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Lent 15

Lent 15

 

It is a sight to see

A last cold day in winter

Green is trying

To work its way through

It only looks like moss and lichen

Now

In the south, it’s autumn passing

I think I’d have to be there

Really to get it

Such is my brevity of sight

Only used to sensing northern climes

 

I don’t live in a desert world, either

I’d be just as likely to romanticize

Though it must be hard

 

to live a metaphor

When it strikes the covered face,

Threatening to upend

A breathing life

 

The world is extraordinary

Our world

It’s hard, it’s soft

It gives, it takes away

It inaugurates

It keeps away for good

A mean game

Except that it’s not meant

 

What we shall have here

What gained, what lost

Anything ponderous

Or discrete

Anything at all

 

C L Couch

 

 

gert jan degroot / 66 Images

Pxhere

 

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Lent 14

Lent 14

 

It’s hard not to feel invincible

When we feel invincible

Let’s not blame youth

Those of us in any age

Might forget ourselves

Relying on our defenses

(don’t even think about them)

 

We conquer the world

Forgetting those to either side

Who want more of the same

Or want to live more simply

Not as victims

Not as Alexander, either,

Or Zenobia

 

Live and let live

We might say

But should wonder how there’s such a choice

When no one is a planet

 

C L Couch

 

 

PlanetUser – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45377129

An artist’s rendition of Planet X.

 

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Lent 12

Lent 12

 

The disciples number

A baker’s dozen with Matthias,

An added treat

According to the lot

The dark or the light mark

That selected him

 

But in our story,

There are Marys

To teach us about calling

And a cause

 

The mother of Jesus

The Magdalene who first told of

The second life of Jesus

And was not believed

Mary the mother of disciples

These three count for much

And more

 

Yet often go uncounted

If not in symbol

Then in leadership

 

Who is the disciple

Who is my neighbor

Who shall rule among us

More lots

 

Or let God do the casting

If we notice, we might see

It’s done

Call Mary to be mother

Call Mary to be mother and to keep

Things in her heart

Until a time

 

Call Mary to be testifier

To correct the doubting

And give hope to those who are

Falling, collapsing from inside

 

Terrified, isolated, waiting

For nothing good

To happen anymore

 

Marys offer differing words

Of discipline, inner strength, and

Capability

No other

When other men have run away

 

C L Couch

 

 

File:The Three Marys at the Tomb LACMA

Domenico Piola (Italy, Genoa, 1627-1703)

Italy, 17th-18th century Drawings Brown ink and wash Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Blanke (M.72.124.2) Prints and Drawings

 

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Lent 11

Lent 11

 

It’s easy to feel pent up,

If not overwhelmed

 

Our world tells us to keep moving

And that’s fine

 

But if the wisdom-writer’s right,

Then there is a time for all things

 

In that, a time to let all

Movement happen all around

 

While we savor what there is

Or step out

 

Because it’s also time for

Taking up what is close by

 

Just behind the shoulder

And it goes unnoticed, even when

 

It presses from wherever

Time to look again

 

To hear

To touch

 

To taste

To smell

 

To pick up and take in

Like a newfound work of art

 

That otherwise might have only lived in dust,

Which is not living at all,

 

Lost to light

But now

 

Like this (dusted off),

We can

 

Enter into

A tasking of illumination

 

C L Couch

 

 

Adamantios – Own work

Attic (aka garret, loft or sky parlor) in Berlin, Germany.

(symbolism unplanned—synchronicitous?)

 

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Lent 10

Lent 10

 

2

 

First, though,

We must have him

In the wilderness

Forty days because forty’s

Important

 

In a place for unbelievers

(for heathens dwell upon a heath)

 

Nowhere to rest well

To drink, to bathe

To have the food that comes

From green and ready plants and trees

 

He is there, and

The wild

Must consume him

Yet he is so vast inside

He has room for it and so much more

 

The space of all the world

And the needs for which it

Cries

 

He is not alone

One other must be there

An adversary

Who must tempt the man

And the child untested

In the world

 

Make bread out of rock

Throw your tired body headlong

Into nihilism

Worship me so I can give you

Empire

Of the strong, such as

Alexander took

 

We know how it ends

Jesus cites

Adjures the tempter and

His own need

The thing must depart

The entity, the plan

(wile away another)

Angels visit angels

This act is done

There is no more to say

Or learn

Time to visit other withered places

 

C L Couch

 

 

Hotchkiss, Jedediah, 1828-1899 – https://www.civilwar.org/learn/maps/sketch-battle-wilderness-position-2nd-corps-anv-thursday-may-5th, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63245863

 

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Lent 9

Lent 9

 

1

 

We place Christ in a journey:

Celebrate his birth at Christmas

His presentation at the

Temple plus his

Baptism by his cousin John

Upon a bank of the Jordan River,

Then consider now

The earthly ministry

Ending in Jerusalem,

The next part of the calendar

 

What notes the work just now but

Miracles and teaching

And many encounters, one by one—

A woman by a well

A man who climbs a tree

Bemused to see this person

 

A woman who breaks

A vial of perfume to wash

His feet

A leper out of ten lepers

Who must return

With thanks

 

There is teaching

Answering the quandary, Who

Is my neighbor

A question about government

The discipline of a warrior

Who, though not a Jew, respects

The way of Christ as he would accept a

Commander’s prerogative

 

The woman who begs for scraps

Of mercy, who is rebuked

Before she astonishes him

With a reminder for whom he’s come

 

He comes for the Jews

He comes for Arabs and

For Romans

Even the pirates of

Parthia

He comes for the savage Britons

And the unknown Asians

He comes for them

He comes for then

He comes for now

He comes for you and me

 

Oh, how he loves you and me

And it never stops,

The arrival since creation

Life upon a troubled plain

The departure into earth

The return in keeping with

Prophecy and promise

 

C L Couch

 

 

Fritz Geller-Grimm – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1690920

Fritz Geller-Grimm – Own work

Saint James’s shell at a well of the Way, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

(Camino de Santiago)

 

“Oh, How He Loves You and Me” by Kurt Kaiser

 

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Lent 8

Lent 8

 

Though the dates change,

The days remain the same

Lent’s first week dawns into

The second

 

Let’s not tally

What was done each day

Though there are calendared prayers

And practices

This might work best as

A time that doesn’t have

A record book

Keep a journal, fine

(but) sit still and think

Afterward, have a smackerel

A spoonful of sugar

Yes, Lent is its own reward

 

Understanding quiet

Knowing the noise

That greets us later on

 

But if there is a little treat, enjoy

 

Maybe the next hour will be good

Maybe the new week will be patient discovery

Senses a little more alive

Than they were, even yesterday

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

 

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Lent 7

Lent 7

 

A week from Mardi Gras

(fat Tuesday, )Shrove Tuesday,

Fastnacht that in

Pennsylvania (USA) is a doughnut

 

And the observance

What did we shrive,

We shrove the house of fat

Of everything extravagant that might

Distract us

From the discipline

Of remembrance and devotion

For the coming days

 

Okay, so what did we really do:

We might have had our fun on Tuesday

But who’s to say the next day was

Somber

It should have been, I guess

A mood for taking ashes if for nothing else

 

Though there was something,

Something not to miss

The start of a new season

Not as fun as Advent

 

Without the fire that comes with

Pentecost

Let alone the triumph that is

Easter

 

There is an odd coupling as well

Since spring is starting now in northern climes

There are signs

Today there has been sudden warmth outside

 

There are springs of a green kind

Winter-washed

There are signs

Of nascent life

What shall we own, then

Of dust or seedlings?

 

Maybe we take both

To have a time of stillness and of energy

A quiet dynamo

Fueled for the change by fragrant remembrances

In growth

 

C L Couch

 

 

DeFacto – Own work

Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940

 

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Lent 6

Lent 6

 

The season is like mourning

A dying of a kind that takes

Weeks to be fully realized

The only kind of death that might be safe

Because following

Still keeps us here

 

The consequences are mollified by

Our remaining mortal

If something else should happen,

Well, that’s something else

 

It’s dying on the inside, isn’t it

The gradual release of things

That might do better elsewhere

Attached to other life preservers, say

 

Dying to ego

And to vanity

Fleeing what we think we need

To embrace and then let go

A gift, a conversation

Uneasy service that

Needs doing, anyway

 

We have days now

Negotiating will,

Arriving at a knowing place

Of spirit

From which to act

When it’s time

 

C L Couch

 

 

Official Navy Page from [the] United States of America[, ]Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Ryan J. Mayes/U.S. Navy

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22662531

Attaching distress marker lights to flotation devices used in the event of a [person] overboard[.]

 

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