…and he turns loose the South Wind…drenched wings, night-black armor where face should have been…
–Ovid
Saw you once
In the photo booth of grief
Just before the Flood.
The Flood
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Category Archives: God
Writing with Invisible Ink
Now that I have seen the diamondback rattler in the domain of children I see him again everywhere–the darkness notched between sidings and foundations, lassoed water hoses resting in the sun, tree branches in the grass, all become the skin and flesh and memory of the foolish man who held just the severed head of his deadly foe too close to human skin.
We keep the most dangerous pets coiled in emptied potato salad containers, hastily labeled with words too awful to write down in anything but
Invisible ink.
Ghost Child
To be clear you are all grown up now and living somewhere as I try yet again to excise what you have done to us all from pictures of beautiful children.
You were
You are a dangerous male child
But what you will be
Is mountains told to throw themselves
Into the Sea.
Mark 11:22-23 NIV
[22] “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. [23] “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
Apophenia
I pull the elephant ears out of the water, one and then a handful and then none for awhile, risking dead fish and live snakes to find you. At dinner the little boy asks what miscarriage is and my answer is accurate but brief because why tell a little boy about lost siblings and the trees grown in their place or the way that forgetting is not better than carrying this
This memory of you dark, indelible angel, in the midst of all I hold dear.
The Jerusalem Embassy Act
The Congress of the United States passed by an overwhelming margin an act authorizing the US embassy in Israel be located in its capital–Jerusalem…during Clinton’s presidency.
He refused to sign it.
We decided this as a representative democracy more than 20 years ago.
70 years after the birth of the modern state of Israel and 73 years after the end of the Holocaust.
The Common Era
We name the fox Kristofferson after the character in the Wes Anderson movie. He sticks to the shadows but when he emerges you know it is him–not a cat or stray dog, too vulpine to be anything else and we are worried because the kittens are in the woods somewhere while their mother is out.
What can I do?
Leave the children in the running car? Leave the headlights on? Turn on the flashlight? Stomp through the tall grass into no-man’s-land? Keeping eye contact with him all the while? As if I could just scare him off from where the young ones are?
…pray they survive the night.
One
Matthew 1:1 NIV
[1] This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew seems pretty confident that Jesus is the Messiah, a word with so much power to reckon with us and all that has captured us that I am not sure how big or long or loud our explanations of Messiah could be and still be only an approximation of the real.
Some synonyms: King, Anointed, Savior, Redeemer, Ransomer, Hero, Deliverer, Protector
The Reckoner.
Matt One and Me
I have been writing regularly and publishing nothing. I would say I have had a crisis of words–too much of mine, not enough of His, so I have decided to return to my Remedy and try to stick close. I need an antidote to my parochialism and old wounds and a Balm in Gilead.
To Govern the Night
The moon recites the prayer with me, tethered to a God who never sleeps Our Father, who art in heaven…where does the slivery-thin-orange moon go when it passes below the shoulder of the hill? To all the other insomniacs…hallowed be thy name…indeed You hear me, Maker of that smoke wisp moon, Maker of the metonymy of darkness, a body can rob a body of light until You are here …Thy kingdom come…thy will be done…among the sleepless…on earth as it is in heaven.
His face shine upon you
Numbers 6:22-27 NIV
[22] The Lord said to Moses, [23] “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: [24] “ ‘ “The Lord bless you and keep you; [25] the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; [26] the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. ” ‘ [27] “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
Carrying Light 