halo
One hundred miles above the
Arctic circle
So cold the sun
Will fail to even graze
Skin of men bound in iron and chains
Click of light and dark, tracks and ties
Train.
To a string of gulags
Resembling nothing less than
Rough pearls
Which are surely
The opposite of coal
Torn from the frozen chest
By men whose bone-deep desperation
mix with their fear
As air bleeds out
We all dream of
of fire
Archangel
So far beneath the buried heart
Of this vertiginous stone
Planet
According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.
It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all. But the human side was sub-par. The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs. But he did not.
Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King. Harder to face our own.
The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him? At the breakfast table or the DMV? In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?
It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.
Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.
Beneath a star.
In the presence of angels, so close to our King.
The sermon was lovely–feeding of the five (to 20 plus) thousand.
Five loaves and two fish expanding out to a feast for thousands.
Is it difficult to miss the metaphors? The abundance of God? Jesus providing through his own personality to satisfy all those souls by the sea.
But what if the boy had said no?
What if he had not shared?
Jesus never needed us to contribute. He tells us that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out.
He doesn’t need our help.
But if we keep our lunch to ourselves? We miss our portion in the miracle.
We need Him to make us characters in His story, not the other way around.
Good reminder when I am hungry and not sure it is a good idea to share my lunch.
When Jesus gives, He pours it all out for us.
Down to the last drop.
I just read a poorly-written article from the Washington Post desperately attempting to disentangle Hillary Clinton from Saul Alinsky and Lucifer.
While I personally doubt she will ever be able to divorce herself from Satan, there seems to be little reason for Mrs. Clinton to distance herself from Alinsky. He was a bit of a badass, sloppy theology notwithstanding.
Jesus (the original anti-Lucifer) told a parable about two brothers who had opposite responses to their father’s request that they both go work in the fields.
One said sure then did nothing; the other said naw then went to work.
Mr. Alinsky seemed to have been the second guy. He went to the poorest, least powerful communities in this country during a time when the people in those communities were genuinely oppressed and disenfranchised and gave them power and a voice.
When asked why he focused on African American “ghettos” he spoke of pervasive oppression of African Americans through lynchings, the Klan, and systematic disenfranchisement.
He chose to go to the people who had the least reason to refuse any offer of hope.
Saul Alinsky was a do-gooder. He refused labels, especially political labels.
He was wrong about metaphysical hell–there are few have-nots there. But right about the hells on earth that men engender through systemic avarice and racism.
I don’t know Alinsky well. In fact after Carson and the bedraggled WP article I plan on getting to know him better.
But I leave you with a fact and a suggestion–
Alinsky once suggested a fart-in at a concert to combat social injustice.
And I bet you a pork-pie hat that Alinsky’s version of the Fox TV show Lucifer would actually be worth watching.
There are these nuggets of meaning (or anti-meaning) floating around
Zika fears, Pokéstops
Two presidential candidates
Each holding silk screened banners
The lesser of two evils!
2016,
When “most Americans”
Were once again depicted by
The hastily gathered
Opinions of just a few of us
Through the ghostly-lit rectangular screen
The message seems important somehow
But when we look further
The news is bleak-
This message has no content
the lovely stranger
Tells us all
If this thing in front of you
Doesn’t give you joy throw it
Away
I kinda wonder about the ordinary scrub brushes thrust into the most terrible places
Do you discard them too?
Replace them with newer ones without the dark history?
Maybe keep them away from the crap
Which tangentially reminds me of
Poor Thomas Crapper–
Bringing us into modern hygiene at the expense of the family name
Don’t worry, Thomas
Your job may be thankless
Your name synonymous with
Well, crap
But I won’t forget you
Joy may be a too-strong word
For preventing public health catastrophe
But somebody gotta do it, TC
Somebody for all the rest
While the crucifixion of Christ is overwhelmingly unbearable, the deaths of ordinary humans are awful enough.
We are all certain things when we die.
The cessation of breath is a terrifying thing. Add to that helplessness and pain–most of us avoid death the way you would avoid the edge of an unforgiving precipice or an unguarded incinerator.
John the Baptist’s death is no exception. He died as a direct result of powerful people’s sin. He died in chronological and geographical proximity to Jesus.
The howl of the unfairness of it all is unmistakable.
Which is why I stick close to men like him. What if John had not questioned Jesus? What if his grief and doubt had not been recorded in the Gospel?
…I would have fewer answers for my lesser questions…and one fewer member of my support group.
And a narrower understanding of Jesus–no Santa Claus god. Jesus commands us to focus on both who He is and what He does for us on the most primal level.
He gives us back the one thing we can never get back ourselves–eternal life.
The death of every human may seem inevitable, but who we trust with the forever after makes all the difference.
To John the Baptist and every ordinary me.
I have told my kids (on too many occasions) that I would love to see a spy movie in which the main character’s spy skills are demonstrated by the character’s thorough-going appearance transformations.
He would become she, young and handsome would morph into old and frail, fat to thin, and tall to short…by assigning entirely different actors to play the part in unbroken succession.
Then it occurs to me that is what Jesus did–He came in disguise. Clues for this theory are in the Gospels–the transfiguration (why take only three disciples?), the times when He prohibits the healed from blabbing about their transformations, the healing of Jairus’ daughter (again, only three disciples?) and then those times after His resurrection when people don’t recognize Him.
God in disguise.
It makes sense when you see Him described in other places in the Bible. Excuse my French, but Jesus in His “real form” is unmistakably bad-ass.
Which brings me to the most haunting part of this story of voluntary disguise.
The Lord of glory, Creator of the universe, Beginning and the End, Lion of the tribe of Judah, naked, eviscerated, gasping on the Cross.
My death. This is the purest place for me to see who I really am–the person who deserves this terrible end.
He wraps Himself in the vortex of hell to give us access to heaven–undisguised.
Imagine them as you will but never
Assume your scepticism will make them
Mythological again
In the smoke of our discarded daughters
/commerce of indifference
Shoots craps in crowded rooms
Sweat-palmed cash for common shame
Summon these
Monsters of righteousness
From this fire we
have made of love.
I love them when they snake totemistically through the clouds, smoke before the storm
And when they are filigree-perfect by the pool, along the slender branches of new trees
Skin the same green as the leaves
But when it is the serpent
Climbing vertically toward the sparrowlets,
I cannot either
Turn, ignore
Or observe with the objective skill of a naturalist
intervene
Knowing grace is more than words before a meal
Or a sticker you wear to church on your lapel
Grace is the Hand that
saves the sparrow
Even at the mortal expense
Of the dragon.
Carrying Light 