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Blogging 101, “Who I am and why I’m here”

My Response

posted in the Commons

I am Christopher (Couch). Mostly, I’ve been a teacher. I took Writing 201, sort of put a blog together, and now have posts, responses, followers, and friends. What to do next is my current concern. I’d like my blog to look more like a blog–more like my blog, I guess. I’m looking forward to getting to know folk here. Thank you!

now more of the rest of the assignment

I do keep a journal. I don’t keep it well. Recently, however, I resumed journaling daily (nearly always daily).

The first suggestion I received about having a blog was from my spiritual director. I guess he liked the way I express myself about big matters. There are some things (beyond blogs) that don’t confuse me, and one of these is the process of faith.

Why believe? How do we know we have faith? How’s do we know there’s a God to have faith in? Why do we sin? Why is there evil? Does love prevail? The responses to these are not pat and are not easy, especially when the struggle’s on. But I am more than willing to talk about it all, keeping the communicating respectful.

And I post my own thoughts, anyway—not to evangelize so much (I’m a poor evangelist) as to share what’s in the room and keep the door open for visitors and friends.

My interest is ecumenical, by the way, much more so than sectarian. There are many traditions and those who follow no tradition. All deserve respect and appreciation.

So I want to blog because I’ve been encouraged. Because I’ve tried it and gotten good response. Thanks to Writing 201, I’m corresponding with folk from many time zones, many nations. I am thankful.

It’s been poetry, response to other’s works, and bits of general commentary. But, practically (and creatively) speaking, I think I barely have a blog. I selected a picture and was given a name. Maybe I picked the name; at best, it seems to have been a matter of negotiation with WordPress.

I’ve learned to post and can read another’s post except I do that pretty much in response. I’ve not been out there, so to speak, in anything like the fullness of blogging cyberspace. I’m not sure if I could find my own blog without using another’s as a touchstone.

So I need to learn a great deal more. Thank you!

November 2, 2015 7

Six Sentences for the Jacki K Challenge

(based on the words I chose to use to say something about me)

I believe that One is creation; I try to appreciate the created world every day.

I see One who is a savior, because we live as fallen people and have a way (and a One) to have it right.

I know One who inspires my living, whatever the mood, moment by moment.

Four is me in relationship with the others in my own flawed though faithful way.

Not is waste: I’ve seen the waste of lives, which we can make ourselves or others long too much to do to us.

Three would be discrete and separate parts of life, while I prefer to understand and practice the universality—with the glorious differences—of us all.

November 1, 2015 2

second try at sainthood

second try at sainthood

a saint, small s, is a believer
and a follower

and that’s pretty much it
except that God by definition
should be involved

the safety of God as a leader
to follow is that God is not
insane, while some people are

yes, it would be interesting
to ponder if God were insane
maybe insane in making us
but that’s an exercise

I mean saints following a
leader who defines the right
way so much so as to become it

belief and following, though, that
is the definition

of saints, small s
I can try that (no capital S for me)
with your help

I mean you

C L Couch
(for All Saints)

November 1, 2015 0

a little more for Hallowe’en, for the “hall” of it*

arrhymic rhymes in Hallowe’en time

under the copse
there is a corpse

behind the horse
there is a ghost

beneath my hats
resides a bat

next to the versed
awaits a curse

so this poor wretch
who loves a witch

shall carry on not
this Hallowe’en night

C L Couch

*(I recently read that trick-or-treating might have been a precursor and rehearsal, of sorts, for Christmas caroling. At this time of year, the Hallowe’en time, tenant farmers’ families went to the hall of the lord landowner—at which they sang and danced and performed illusions and other entertainments, all in the hope of receiving food from the landlord, because all were entering a time of year when there would be no more crops to harvest. At Christmas time, the same visitations happened for the same reason. The fall tenant traveling also timed, intentionally or coincidentally, with the Celtic festival Samhain—spelled with an m, the m pronounced as a w—a celebration of autumn and the food that could be harvested.)

October 31, 2015 0

celebration of the season 3, Ghost

Ghost

it is like us because it was us
breathing, living once like us
ghost become, be-turned in death, untimely
and unfinished

are they real?—we are real, and
we’re the ones who make the ghosts, for
they were us

we know a ghost of one kind lives
we meet it every day: anything that
haunts us in our daylight lives, the
choices and the acts we want to leave

behind but carry with us in a lingering
way not finished

we make our ghosts, and they haunt us

the other kind?—well, why not, since
so much of us is left behind, undone
so that we carry it in some
unresolving way

after dust, before heaven
what we leave that’s extreme and
exigent persists

so we make the ghosts, and they persist

is it bad, then, on one day a year, we celebrate
the ghosts this once?—and then again next year

Happy Hallowe’en
while remembering

they will be

October 31, 2015 2

Day 2 of the Free Jacki Kellum Writing & Illustrating Challenge

One plus One plus One? Four = adapted to One, One, One, Four, Not, Three

One

Image result for wind

Four

Not

Three

Image result for three

(1, http://www.chris-proba.uk, Google Images
2, http://www.parentingwithouttears.com, Google Images
3, http://www.wallconvert.com, Google Images
4, http://www.pinterest.com, Google Images
5, http://www.arcaneflameserver.com, Google Images
6, http://www.seejenwrite.com, Google Images)

October 31, 2015 1

for the Hallowe’en season 2, Goblin

Goblin

Made long ago
Beneath the earth

Though there’s the curious way it
Adorns cathedrals—look at the spouts of
Notre-Dame, which end with gargoyles’
Wide mouths mouthing, through which
Rain water flows (hence the word for
Throat that gives over “gargoyle”
And gives the English “gargle”)—

Beings that are warped yet lifted high, that
Serve a purpose for the holy
On the ground below

Say they are not goblins, but I think
They might be goblins

It likes the cave and has been seen
Through centuries’ shadows; some say the
Creatures are responsible for changelings, stolen
Children replaced by theirs in human homes, though
I’m not sure I’d understand
The benefit of that

For the goblin in surrendering its own would
Lose its own and thus die out
Within a generation

The goblins in folklore are frightening; but
To this child of the suburbs, I think goblins

Are cool

Although, like you perhaps, I am not anxious
To meet this child from under the earth

October 30, 2015 4

for the Hallowe’en season, Witch

Witch

what a word
“rhymes with” I guess is still popular

and there are the re-broadcasts of
Samantha, Tabitha, Endora (Agnes Moorehead
of the Mercury Theatre), and Maurice Evans
as the father (of Samantha)

I know, he’s a warlock, though if I know
anything about witches (and I don’t know
much), they can be male

was there ever a witch like the one we once
invented then feared? I don’t think so—a
creature who leeched power from the devil
to cry havoc on the earth to wreck it toward
her ways, which must be

bent like her, like the witches in the Scottish play
(“cry havoc,” by the way, from Julius Caesar), as
fearsome pillars of fog and night—or so
they are portrayed; the witch

of Endor notwithstanding (and I don’t know
ancient Hebrew to find if there’s a
better, closer word for her), I think

if there’s a witch who she likes a friendlier
power, the kind from nature, the kind

that heals

the one who studies nature better than Hamlet’s
mirror, as if to use what nature freely gives
to those who care, who want to make the
broad world better

white witch, black witch; red, yellow, blue, and
green witch (have I counted the Olympiad
flag, remembering that its field is white?)—all
who love the world, who heal, who kiss, who
touch our wounds in knowing ways, perhaps

these are the witches now and maybe ever were; if
the rest of us had behaved in better ways, maybe
witch-hunt would not be a shameful part of our
vocabulary: the rest is cant or, better yet, simply
modern Hallowe’en

October 30, 2015 0