I draw from memory, with sticks of charcoal, which smudges like the dickens! The figure has the messy edges of your ordinary unfinished sketch, work-in-progress, might-never-be-finished
Angel just means messenger and
We mortals are
from dust, and dust return,
Until such piercing Light
Outshines all
That came before.
When the older brother lifts his little brother up
So high in the air
above the dock, out into the deep river
Light scatters everywhere
And I think
You are my magical and amazing Older brother
Giving me, your little sister,
Flight
You say the sweetest things
A soft answer turns away wrath
Love is always patient
What if you took the terrible letters of a curse of sorts
One you never willed and controlled and made it into an acrostic or a cypher-
The letters are a-b-I-r-r-t-u-w
What if that were a word by itself
And you-like the fairy godmother you resemble in rounded form only
No power only soft and aging
No longer the princess or the sleeper or the magic one
Just this one last spell-
Let the word when spoken
Set us free from past and illusion
Let it be the strange, scary truth of the thing-
Oh fragile love-
You say the sweetest things
Revelation 19:16 NIV
[16] On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
king of kings and lord of lords.
She calls him King of Heaven. I like that
Evoke the way you effortlessly possess
The sky, the clouds, rolled up One Day for something new. I want to gather these flocks of clouds, the silvery colors of this matchless afternoon
Wonder what is written on you
Wonder what you will write forever
On me
Mark me
Mark me out as your own
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
I want to say so many things to
This man who does not really see
“This little girl”
But I know You
See her, see me, see them
All the little ones who
Need a God like You
Take my sins away, heal my wounds, stay until I am well, bring justice in your wings, never blame the victim, never stop searching for treasure
You
who were, who are, who always will be
Just You,
and “this little girl”
About a month ago I spent a day dragging my family through a crash course in coronavirus. It was appalling.
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.
Only one of them, the beloved, would be clueless and self-absorbed, inclined to foibles and easily distracted
A regular
Flibbertigibbet!
But the Other One—
He would always be true.
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.
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.
Carrying Light 