Darling, I have no right to
Look for you
At every bus stop, mailbox, broken sidewalk, out of the corner of my eye as night falls
No right but your love, so true
Been there all along
Been There All Along
Reply
Tag Archives: Faith
Eschaton and testing for Covid-19
About a month ago I spent a day dragging my family through a crash course in coronavirus. It was appalling.
- The range of symptoms is highly variable.
- Carriers can be asymptomatic.
- With over 200 mutating strains, the range of severity in this disease can be highly variable.
- A person can be exposed to the mild strains, and still get hit by a secondary, more severe infection.
We put too much emphasis on testing. Testing would be great only if there were limitless tests and the tests were far more reliable than they are. If that were the case then we should all follow a protocol of weekly prophylactic testing.
Not feasible right now.
A few years ago my family started to play a modified version of a very complicated fictional tennis game from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. His version was very apocalyptic (fitting); ours was as well but with a fraction of the complexity.
In our version two teams of as many people as you have (evenly divided, of course) face each other on either side of the net. We divided as many balls as we could muster and started hitting them across the net relentlessly. The opposing team did the same. At a predetermined point (like music chairs), we would pause the game. The team with fewer balls on their side won that round and then we would continue.
Great cardio workout. Quickly exhausting.
That is coronavirus. We will all face an onslaught of a relentlessly moving, mutating virus which can spread quickly, if not effortlessly, through contact and fomite transmission.
Eschaton is a fun game.
This is not. But if I know one thing about how to “win” at eschaton, it is organize your team and don’t stop lobbing the balls back across the net.
We don’t play eschaton right now. Our tennis court is closed. That is a good thing. The best way to “win” at this is to assume we are all spreaders and keep us all
Six feet apart.
Pray. Pray because our lives depend on it. Imagine what a simple game of eschaton would look like if
God were clearly on
The winning side.
Matthew 17:20-21 KJV
[20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Coronavirus
All over the world
Right now
People just like
You and me
Have begun to
Live in fear
Of our own
Invisible, creeping
Spinning, spiny, tiny, inevitable invisible crowns
Empty shelves
Where once cellophaned signifiers of
All that can be wiped away–
Canned food, pasta, string cheese, milk
Fomite transmission
You and me
Gone
Don’t worry, Darling
He took all our thorny little crowns
Smoothed each out
Like a girl braiding her sister’s hair
Singing some sort of song about
A proper crown for the One True King
Come to save us all.
When mountains crumble
Think about it.
Your darkest night
Your loneliest moment
The here-and-there times when it is either your own
Life or the life of the beloved
Taken from you
Faith I get
Love anchors
But it is my squint-into-the-sun-reticence about hope
Which drives me to speak
Of mountains.
Today darling the mountains
Are all shaped like crowns
Crowns of thorns or flowers,
The braided laurels of an imperial victory
He said, it is finished beneath these crumbling mountains
And I will wait, sometimes in tears
To see them all
Thrown into the sea.
The Feast of Thorns
Long before our terrible story your birthday was already
the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:
Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas
Lame men whole, blind men see
Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings
impossible things all around ya
If only you will
See
There All Along
By Ben Lee
I walk these streets and think
My love
But you are not here
I look for you
Around corners
In the cracks of ancient bricks
I descend the hill listening for you
I find the top of the mountain
Look back
At all I’ve traveled
And realize you were with me all along
You are eternal
Years ago a man who fought fire told me that the hot center of it is black, vortex dark, a hole you could fall into and never stop
Falling
There is no fire without burning, I tell the children, each sun a metaphor for something
Something bigger than us
Something bigger than them
Than all the worlds of burning
Light reaching back to us
Saying something
Maybe in Morse code
Flashlit messages exchanged through neighboring windows by children in the night
You are…eternal
Luis, I…
Luis, I once lived in a country where the money I earned was worthless outside the country but could buy beautiful, irreplaceable things inside the country. I had a gigantic blue suitcase, a backpack. I took treasure home, but not enough. I should have emptied my bags of all the replaceable things and brought home treasure.
You are home treasure
You are Home, Treasure.
Alpha Centauri
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.
Rules for Prodigals
I once knew a man who said it should be the parable of the prodigal father, which, of course, is true. We are not very prodigal with much but our father’s treasure.
I have been the younger son. I have been the older son. Jesus knows that we are all really not great sons–judge-y or profligate or both, so he gives a story where the two great characters are an old man and a fatted calf.
The man who saves the world makes himself the main course at a feast thrown for a loser.
I am that loser. The shining moment of clarity in any human life is when we realize we are all the prodigal child.
And so we should know the rules for prodigals–
I have done nothing to deserve this inheritance I have squandered
I have made little account for the days my Father has grieved on my behalf
But he never stops hoping I will come home.
What pride, what fear, what foolishness can withstand the power of love?
Luke 15:17-20 KJV
[17] And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, [19] And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. [20] And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
Carrying Light 