Already Rome.

I am not much of a pro-sports fan, although I try sometimes for the sake of my partner.

I feel less inclined to try now that the famously laconic Gregg Popovich had words for this recent election and the folk who voted red.

So many things you said worth noting Mr. P, but the one that stuck out the most?  Like if I could only pick one thing you said to comment on–You are afraid we are Rome?

Long been Rome, I would say.

 We have not only tolerated legalized infanticide for the last 43 years through Roe v. Wade, we now allow the concessions which provide the service of salting, vacuuming, dismembering, and dehumanizing small, voiceless humans through the months of their development in the womb both federal funds and deep privacy in order to abort and also harvest the bodies of these exploited children.

If you were to ask an ordinary person, say a woman or a disabled  person–would you rather be verbally belittled or carefully vivisected for spare parts?

Belittled, thanks very much.

The latter-death by legal and medical caveat.  Pretty disenfranchising.

To be clear, very clear–we, the citizens of the United States, have long been Rome.  Infanticide is infanticide is infanticide, Mr. P. 

How many millions of female, minority, Muslim, immigrant, disabled American voters did not vote in this election because we legalized their murder years ago?

No words will bring them back.

Minimum

He says

The least of these in the language of childhood

Neither emperors nor governors nor bards

Gather the little ones

…least of these

Army of small

Wanderers in the world 

They look for a Savior

Older Brother King

Who can 

Calm the storm

Speak peace to the wind

And tell all bedtime stories

With hope at the beginning and the end

Of each hard letter 

INRI

The  least of these-

M.

Roll the stone away

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the…

Minimum.

Weighted Blanket

in a fit of unease 

she has an out-of-body experience 

Rising above the squalor

Imagining what it would be like

To live inside the perfect house

Instead–she dusts the counters and all the edges

with cinnamon to deter the sugar ants

Beats the air with questions

Washes and re-washes clothes, stones, teeth 

Delays bodily functions  

To search for

-The weighted blanket-

Surrogate mother/synthetic comforter

Lyrics/verses 

of a lullaby sung softly by the

Real One

“Hear My Voice”

I am a big fan of Jesus, even  though he is a little scary.

Why?  Well, there is the dying for the sins of the world thing, but there is also the stuff he idly seems to throw into his parables–weeping and gnashing of teeth, something about being salted with fire.

CS Lewis is right, he is not a tame lion.  He is the only and original badass and he more than deserves to be the divisor of before and after in human history.

Years ago I cried when I read an article about a nurse who visited new and at-risk parents.  She said that years later the babies she had visited would recognize her voice when they heard her in random places.

This mattered to me because I have a baby out there somewhere who might recognize my voice even though she was just 14 months old when she was taken from me.

The voice of love–that is what I hear when I read Jesus.  He is, by turns, funny, deadly incisive, ironic, and passionately in love with us.

Crucifixion and resurrection kind of passionately in love.

When I lost my little foster daughter I grieved beyond what is comfortable to describe.  I took my cry to God–why?

His voice was clear–if you have to choose for her to know just one of us, you or Me?  Which would you choose?

Him, of course.

Always and only Him, baby girl.

Hear his voice.

John 10:2-5

Heroin Gone

Looks like deep

Sleep

Draped across the seat

across the bodies of these hungry

Children

 Immobilizing poison

Shot into blood vessels, skin 

I call to you, no answer

Try to warn you

This venal monster 

Hunts then kills its prey

No answer, Sleeping Beauty

Already heroin gone

Who takes apples from strangers in a storm?

Do you believe in ever after?

All the tropes of fairy tales will not save us from 

The story of a little girl trapped

In this worst kind

Of nightmare tries to call

for help

Nothing left

As the anatomical apparatus for sound and breath:

Lungs, rib cage, windpipe 

Collapses beneath the weight,

The force of  blows to this chest,

All alone,

Of the used-to-be

girl.

God of the Impossible

John 11:4 NIV[4] When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

What is impossible?  Is gravity?  The suspension of gravity?  Space flight? Sea urchins?

We live in a world filled with wonder and darkness.  The wonder feels improbably miraculous until the darkness throws an extreme curve ball and bam!

Death takes all.

Or so it seems.

When Jesus says this sickness will not end in death it seems like he knows what he is talking about.

Several days later when he weeps with the mourners he seems like a total nut job.  Until…

I am going to hold that until–single note sung in the dark.

Some of the untils we weep through are excoriating, catastrophic…terminal.

It is important to pause at Jesus’ pronouncement.  If you know the story you might be tempted to breeze through to “the good stuff,” but in this case time takes the stage–time for Lazarus to go from well to unwell, time for Lazarus to go from unwell to fatally ill.  Time for Lazarus to die.  Time for Lazarus to be prepared for the grave.  Time for grief.  Disbelief.  Sorrow. Anger. 

And the apparent  absence of Jesus.

But…

He is not absent.  He is impossible.  He is the God of the impossible.

Wait.  Impossible means powerless, the opposite of able.  

How can God, by his very nature omnipotent, be defined as not able.

Deliberately. He was intentionally…

“not able” in death.

“not able” on the Cross.

“not able” for us.

Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave in preparation for his own death.  He gave his followers an impossible four day route through death and burial so that when it was his death they would only have to wait three days.

The three darkest days of history.  Three impossible days.

Until…

Sunday morning and the God of impossible things walks back in.

When you were little your foster father would throw you in the air above him.  Within one second your face would register fear, exhilaration,  joy, laughter.

It has always been a picture in my head–this God of sea urchins and dwarf stars throws us high up in the air for each single looped thread in the seam of  all eternity.  

The fear and uncertainty only bearable when we know, know, know…

He will catch us in His arms.

As He has already caught your beautiful mama, let Him catch us too…

Forever.

Safe in the outstretched arms 

of Love.

Luke 18:27 NIV

[27] Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Hell in a hand-basket?

A basket full of deplorables:

they say love is in the eye of the beholder

Whatever the heck that means

But what about deplorable?

Is that open for interpretation as well?

Or is it etymologically and irrevocably anchored to hell?

To white, doughy, affluent men who use their power and money to force themselves on teenagers?

Or white, doughy, affluent women

Who malign child rape victims to 

Free the perps sooner,

take their campaign donations by the hundred million

Buckets full of baby parts

Littering the sterile field

Capitalizing on

the saline burn, scissor beheading

Of minority

disabled

And female fetuses

Deplorable

Basket 

where there should be babies

A Fortress is a fortress is a fortress

I walk into the house just as the smallish bandits, pirates, and cowboys dash through the living room brandishing colorful weaponry.

Some tend to be softish, others–bullets made of foam, none lethal, although all inspire the requisite awe in the dogs, certainly held at bay.

There is a formal request for pillows to be requisitioned for a fortress.  The Quartermaster readily assents, asserting that a fortress is a fortress is a fortress.

Suddenly every camp, garrison, base, castle, encampment, barricade, stronghold in the annals of history forever bound to this laughter, this moment of joy, this pillow…

Fortress.

Jacob Wetterling 

they say you should not 

look directly 

at the sun

ignoring the real possibility 

that it is the night 

that has already

blinded us

To the scared, cold, 

Ordinary child

In each photograph

Owned by 

This oddball monster

While the dying sun,

Claw-handed scribe, failing light,

Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice

Into one kind of eternity

Or another