It would be an ordinary basking day for the spiny and the green
Lizards who sun on the rocks and the fences
We would beat the palms of our hands on the opacity of windows
Before we opened them to warn off
night so late that morning is just a nap’s distance
Away
The fans would beat their wings
Now while we can
Let us forsake
all our wasted days.
As you well know, I have been trying to focus on the presence of signifiers–the feral blender noises the dogs make when they are behind the dark door–the way the clouds pool and furl in beautiful splendor–let us say our daily prayers
Swap the signifiers
Killer clouds for beautiful dogs
This savage world/all ripped to pieces
While the light of one ordinary star is enough to
Remind me
Just how good you are
At holding on to me
All the same.
Oh howl, my intemperate soul–
Until it was too late
I did not realize who it was
Singing on the porch each night.
Thought it was a frog or a night bird
Not this perfect little cup-sized creature
I have no place to go to speak my grief
Only the knowledge that it is me and my kind who have
Ritualized the extraction
out, out
of each small, indelible singer
Leaving us to mother
Regret instead.
What happened to me, that in a moment of gargantuan hubris, I smudged it out? So what if it lived in the books or the play things? So what if it preferred the damp and closeted nocturne?
The moment before it was a glinty, wriggling alive
Then it was just an undoable regret
A life I should not have taken
We all have them–
Our ghosts, the ones we wish we could
Bring back whole
A parade of The Returned–
Uriah, John the Baptist, Stephen, Joan of Arc
Leaping and unfettered procession
Amidst the boundless sea of
The Redeemed
these trees of life
I have never been a roller coaster girl. Too queasy, but these days the ride is all mental grit and actuarial tables–I stop in the credit union parking lot just as the preacher on the radio quotes Jesus–ask anything in my name and I will give it to you!
Ok, God, I tell Him, make those doctors brave
Could substitute kind, generous, humble, compassionate
Feels impossible, I tell Him then
He reminds me
Impossible
Is His specialty.
People look for hope in all kinds of things–money, elaborate shelter, the absence of risk, the presence of satiety.
Other people
It is not hard to believe in God
By the power of blinking stars and damselflies, it is hard not to believe in God
But what is hard
Is choosing to only
Believe in God
For the hope where there is none
For the rain in a dry land
For miracle in the Iron Age of science
Hard to believe that God could comfort every soul in Lebanon when Lebanon is not sufficient to burn
Hard to believe in Resurrection at the foot of the Cross
But if you can or do
Cling to Resurrection
All things are possible
Miraculous little
damselfly.
The summer of 2018 was hard on us. We lost beloved kitten after beloved kitten. People in the community who fostered kittens talked about PTSD and loss.
The agony of hope and grief was indelible, but so too was the change in my experience with veterinarians.
Some refused to care for the kittens; others failed to tell us what was really killing them. I had always thought that veterinarians were doctors for animals, with the same abiding principles of integrity and common good.
That is what I thought before.
Now I know that for many it is just an income stream, a path to selling things in order to make a living.
I think about that summer. It was a bad summer for panleuk. There was a terrible tragedy unfolding for the most vulnerable among us. Back then, the people were ok, but the wee kittens had no chance.
Now I think about it because the pandemic we face this summer is counted in human lives.
Let us all hope and pray
That the people we trust with our lives
Are in this for the right reasons
And for the distance.
Come, girl, let us pause and make sandcastles in the dust where once there were courts of stone, because kings may come to tear down both walls and doors, regard or disregard our little lives, take stones one from another and make each a witness
what door will you keep then, when the one true King has passed us by and taking in his wake all love, leaving us without our voices to praise him or call out? Let stones cry out if we do not
Let the doors we have kept keep us instead
John 18 KJV
Genesis 43:23 KJV
[23] And he said, Peace be to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks: I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto them.
Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers. He was not their treasure. He was, at some point, so despised by them that they would have killed him. They went to great pains to get rid of him, and then let’s face it–life as a slave was no picnic for Joseph. He had so many days of servitude, imprisonment, and darkness. All because his brothers did not see he was treasure.
The similarity between Joseph and Jesus is strong and intentional. Many of us are like Joseph’s brothers, just trying to get Jesus out of the picture so we don’t have to deal with him, all while he has willingly taken on our enslavement, our imprisonments, our being left for dead.
And yet Joseph restores. He gives both life and treasure to his brothers when they had deprived him of his own
In the same way Jesus does, turning rejection into blessing the moment we realize
We can’t live without him.
Carrying Light 