Category Archives: grief

How to want…to be His friend

Posted on by
Reply

You have to see past the blood—your own and his

The stinging sweat and the jeering crowds

The voice in your own pounding brain

Nay, voices—

Saying that no king of anything could die like this

Alone and vulnerable in the dumpster fire of all

You have to focus on his eyes

What he sees and what is reflected in them

Love beyond measure/sky without end

And you must listen to his voice

Agony is too small a word for what he has done for us

The fire of the wrath of a holy God

Substitutionary Everything

Nothing left without Him.

The Parables

Posted on by
Reply

Jesus knows that his beloved followers will need things to hold onto as they undergo the crushing persecution and ostracism of the first years (300ish) of Christianity.

So he gives them stories—stories so vivid and memorable and simple and beautiful that they can go back again and again to these stories to nourish them in the dark places they will find themselves in as followers of The Way.

The parable are rooms we can live in, stories we can inhabit, people and places and symbols we can return to again and again

As we wait in dark places

For the Return of the King.

You tell yourself

Posted on by
Reply

You tell yourself it will do no good

To acknowledge the child who floated in the beads of the ultrasound or the mantras of the obstetrical attending—

It is for her best not to know

Or the terrible error in calculating

The time it takes to unpack and repack a Pilot

A truck, an Accord, a house, a life

You tell yourself

It would have happened by now

The Icarus Moment

The violent fall

When an ordinary man walks into light eternal

Only to become it

We will all be changed

Some moments last for all

Eternity

Returning to the place of grief

Posted on by
Reply

After it became clear that the state of Texas was not going to provide adequate consequences for the assailant or adequate protections for the victims, I did three things—

I wrote a book so there would be a record of what had happened to us.

I asked to move and tried to expect less of law enforcement (a person cannot change who they are without losses).

I became involved in extreme sports. I became an adrenaline junkie.

Facing my fear and pouring myself into physical challenges with the risk of pain helped me to ease the grief, anger, and helplessness of what had happened to people I loved.

Like all addiction, this was not a long term solution, but it did help me.

Routinely facing fear of physical harm helped me to be more courageous when there was only the fear of human ostracism.

I still seek the adrenaline rush and lately it has been through swimming in challenging conditions.

When the lie is on a hand-made sign

Posted on by
Reply

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7762407/

The mother looks almost beatific patting her baby bump. She is going to great lengths and expense to end the baby’s life through dismemberment in utero.

Another picture from the case shows a supporter holding a sign asserting that abortion—the medical murder of babies-“saves lives.”

This is a statement which should be scrutinized with the same carefulness as injunctions over the gates of Auschwitz.

A lie is a lie is a lie, but covering human carnage with a bait and switch slogan is both Orwellian and apocalyptic.

The woman with her hand lovingly placed over her tummy is bent on killing her child prematurely.

It is hard to see such tragedy celebrated. Endorsed. Maybe even promoted by the journalists and photographers focused on elevating the rights of one human above another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

Don’t blur out atrocities

Posted on by
Reply

The video started out unedited, presumably because it was filmed by her abusers—

The young woman is dragged by her hair from the trunk of an SUV.

Her arms are abraded and bloody

Her face is bloody

And her clothes show other signs of violent assault.

She has a look on her face which is haunting and she is pushed into the vehicle by men shouting and pushing in on her.

After the initial few hours of seeing her clearly, news organizations blurred her out. I know they had their own reasons for doing so, but they should not have.

If the aim is to find her among millions of people, we need to see her face.

If we are to face what happened to her. We need to reckon with all the horror together.