Talitha

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It’s not rocket science, I tell myself, still present with my former self in the iterations of the supplication–old and unglamorous skills get unfolded like the swords beaten into plowshares.

Or the plowshares years later, back into

Swords where there might have been a daughter or two

You know I would have took that many and more

Or tried to sow or shape them from whatever you can make into a girl

Not dragons, not the teeth of dragons

But words stronger than all of my

Misgivings

Isaiah 55:11-12 KJV

[11] So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. [12] For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Woman Up!

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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.

Who protects the wary?

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John 5:3-4 KJV

[3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

My first question for you is–do you believe there was an angel who came down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the waters?

So one person each time could be healed?

Crazy, right?

But no crazier than believing that Jesus healed the man who had been at the pool so long, who does not turn out to be the most grateful healed man.

I have skirted the issue of the angel at the pool for years, choosing instead to focus on Jesus and the man and the religious oligarchs who made it hard for Jesus.

I understand that angel complicates everything–messenger of God who brings some healing, brings some hope only

In a certain season.

Damselfly 40:16

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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.

Another Pandemic

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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.

The damsel who kept the door

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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

Thousands of miles away

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I read this article today about how a hospital in Texas is deciding to handle rising numbers of Covid patients.

The entire article is alarming, but one thing struck me–thousands of miles away?

The entire state of Texas is not thousands of miles across from end to end any way you look at it.

While there are far-reaching and devastating consequences for everyone involved when people in need of care are summarily left to die and refused care,

I am also not sure how I feel about being told that there is not one place in Texas that will take very sick patients, the fragile and the dying.

Maybe we need to talk about that.