Damned Pictures

I have grief, things I drag to the Cross.

Pictures so rough there is no other place to take them.

Jesus became horror the day he died.

All those damned pictures

Of the terrible we do or become.

He becomes the damned

Pictures

what if he had not?

Where would I go with this?

If all I had left was prone to burn

And God were just

A consuming fire?

Luke 23:44-45,48 NIV

[44] It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, [45] for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. [48] When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away.

3.5

What if God were just twice as smart as you? Twice as nice. Twice as precise. Would you worry then, Darling?

Worry about the things He would tell you

Before, not after, the flood

The possibility of both

Righteous anger and a casual

Ordinary

Blast of glory

Refuting all the

niggling details of narcissism

And all your little monsters

Eyeing you hungrily from their corners

Waiting to take all

The clues, the love-notes, the blazing stars

He has strewn about this place

Only hope for

Ransom.

Super Powers

The argument was about space-time manipulation. Wouldn’t he be able to fix them immediately? Couldn’t he move things instantly, not just travel between times? I like to think of you, in the room with the baby girl, talking in words only children can understand

About how lonely and strange the world might be

Without a best friend/just/like/you

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