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Second Sight

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Second Sight

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Be Thou, my vision

Begins my favorite song

In church

God should direct my sight

I should set my sight

On God

Maybe to the classic hills

Where help does not come from

Though our mortal selves might hope

But from God

Who made heaven and Earth

And those hills

Behind which God will come

If God wills

The will of God

We want to know

We get in wrestling matches

So to know

But the outcome is unclear, as the child’s

Magic 8-ball used to tell us

And then we grew

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God wills

It’s no fun not knowing

Inwardly, we might turn into fatalism

And there are less constructive

Ways

Is there a knowing beyond knowing?

I imagine so

But without genetic arranging

Or supernal training,

I must wait my turn

With the rest

Who want to know when heaven comes

And this be paradise

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Or what to do about tomorrow,

As if clairvoyance

Or supernal understanding

Were a guessing game

Sorry

If such, then such should be respected

All of us may pray, if we may

And we should,

Then use our best impulses

And instincts

Our best use of faith

To go through the day

Hope for tomorrow

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Clarity, the better vision

Direction, as we know it,

And we have ways to know a lot

With faith and allowance

For the rest

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C L Couch

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Photo by Roland Seifert on Unsplash

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my own exegesis

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my own exegesis

(in response to the sermon)

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Exodus, Moses, pillars

foot of the mountain

young men sacrificing bulls

the blood upon the people

the purity of blood

they meet God

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this business about blood and purity

blood and sacrifice for purified results

I don’t understand it

I’m put off

if not revolted

I’m glad it’s done

thank God it’s done

by Jesus

thank Jesus

who for God and as God

sacrificed himself

whose blood must have purified the Earth

his blood purifies us

to be with God

now and forever

one sacrifice, one purity

for all time

the killing, bleeding business now is done

betrayal’s done

as is blood-letting

the blood of Jesus is

restoration

into garden-readiness

again

we could be back in Eden

we will be

new heaven and new Earth

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c l couch

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David Henderson preaching.  I wrote this after the sermon delivered 29 May 2022 at Covenant Evangelical Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette, Indiana.

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Exodus 24

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Photo by Nguyễn Hiệp on Unsplash

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I Hope the Dogs and Cats Are Well

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I Hope the Dogs and Cats Are Well

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I heard stories about them

Early in the war

Not so much now

There might be zoos

I remember that detail

In a story by Unamuno

About the end of the world

And the wild animals getting out

But dogs and cats need our help

They always do

We made them that way

Adapted them for use

And took away their other capabilities

How could they stand up to wolves

Or bears or badgers

Wolverines

Or unknown men and women

With machine guns

Who have no familiar smells

Nothing about them

To indicate

Friend

Or family

Or home

Cats and dogs might do all right

With welcome from the stranger

But in battlefields

The anonymities are too severe

And the cruelties

Tend to pile up

Where did they go?

Where are the ones I was protecting?

I do not know anyone

Anything

Anymore

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C L Couch

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Photo by troy williams on Unsplash

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Ephemeral

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Ephemeral

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A loose hair

A tress, in fact

Something for keeping

As Victorians

And other nineteenth-century

People

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In a box

A remembrance of youth

Or younger days

Or the other day

When the lock was snipped

And tied with ribbon

And I remember you

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C L Couch

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Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

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Unrequired Beauty

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Unrequired Beauty

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I drove by

What might have been

An accidental field

Of flowers

No fine edges

No uniform establishment

To speak of

If it had been planted

That was a while ago

Perennials, I imagine

Every year the patch returns

Of blue and purple

Rising

From brown earth

Like holidays

Like celebration

Slowly

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C L Couch

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Uva, Russia

Photo by Daniel Spase on Unsplash

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Sorries

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Sorries

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Maybe there is

Nothing more

Sometimes

Except to say we’re sorry

We’ll do better

Then do better while

Moving on

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C L Couch

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Photo by Andrew Johnson on Unsplash

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(I made up “sorries.” Sorry.)

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Close Call

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Close Call

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Danger, Will

Heatstroke air today

Both hot and humid

You’d swear we were

Sitting, rocking, reclining

On a porch

In a Southern family drama

Spanning time,

Hope, and cynicism

Sipped by lemonade

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Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this

But once I asked a Southerner

How Southerners

Endured all the close heat

There

I thought maybe home remedies

Or some adaptation over generations

Here’s what I was told:

Air-conditioning

Sigh

No saga

Only appliances

Or a central system

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C L Couch

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First-edition dust jacket cover of As I Lay Dying (1930) by the American author William Faulkner.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91865318

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Each One an Apocalypse

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Each One an Apocalypse

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I look up to hills

From the valley

It’s not that the rescue

Has to come from there

Though there are climactic moments when

Over the ridges

Everyone needed

And everything

Appears

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It’s that wherever from wherever

God is there

And it is God who rescues

Who swoops down

To carry us from battle

Takes us to water

Moving just enough

For a hand to fill

From which to drink,

Clean water played

Over wounds

We are better than we’ve felt for days

We are lifted up again

And taken to a home

Whose dimensions have been guessed at

But whose simplicity

In majesty

Is unknown ‘til we’re there

Where living’s perfect

And we are told

To stay

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Each has an Armageddon,

An apocalypse

The unprevaricated spirit

Manifest

With mortality and eternity

On either side

And through and through

Some have called trinity

But is the nature of the Lord

Relational

And relational with everything

Forever

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C L Couch

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Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash

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Stone Soup

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Stone Soup

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I don’t know what to say today

I want you to have a good day

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And for a while

To know good days

And what to do when days are bad

Beyond the dreaming we all do

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So that it’s

What we know to do with what we have

Sometimes that’s hard

And hard to believe we have

I’m poor

I know

Too close to the legacy

Of art and artists

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But I know good people

Am learning to ask

And not gauge heaven by response

Or lack thereof

But to keep trying

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Also allowing expectation

We live

We are entitled to live

I don’t know about evil people

I know so few

You are entitled, too, I suppose

I am not God

And cannot judge as God

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But the many, many, many

Of us who are not evil, not pure good

A mix, you know–

Choose a complementary color

We are colors

We color the world

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And are deserving

You deserve

A good day and another

A whole bunch like bananas

Or corn kernels on the cob

Or other things so many colors

(as I’ve said)

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Anyway,

A wish is not a horse

Or an electric car

And, drat, we have to try

The curse of Adam, some would say

Eve is cursed as well

But curses are not endings

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“We have to make our own way,”

I just heard,

Which is true

And there’s so much more

There’s you

There’s me

And any me or you who happens

To be close to you or me

In distance

Actual

Or relative

(and there’s cyber-),

Which is to say

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A nearness

(actual or relative)

To help make life

One bowl of stone soup

At a time

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C L Couch

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     Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Statue of a monk and stone soup (sopa da pedra) in Almeirim, Portugal

By Adriao – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7645719

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