Category Archives: history

What would you do with the end of “normal?”

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In the early months of 2021 I formulated a plan based on the return of my life to me. I had almost died of Covid and had spent some time tethered to an oxygen machine.

I decided I should move slowly—literally. I felt like there was a sense of my own human fragility that had to be acknowledged—drive carefully, walk carefully, acknowledge the fog of your recovery.

Give some stuff away. I am a thrift store shopper and I tend to hold on to clothes. I went through several bags of clothes and was able to give them away with the acknowledgment that I had survived something and did not need that dress or that shirt in my new chapter.

Use the gift of a life given back for something. We took in our adopted granddaughters, whose lives have been pretty traumatic. I told myself—if I have been given more time, I need to use the time for brave things. That is not the easiest decision to make when your brave decision changes the lives of your entire family. But I can’t imagine my life without my granddaughters now.

I feel like we are all on the edge of change. Economies are brittle, wars are on horizons. Have we even really recovered from the trauma of a pandemic?

What would you do if today or tomorrow or Sunday was the last day of “normal?”

John 13

Yeshua

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I usually call him Jesus, like to think I am “his girl” and rarely live up to what he deserves.

Yesterday the daily Bible reading was Isaiah 53 and it brought me to tears, as it always does. “Crushed for our transgressions”? I think of the ordinary atrocities we humans endorse on the reg as well as the ones which will forever radiate darkness in our history.

He took them.

And he offers such untrammeled friendship. King of kings, yet he is the friend of every yet-born child.

I should stop there. Benign, seek Jesus stuff, right?

But that is not all. Isaiah’s view of the Messiah is polarizing. He is not depicted as the universally recognized cool guy everyone loves. He is depicted as “despised and rejected of men.”

Why?

Because we do not usually like to be told we are wrong, helpless—supine. We like to be in charge.

Jesus is our, wants to be, our friend, but ultimately that should be on his terms, not yours or mine.

Does that galvanize or offend you?

I do not enjoy thinking about Jesus’ crucified death, his humiliation, blooded and broken and naked and alone, but I know

That and worse was to be my lot without him.

Advice for the dictator

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Lately he doesn’t seem to smile much, hardly a surprise when his latest hobby is world domination.

I pray for him, but how?

How do you pray for a monster?

By acknowledging we are all monsters, only some monsters do not obey the voices in our heads which

Reduce cities to rubble and children to dust.

The advice is simple–

You are a man, just a man

And you are dying

You cannot, no,will not, outrun God

Repent and change

Leave everything but your soul behind and say you are sorry for what you have done

Replace your illusions of control with the acknowledgement of your weakness

For we are all monsters here

Debtors all to grace

Altos De Betania

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John 1:26-28 NIV

[26] “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. [27] He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” [28] This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

I was once set free in Bethany, so far from Jerusalem the rainy season fills the streets into rivers and the dry season ignites the hills, black ash a veil, a shroud over all

Who are you?

In the house of figs and sadness, blessed are the poor in spirit who

Know they cannot raise themselves to life

Let all the other signifiers change for us

To Lazarus to life

gather the souls

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Genesis 12:5 KJV

[5] And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.

My daughter has to do a slide show about very small souls, cupped in the hand souls, lost at sea souls, their tiny lives made consciously insignificant by human design alone

There are quiet, tree-lined lanes in the arteries of the capitals of the world where pretty twins play while their siblings become the interstitial jigsaw pieces of a world built without reference to

The souls they had gotten in Haran

What is a man’s soul?

And what will he give in exchange for it?

For what does it profit a man

If he gains the whole world

And loses his own soul?

Well, will He?

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A little over a year ago I wrote emails to Catholic official all over the state of Texas. Called some. Beseeched others. Got one response and one sympathetic conversation with a lady who said she would send along a message.

At the time I was deeply concerned because an international healthcare system with a Catholic identity was facilitating the expansion of a medical records system owned by a woman with very un-Catholic values.

I wrote the Vatican.

No response.

As Biden announces he has been blessed and authorized by the Pope to get communion and keep doing what he is doing, I can’t help but think that the list of bad popes is incomplete , and should include a few more, the guys who weren’t active felons or thieves, just cowardly or selfish or fooled by the allure of celebrity or power.

It raises two questions for me–when is a useless police department better than no police department? A bad police chief better than no police chief?

And more importantly–will Jesus find faith when he comes back? Will any of us have the courage to stand for peace for the vulnerable children targeted for destruction in their mothers’ wombs?

Luke 18:7-8 NIV

[7] And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? [8] I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

What Angels Do

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Daniel 10:12-14 KJV

[12] Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. [13] But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. [14] Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.

We have so misunderstood and utterly misrepresented

What angels do

Who they are

Or how they might appear

(While surely they might be anyone–

Women, children, the dispossessed)

They stand their ground

Fight for us

Maybe when it would seem

We are otherwise entirely

Abandoned

Let us write a book, my loves

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Let us write a book my loves where each of you gets at least a single word because, as the Good Book says words are signifiers of eternal things and you are nothing if not eternal.

This time only you and God will be able to decide what words your little lives will signify

And how much each is worth

Words for children

A progeny of words

Like the teeth of a dragon

Sewn beauty in the field

Where once was only sorrow

Jerichos

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Long before her son’s whirling and untimely demise, my paternal grandmother believed in her traction with elected officials. I remembered this belief upon my first campaign, which was, parenthetically, about the loss of a single child and an unjust judge.

Who save me

would draw a line between Mamaw and the rise and fall of Hasmonean kings?

Amidst all this talk of unjust judges and rising kings

I tell myself there must be

sycamores in Jerichos still

Awaiting His return