don’t recognize Him.
God in disguise.
It makes sense when you see Him described in other places in the Bible. Excuse my French, but Jesus in His “real form” is unmistakably bad-ass.
Which brings me to the most haunting part of this story of voluntary disguise.
The Lord of glory, Creator of the universe, Beginning and the End, Lion of the tribe of Judah, naked, eviscerated, gasping on the Cross.
My death. This is the purest place for me to see who I really am–the person who deserves this terrible end.
He wraps Himself in the vortex of hell to give us access to heaven–undisguised.
light
With the exception (perhaps)
Of biolumescence
Always burns
Always the symptom, the result, the flood
Of fire
So when He says these things about light
They would have been connected in a way we are not
With the pure physical fact–
Where there is light
Something
Someone
Must burn
after years measured in either sabbaticals or fists
The woman in the box
Realizes she has only been an apparition
Sorting through previous
Versions of “her”
She sees one to nurture–
No lines around the eyes or heart
An ordinary girl
Who believed in human intervention
Fragile thing, scoops her up
Just a bird in the hand;
Looks for a place to set her down
If only to assess
the utility of wings
My son tells me his fears and I tell him mine are remarkably similar–fear of the tragic loss of love.
Sometimes he and I get to the end of an ordinary day and he says our crew is still together, Mom.
We are citizens of a dangerous and lonely kingdom.
But only because the true King travels in disguise.
He is this magnetic force–scarred forever by his tragic love for us, hole in the chest and again in each Vitruvian extremity.
Stranger at the party.
You should get to know this guy. His words and actions may seem either simple or radically divisive, but His gaze is irrevocable.
He is the perfect older brother, fierce in both love and justice. When I dread this fallen world I turn to Him.
Knowing He will never fail.
Imagine them as you will but never
Assume your scepticism will make them
Mythological again
In the smoke of our discarded daughters
/commerce of indifference
Shoots craps in crowded rooms
Sweat-palmed cash for common shame
Summon these
Monsters of righteousness
From this fire we
have made of love.
When I first saw Finding Nemo it was so much about you.
And after all these years, Finding Dory is much the same.
I may have been your brief and most arbitrary mama, but I will love you forever.
And your foster dad and I will never stop laying down the shells…not just for your way back to us, but as a mosaic for how you changed us forever.
You, beautiful girl.
I love them when they snake totemistically through the clouds, smoke before the storm
And when they are filigree-perfect by the pool, along the slender branches of new trees
Skin the same green as the leaves
But when it is the serpent
Climbing vertically toward the sparrowlets,
I cannot either
Turn, ignore
Or observe with the objective skill of a naturalist
intervene
Knowing grace is more than words before a meal
Or a sticker you wear to church on your lapel
Grace is the Hand that
saves the sparrow
Even at the mortal expense
Of the dragon.
Carrying Light 