All these years the ghosts have always been there, in our carved out hills of refuse, in our streams of once-living
Water.
–Federal Judge Has Blocked Texas Fetal Burial Law – NPR–
Once-living Water
Reply
Category Archives: history
Even So
I struggle with sadness (with good reason). The world is a dark place. Sometimes I will construct bits of words to hold off the sadness, things that are true but cannot fly or sing or curl up in one’s hands. We make words alive all the time–alive to life or alive to death, but not everyone can use words to make the dead rise or the sun, to speak worlds into being.
I know only One who can do that. Word of God, speak us all to life.
Noise Travels Hundreds of Miles Underwater
Despite my refusal to believe in the ghosts of the dead, stalking the yard, watching from the hill, beneath the trees where we have buried them, it remains the souls of the technically still living who haunt the before-and-after story of the man buried for another
never asking what exactly it is a carpenter does with
the disarray of
rails, posts, and sockets from the busted-in gates of hell
Cat’s Elea
She mistrusts me now, with good reason. I took her smallest one and when I brought her back it was only to say goodbye. She moves the surviving ones to the back corner of the closet where they are surrounded by the fragrance of girls’ Sunday dresses, sashes the vines and tangles of a forest we can only see through the window. She shuns the crass plastic takeaway boxes for the Formica bowls we bought in South Korea before you were born, before you were the little ones stashed in the closet for safety. I wish more things were just metaphorical thought experiments and fewer things were laced with grief and its outsider ways.
I understand when she lets me feed her and when she growls be careful, lady, I am done with white man’s justice.
“Don’t worry, Girl,” I tell her. “No white men here anymore.”
Dearest Little One
I believe in regrief. I believe you and I will continue to regrieve the death of your mother. Recently we lost all four of our kittens to a fast moving, devastating affliction. In a week we went from joyful to devastated.
And I regrieved, the way I lost them reminding me of the way I lost you. The pain of one overshadowed by the pain of the other–even after 20 years.
Both griefs were characterized by my naive belief in the authorities in each case–the judge, the caseworkers, the lawyers for the lost daughters, the veterinarians for the kittens.
In your case I discovered that the entire system all the way to the state regulators was riddled with greed, prejudice, and corruption. You and your siblings were sold or bartered in exchange for federal subsidies for your care. Your adopted father had not only abandoned his first family, he had placed all of his assets in your adopted mother’s name to dodge child support. At one point he faced a jail sentence for failure to pay child support for his children. Things which should have hindered his ability to adopt you.
And the kittens?
Their veterinary clinic was indifferent, too busy. They were not seen in time. I could not get them any help until I found another vet, and by that time it was too late.
So in the midst of grieving for the lost kittens, I grieve for you as well–you and your siblings, you and your beautiful mother.
She had no chance in the rigged system. She had no chance but me.
And I was not nearly enough.
The Cross
Even from a distance of 2000 years and a decent set of personal anecdotes about the constancy of God, not everything Jesus did or did not do makes sense to me.
Which helps when my prayers get different answers than what I want.
Because I do not need a Savior who feels the need to do what I find logical or necessary.
I just need a Savior.
Measuring Time in a Teacup
Nondescript kitchen window transforms itself into stained glass as I overthink which teacup, settle on porcelain white so different from the non-Euclidean trees green, alive, and fierce in this hot summer wind
I drop
two bags into the single cup, pour water from the kettle, assess how full the tea tin used to be
Last time we were alive
Together.
Beanie Weather
The young fella folding library mailers eyes the old ladies as they cross the light-filled atrium. They are an exclamation point and a question mark traveling at processional speeds, arms entwined for mutual ballast. I take my own child’s arm, tell her that if we play our cards right one day they will be us, we will be them…while the young fella wears a reddish “cadet” tee and a off-grey beanie in the late days of May in the heart of Texas–bit warm for beanies, she says.
Better to catch the eye of all the pretty girls, I tell her on the way home.
The Jerusalem Embassy Act
The Congress of the United States passed by an overwhelming margin an act authorizing the US embassy in Israel be located in its capital–Jerusalem…during Clinton’s presidency.
He refused to sign it.
We decided this as a representative democracy more than 20 years ago.
70 years after the birth of the modern state of Israel and 73 years after the end of the Holocaust.
One
Matthew 1:1 NIV
[1] This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew seems pretty confident that Jesus is the Messiah, a word with so much power to reckon with us and all that has captured us that I am not sure how big or long or loud our explanations of Messiah could be and still be only an approximation of the real.
Some synonyms: King, Anointed, Savior, Redeemer, Ransomer, Hero, Deliverer, Protector
The Reckoner.
Carrying Light 