An old lady sits in the light-filled atrium, says there is a special place in Hell…a special place in Hell, there is a special place in Hell..there are bombs going off somewhere and she refuses to watch, she says she will not watch while behind her emphatic form, the nearly full moon slips its moorings and floats across the pierced blue sky.
She dots the house with sticky notes scrawled with litany reminders–cupped in His hands, asleep in the boat, keep your eyes on Jesus, you are my “Wonderwall,”
As the preacher men go silent, as they are oft to do, in their complacency and fear
As though any of us can escape the
Light-blast of the Divine.
I can’t have coffee with Tara, the stuff she drinks is way too strong for me now, but I wait for her anyway, keep glancing out smudgy windows at the passing clouds, shafts of light, signifying every
valley filled, hill made low, road made straight, and all these rough, rough ways, smoothed at last.
Luke 3:5
Tara B.
Trust God
Don’t flinch
Luke 19:40 NIV
[40] “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
I supplicate
Raise hands heavenward-
(Where Thou art)-
Give me stones and pebbles, hands-full-anything-anything
I can lift up to you,
Tell you, breathe on us, breathe us all into
Sharp shafts of light
The bed roll is rectangular, perfect, filled with a mixture of water fowl feathers and synthetic fill. When I remove the soft duvet to wash it, I find each corner has an anchoring point where the duvet has been tied to the downy quilt. A human had to tie each, the reverse operation of what I do, untying each.
In China a woman like me sews and ties
Sews and ties comfort
And I feel fragile
Because she does.
I want to tell them you will miss the leaves curled into small boats, miss the trees, the river, the way water carries our voices
Our eternal voices
Beyond
Revelation 21:1 KJV
[1] And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
The whole world just a shotgun shack with the big fig tree in the backyard. We used to swing there on the old swing set, first for just us children, then the one even old people could sit in.
So clear in my mind
What passed away meant to you, meant to me, its euphemistic weight gone with all the passings, you, then grandpa, then dad
Passed away you would say then, whereas now there are no euphemisms, no ways of hiding
What the new looks like
All filled with glory.
Dear Scarlett Johansson,
Would you please 1. Read Woody Allen’s Wikipedia page 2. Comment on the number of time he has trucked out the trope of the teenage ingénue in his films and private life 3. Tell us more about how you assess his sexual relationships with these teenage girls (real and thinly fictional) and then
Ask yourself how old was Dylan when she was dragged into a rape story? Would you want that for your daughter? Would anyone?
Believe is a strong word.
With lasting consequences.
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2 KJV
[1] So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [2] Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.
I generally chafe at the wisdom of Solomon. I want to measure my “wise guys” by their lives–faithfulness, sobriety, compassion. S-man seems to fall abysmally short on all categories.
When I read this verse from Ecclesiastes it resonates with my own sense of the fragility and tenuousness of life, but then I cannot help that Solomon had so many powers the ordinary dude did not have to:
Stop oppression
Comfort the bereaved
And use his power as a monarch to generally improve his culture
He had the power to live a different life, to show a different way. I am no king, but I will be judged by how much better or worse I use my power
To change things.
Carrying Light 