Category Archives: grief

Savage Paradoxes in a Broken World

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 6:29-30 (NIV)
On hearing of this, John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. [30] The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught.

When I write, when I look at the pairing of words, I look at the incongruities–the disciples are cruising around healing people while…the last OT prophet is imprisoned and murdered?!

Why not storm Herod’s palace? Kick some apostate butt?

😦

God sees the big picture. I don’t. I just have to keep my eyes on him, on the Cross.

He died. For me. For you. For John.

The Big Picture: Calvary.

Twisted Lines

Posted on by
Reply

How did they get tangled?
The long lines reaching out and up to the scaffold
Not cloudless but wind-fierce
Like blue could be fire.

I ask my son to count
Them, he gets the number wrong–says six for seven
When number eight shuttles around in a lost circle
Infinite forgotten

I watch this man
Patiently untangle them
Cords missing air balloons
Lines, ropes, braids

Carrying clumsy morons like me

I ask him about the scars along his knuckles
Painful looking
He tells me his story
…one more way to be brave

I am not

I can tell you exactly when I knew
I was a coward
The day I let go of the rope

Forever as you swore at me loudly in this crowded terminal
The people raise their eyebrows perhaps

I only remember the pain, you
A promise
Never to rise again
with the white noise and anger

Airplanes pressing physics
across this merciless deep
Sky

Fiction, of course

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 6:10-13 (NIV)
Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. [11] And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.” [12] They went out and preached that people should repent. [13] They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Once there was a town. And in the town there were some kids. They were from another country. There was a family in the town who took the children to the beach, or to the park, the pool, or just to play at their house.

They loved the kids, but there were a lot of them. They filled the family’s van.

One night the family was stopped by a policeman. The police officer took a long time and decided to give a ticket for something fabricated.

The family fought the ticket, but the judge would not lift his head to make eye contact. He told them to talk to a fictitious character. A lawyer he dubbed, the municipal prosecutor.

The mama said, we have to go. I cannot take the children here or there if this is what happens when I am trying to follow the rules.

She misses the children. Worries about the paths they will traverse.

Wonders over how dust can cling to a body. Some testimony of love…

Real Ghosts

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 6:13-16 (NIV)
They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. [14] King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” [15] Others said, “He is Elijah.” And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.” [16] But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”

These verses are about a ghost story. Herod is worried he has a ghost–John come back to haunt him.

It isn’t John, it is his cousin, but never mind that. Herod is spooked.

He deserves to be. He is a rat–adulterer, bully, pedophile. He is one of those tidy historical villains who leave little doubt of his destination.

A bad guy. But that is the irony–when he was alive he was haunted by the possibility his victim would return. When in truth he is the ghost.

John died for no good reason, but he went to heaven. Herod lived for no good reason.

And hell became his habitat.

Private Resurrection

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 5:39-43 (NIV)
He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” [40] But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. [41] He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). [42] Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. [43] He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Unwise to laugh at Jesus.

He knows when we are dead and when we are merely sleeping, and I imagine he could have pointed out people around him who were already dead–who failed to absorbed eternal life.

He tells the girl to rise and although we know she has been dead for at least a few hours she gets up restored.

Her healing is complete. Then he gives her an additional gift–privacy. She will not have to go through any ritual purity, public scrutiny or unwanted celebrity.

She gets to live again, whole.

Jesus both restores and loves those he resurrects.

A Parable of Faith

Posted on by
Reply

My kids are practicing French, handwriting, and shooting the breeze. They are quoting Patrick Warburton, who could read tax law and be funny. They remind me of my father, who was a military helicopter pilot.

He used to take the back roads. He would head down some narrow country road with a mysterious look on his face. Where are you going? We would ask.

I know a short cut. He would tell us.
He had marked the roads as he flew over the countryside.

I think of this when I ask God, why?

He sees beyond the horizon, the big picture, the answers to all my why?s

Waiting.

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 5:21-29 (NIV)
When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. [22] Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet [23] and pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” [24] So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. [25] And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. [26] She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. [27] When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, [28] because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” [29] Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

Jesus from afar. He is not constrained by cement walls, ordinary time, peer pressure, or the weather.

This can be hard to understand in a crisis. We want instant relief from grief or illness, and sometimes we get pain, loneliness, waiting.

This story works best if you don’t know the ending. Jairus was desperate. We know he wouldn’t have risked himself if he had another option. It must have been excruciating to wait. You can almost see the words in a bubble–

c’mon, my daughter is dying!

But Jesus is in no hurry. In fact there is no mention of him ever hurrying. The waiting is part of the story….

For all of us.

Holy handbags, Robin!!!

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight I sang loud and off-key to God. There may have been some dancing around too. One of my children eyed me with a bit of alarm. Notable only because you would think they all would.

I also washed my purse today.

Not seeing the connection? Well, first let me explain that I am not a Gucci/baby Louie gal. My purses are cheap, washable, frequently seconded to me.

They are the receptacles of diapers (new), hair bands, gum (also new), keys, money, action figures, snacks, beverages, electronics, random papers.

Crumbs, a lot of crumbs…

I have been feeling itchy because I knew that my current purse avatar was the victim of a public bathroom floor incident that I will not shock you by explaining.

Just trust me: unhygienic.

So I feel good. Brownie crumbs evacuated, wallet transplanted. Purse clicking noisily in a midnight wash.

Cleaner.

I am aware that the God I trust and love is holy. Really clean.

I have a few kids who are well versed in superhero lore. So I was thinking about how a good comic book superhero needs an Achilles heel. And that led to thoughts of the only real superhero.

No Achilles heel–wait! There is a weakness. Not in him, us. We are his weakness. We are his mortal heel.

And he lets himself bleed out in holiness to bath us in his eternity.

That is clean. That is holy.

So I worship–messy and loud. Because he has rescued me. Once and for all eternity.

The closest you get to f…

Posted on by
Reply

Mark 5:9 (NIV)
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”

Huh. Like Jesus didn’t already know his name.

Jesus knew his name.
Jesus still knows his name.
Jesus knew all of his names.
Jesus knew their names.
Jesus knew them before they were shadowy inhabitants of a man in a graveyard.
Jesus knew when they were light.
Jesus knows this story.
He knows it all.
He is the eternal God incarnate.

So why ask the guy’s name?

I read today that Nokia was going to begin selling 3D kits to customers to “print” phone cases.

I saw a picture today of a small USB drive with a TB memory.

This is a story about before and after.

This is when and how the world changes.

God, the Poet asks the question because he knows the answer but we don’t. The guy doesn’t. The Legion has an idea. They know they are dealing with Eternity, Fire, and Change.

They are about to be kicked out.

But the question to ponder before we look further is–how did they get in?

Who let them in to the man’s messed up heart?

He did. Once called different names–pride, lust, ambition, lies. They walked in through the door….

And gradually took over.

Father’s Day in the graveyard

Posted on by
Reply

This is one of my favorite stories.

I know too many people like this guy. In fact I know a couple who make him look like a boy scout.

Mark 5:1-5 (NIV)
They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. [2] When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. [3] This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. [4] For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. [5] Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

Read his symptoms carefully–loud, violent, scary, self-harming. Just like the rest of us, this man has a story, and not a fun one. Abused and neglected? Maybe? Into violent games? Maybe? Dangerous to others? Definitely.

No hope. No national mental health initiatives to save him.

There are 2000 reasons why he has chains and lives in the graveyard.

Now imagine you find out he has a little baby with him out there…

Would you worry? Would you call for help? Send him cloth diapers? Try to intervene?

What would you do for the child?