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Consider It All Joy

(x = space)

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Consider It All Joy

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Let the outside

Be awful

If it must

For princes of the world

Might have their own way

There

(not letting

princesses rise

by the way)

If only

There

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Be good on the inside

Your own realm

Where you have willed

Let in

Avowed

God to rule

While you serve God

Servant

Steward before monarch

Even when pressed

Persecuted

Outside

Sigh

Sometimes devilishly

On the inside, too

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Consider it all joy

The paradox of life and death

And resurrection

Final joy

Complete

And unrelenting

Even

In new tasks

Assignments from

A celestial magisterium

Or shall we say

The will beneath the crown

Of the Lord

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Doing what God says

Because

The glass is clear and

We can hear

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Consider it all joy when we must have trials, knowing that this testing of our faith makes endurance.  And let endurance be complete even by trials so that we are whole, lacking nothing that we really need especially inside.

James 1:2-4 (paraphrased a little)

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Photo by Sam Mgrdichian on Unsplash

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Entertaining Unaware

(x = space)

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Entertaining Unaware

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The Greek myth that

I like so much

About the couple who

Ends up entertaining gods

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Then while at dinner

Having both

The pitcher and the plate

Fill with wine and grapes

Respectively

All the time

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Comes to mind

When pouring out the last

Of the cream

From the carton

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Hoping there’s enough for

A cup of coffee

By an acolyte

Of morning

x

Or whenever

Some plenty might be needed

Provided by maybe

A not-unknown

God

With perhaps

An agency of angels

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C L Couch

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Baucis and Philemon

Metamorphoses

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Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Hebrews 13:2

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Photo by mk. s on Unsplash

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The Shape of Water Music

(x = space)

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The Shape of Water Music

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There is a shape

In text

Maybe like the way

Shape notes are sung

While

Both sets look beautiful

Upon the page

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I suppose the sound

Might matter more

Unless only looking’s possible

But all of it

(the music, too)

Are cues

Upon the page

x

To signal

Let us in

Move us on

Toward more

x

By the way

There is no shape here

That I know

Simply words set down

With some thought

You know

For mental pauses

So maybe in that way

I move

I music you

Along

Maybe a little

Maybe more

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C L Couch

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C major scale, in the 7-shape shape note system of Jesse Aiken.

By Opus33 at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Bulwersator using CommonsHelper, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17740280

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oops

(x = space)

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oops

(even big oops)

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we make mistakes

mistakes aren’t sins

unless we mean mistakes

that way

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errors made

that aren’t intentions

sins should meet grace

anyway

the spirit’s and our own

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and as for tripping up

who doesn’t trip

from time to time

the curse from living on this side

of eden

x

fix it

clean it

whatever’s needed

apologize

accept apologies

move on

there’s so much more

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C L Couch

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Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

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Get Up

(x = space)

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Get Up

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There was something

I don’t have it

That happens more and more

I could fear dementia

Or being tired

Living near bad people

Being bad myself

Mixtures of denial

With remembrance

Corrosion

Over time

With late-night promises of products

Ready to shine up all the leads

Again

For the cost

Of philosophy

And exorbitance

So buy in

To something

Try to wear oneself out

For better sleep

To match the abstract way in which

A length of life

Keeps everything

Worn out

In style and manners

Lumping on the way

Another morning

Toward the coffeemaker’s

Totemity

Of dreams

And hopefulness

Having wrestling with an angel

Through the night

Near the water

And the waking land

To either side

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C L Couch

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Photo by Xin on Unsplash

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It Wants Us Crazy

(x = space)

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It Wants Us Crazy

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Yes, there is

A devil

No need to rave

About it

Resist

Find something better

To do

x

We’ll stumble

Fail

And fall,

Which is its pattern

By the way

x

But angels minister

But grace

And even miracles

Abound

Within the evil

And without,

No need for sin

To make them

Happen

(that is a joke

by Paul)

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There is a devil

And, yes,

It seems to want us

For bad things;

Let peace prevail

Instead

And make

Reminders

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Try humor

In a healthy way

As well,

For we understand

The devil cannot

Take a joke

At all

Much less

About itself

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C L Couch

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Photo by Sergio Capuzzimati on Unsplash

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Mystery Breathing

(x = space)

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Mystery Breathing

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I’m looking at my books

I think I really like

Mysteries,

Which is to say

Mystery

The numinous

The liminal

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Could numinous

Mean pneumo-

As in breathing?

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And more fancifully,

Myst-

As in fog

Though which

We go inexorably

As heartbeat

And do not know

What we’ll encounter

On the way?

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I mean,

I like the plain thing

That Jane or Hercule

Must resolve

And I like the modern things

By James

Or Aaron, Charlotte

Elizabeth

P. D.

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But there is the other thing that

Contents of books

Point to

Even to hold them

What’s in here?

Out there?

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Scary stories?

Parts of them?

Without doubt—shouldn’t

Faith be scary as

It’s thrilling?

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And then

The pattern seems to be

That all things

Will not be known

Until the end

With denouement to follow

If an epilogue

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Then

We reach for another,

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Which is why

We make a treasure-trove

Of libraries

Or simply having

Lots of books

That might be in forms

Of electrons

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We are curious

We want to solve

Even as we

Want to be resolved

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What are the greater mysteries?

How shall they end?

Maybe we should read together

Or at least

Discuss them

Piecemeal

On the way

All together

On the way

And over endings

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C L Couch

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Photo by Arthur Oleynik on Unsplash

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prose poem about an—

(x = space)

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prose poem about an—

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–found and read a story about an angel.  A long time ago, I had a book of stories about angels.  As far as I know, I don’t have that book now; and I don’t know where I got it.  I don’t where I was when I read this story.  I seem to recall an institution-like place, a school cafeteria or something, though the light was not widespread and where it was was divided starkly between itself and shadow.  Maybe I’m imagining my imagining of the setting of the story.  This angel looked like a tramp.  He appeared in tattered clothes with a tattered raincoat over all.  He didn’t like where he was or that he had to look and feel this way.  I think he tended not to like his assignments all that much.  In this story, he saved someone; and I think he did this rather often, saving people.  At the moment just before salvation, he manifested as an angel.  As an angel should be.  He was majesty, all power and fear.  His wings were wide and they reached high.  There was great light through him (hmm, I guess he was depicted as male); and the evil in the story was overwhelmed, the human client rescued.  Afterward, he felt some contentment as an angel, though he knew he would be leaving and would be changing into whatever the next place and time required—not by his reckoning.  So he was about to leave and then—and this was the style of the writer—vanish in the middle of a–.

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this story was written I believe by Stephen Donaldson who has composed the chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever; if I’m wrong then I apologize all around; I don’t recall the name of the anthology or the particular story cited, and I don’t know who else wrote the other stories—the theme was angels, that’s what I know and that I often think of this story, this time strongly enough to set something down

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C L Couch

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Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash

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Prayer inside the Wire

(x = prayer)

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Prayer inside the Wire

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Oh

God

We need you

As the song says

(sings)

Every day we need

You

Your presence matters

In the morning

All the hours

We are fortified

Knowing there’s something

More

Than us

And the world

And the hope we want

To have

In the universe

x

Grant us

An audience through prayer

Much better communicating in

Heaven

We suppose

x

But we reach out

As best we can

Here and now

And again there’s something

That responds

More words than our own

Sometimes the timing

Miraculocity

In change

The water parting

Unseasonably

Exactly when we need

Land to cross over

x

Toward a promise

Provision

On the other side

x

And then we’re there

On the other side of prayer

Build an altar

For remembrance

Pocket and snap the urgency

Of interest

Free now

For beholding

Many possibilities

x

And rest

For being heard

Before we rise

And go

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We thank you

You are God

Not to make things splendid for us

All the time

But to give us

Moments

For our hopes

And fears

(all the years)

And for our chances

Before and after

Stretched out through the day

And in the night

(barring night shift

who will have the day)

Still

And still

For thoughts

Praying down

The day

The day to come

And now

The now in which we pray

And as it happens

Or is given

To the hearers

Whichever

Apparatus

Opened

And the rest

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God and the angels

Listening

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C L Couch

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Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

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“I Need Thee Every Hour”

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“O Little Town of Bethlehem”

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