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.
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.
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.
Go for a run in a safe, well-lit place
Sing your God songs, loud if possible
Kick around in the Gospels, the Jesus stories, the Bible project, CS of course
Ask Him direct questions
We love you sooo much
But He is love–
oceans-are-small-compared-love
No-story-too-small-love
Big-sky-love
Lonely awful die-for-us love
Lend us a child like you, Love
Arms wide open love
The stars are more than fire love
In the dark sky they admonish/love
He will never leave you, never walk away
I remember you
I remember when you ran into the waiting room with your sister
I remember all the warnings and admonitions I got from Martha-the-caseworker and your recently relieved first foster mom
And your blue-as-the-sea implacable gaze across a very misguided table
I remember your speech therapist and her fairy godmother-like delight in seeing you make eye contact and in watching your self-inflicted facial wounds
Heal and not return
Storms all over the place
Storms in you swirled all around us, even when I tried to contain them.
I wonder, did he stick to the margins of the day? Hold palms aloft for shade? Trudge through the seasons? Chafe at this appointed endeavor?
Think, “surely this will vouchsafe my peaceful demise?”
I do not know anything except
The hours he had
Squinting into morning sky, evening sky
Lovely clouds, all sea foam and flocks
Anchored by love
Isaiah 40
She flaps her (flightless) wings and flutters about
Because surely birds can’t cry and this world is full of sorrow
She is almost human, fully sentient with the wary eyes of someone who knows what it is to not have opposable thumbs
So I tell her, do your graceless angry dance and I will translate for you
About how eternal we are in this brutal place
Where the stars tell us things in the darkness
About hope
Dammed hope
Which will one day soon
Break free
The bald cypress
Is just a tree
A single tree on a riverbank where
Autumnal colors signify slow, thirsty death from the bridge to the broken
Dam
They try to tell us they are dying with a bride’s train of leaves blown out on the current
Stronger now that the dam has broken
The world has always been this way they will tell you
As if that would be enough
For you, for me
What if you believed?
That the trees were all sentient beings
And their falling leaves were thirst-stricken em•is•ar•ies?
Curling boats cupped and lovely
Or spare, lacy things let go before they should
To
The rippling surface of sunlit, unexpected
Apocalypse.
