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Maundy, Maundy

Maundy, Maundy

 

They had a loving supper

We know, because Jesus said to

Love each other

Many will have the same in remembrance

This night

Jews have a special supper sometimes near

This time

 

The importance of meals

As a bachelor, sometimes I don’t appreciate

The value

Of the family with friends or guests

Sharing food and drink

The nourishment from company

And if it’s too much, well, it’s always over

 

More things will happen later on

Jesus will be arrested,

Sent to trial and to torture

Those who ate with him will scatter

Except the women and two men,

One of them who’s steadfast,

The other man who at the fire says

He never knew the one

Taken away

 

So the greater hope is in the women

Watch what follows in the next few days

 

Let’s have this meal

Because and regardless of tradition

It’s important

That we dine together

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Sandro Gonzalez on Unsplash

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Holy Communion

 

Holey Week 5

 

3

Keeping Faith in Time

Keeping Faith in Time

 

Big days are coming

Liturgically speaking

For practitioners of child and

Parent faiths

Maybe today should have gone quietly

There’s daily service

To attend to

I don’t know how to make

Every day spiritually special

As one of those practitioners, I should

But weak flesh and sometimes

Unwilling spirit,

Which is to say I’m human

So are you

Not as an excuse for anything

While there are certain things, at large and internal,

To give in to

There are things we must keep trying for

Let this day found goodness

In the next one

And if we miss a step

Let’s remember certain rhythms

And their seasons

Allow for discord

(against the chord)

Without ruining the music

Might make it better

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Zachary Nelson on Unsplash

Bethel College, Mishawaka, United States

 

Holey Week 4

 

1

“I” Trouble (not with Thou)

Due to lack of sleep and stress, I’m having trouble using the computer, specifically watching the screen.  I aim to post once a day, still, though reading others’ writing is taking longer.  I’m about a day and a half behind, just now.  I don’t know what will help the eye trouble beyond taking long breaks.  It’s not a good time to consider eye exams and ordering glasses and such.  Hopefully, things providing (more) relief will happen for all of us.

Sorry.  Thanks.  I hope each of you and each one close to you is safe and well.  We’re saying “safe and well” a great deal these days, aren’t we?  Well, we have to do this as one thing out of many things we do to care.

 

Christopher

 

 

Photo by S N Pattenden on Unsplash

Parsons Chameleon

 

5

A Now That Must Also Look Ahead

A Now That Must Also Look Ahead

 

It’s Tuesday

It’s a nuthin’ day

A sick day

Among sick days

The novelty’s worn off

Some learning’s needed

With the cooking

And the cleaning

The boxing

(of both kinds)

All the games that

Walls and cyber-walls allow

Thank goodness, we can

Look outside and go there

 

There’s real talking, too

In many ways

A face to face

That’s a comfort

And we learn from this

A different kind

Of schooling, maybe

There are books

Paper and pencil, too

Or let them be totems for

Pens or the electron kind,

What it all might represent

The faces

All the forms

 

We can through this, now

Until the angel passes

Our own kind of rite

The Jewish own so well

 

Singing for pass-over

Blood upon the lintel

Chair for the prophet, should

The prophet come to call

Food, some of it with bitter herbs

But everything we need

For the journey

Into such desert and

At last

A homeland

 

The Passover is family

Each tradition has its form

And if we have none,

What better time than pandemic’s

For making something new?

For the world needs cleaning

Not a purging

But a dusting off

Soap and water

Disinfectant for the worst

While we wait

Research

And wait

With everything that passes over

 

Having something of the new

Inside,

Maybe inexorably, ineffably

Once shared,

New ritual

Based on care for what we’ve learned

Of who we’ve been

And who we are

Again and for the first time

 

As for death and mourning,

Each tradition knows that well

And those without

However we might feel

I don’t know how to count

While others do

Remember, in the future,

It was this kind of plague

I might not be here

Or another witness

Closer and more qualified

You’ll have to have a story

Back to learning, again

Sad lessons

And tragic

And a void

We learn this other kind of life

Lived through emptiness

It is time for a wake, the Irish say

(who also know bread

and bitter herbs for sin and hope,

Irish Jews more so)

Though this party if too big

Too many coffins to line up

Along the bar

What the dead drink

Will do nothing for a tab

Only take coins in readiness for

Ferry pilots

Announced by banshees

 

These groups I know a little of

You have your own

And stories

Set them down and tell them

Try not to worry about variants

They happen

There is a narrative here

Part of the story of the Earth

If we tell it well,

The Earth might weep

For us

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by David T on Unsplash

Serifos, Greece

 

Holey Week 3

 

0

One More

One More

 

Some might say

Since we are ash

At the end, then

Let us burn now

 

They are wrong

Enough goes up

In flame, not the

Good kind, either

Not the sun

That through the

Ozone give us

Life, that lights up

The moon for our

Remembrance

 

The flame that

Takes, we understand

As Pogo says, this

Enemy is us

 

And yet the comic

Character is funny;

My dad read him

Later quoted him

Year in, year out

 

And he is right:

We know the enemy,

And it is funny

Laughter, sardonic,

Otherwise, does

Drive the devil

Mad, so much so

There’s a rule,

No jokes in hell

 

So breathe and

Do not breathe for

Burning—there

Is more water,

Sometimes with a

Kick, always more

Until the barkeep

Calls last call,

 

There having been

Enough, even if

We are left, human

Will in strange

Partnership with

Eternity, wanting

While we’re here

One more

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Chronis Yan on Unsplash

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us” is a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)#%22We_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us.%22

 

Holey Week 2

 

1

We’ll Burn the Palms for Next Year’s Ash

We’ll Burn the Palms for Next Year’s Ash

 

Today is Palm Sunday.  I recall this because I saw,

just now, an image with two pieces of wood, tied and

at an angle.  I suppose many are celebrating—feasting,

in fact, since it is the end of Lent—the way I am but

with honest hearts.

 

Lent is done, although the days of ash continue.  Nothing

new for planet Earth and the people of it.  What do we

know of ash but that it’s final in remembrance?

We might take the stuff and try to rework it, but what it means

remains the same.  We are of ash.  We’ve tasted it.

 

We try to contain it, though it’s mischievous in

blowing around.  Where does that wind come from?

“Dust in the wind.” “Turn, turn, turn.”  Every generation asks

the question, needs an answer, doesn’t get one.

There is ash.  It’s everywhere.  We think it’s dust, though we’ll never

clear it out.  We can’t.  As I say with all the singers,

 

it is us.  We are ash.

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Niklas Tidbury on Unsplash

This was a picture I took just for fun. One of those “that would look cool”-moments. I only realised the contrast between the new, fresh, ready-to-burn wood and the spent ashes of a campfire, like the wood was ready to meet its maker. Kinda sad actually.

 

This begins a week-long devotional, “Holey Week.”  The title is intentionally spelled.

 

6

Modern Times

Modern Times

 

We’re wearing down

The machine is tired of its gears

And certain teeth are broken

Threatening the sprockets

We’re not talking factories

They can belch forever,

So it seems

It’s our industry that’s on the line

The kind that makes relationships

With flesh and with metal

That makes our efforts viable

 

It takes fuel, cereal in the morning

Tea in the afternoon

Sympathy for sibling feelings

Openness for a surprise

Should evening come

With newness in the night

 

It isn’t entropy, just yet

We still have flesh

And boundaries

The universe isn’t done with us

It expands but is so far from

Dissolution

 

Find a reason, then

To keep it going,

The cosmos for a day

With our place inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

Modern Times is a 1936 American silent comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin in which his iconic Little Tramp character struggles to survive in the modern, industrialized world.

(Wikipedia)

 

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

 

 

0

Crazy Boy

Crazy Boy

(get cool)

 

Cattails

One word

Cat tails

Two words

When referring to the actual

Cat’s tail

Don’t pull at it

Cattails might not hit back

Cats with tails do

They should

 

That’s as much advice

As I have for you

My head hurts

And my nose

Yippee-allergens

I know they could be the other thing

I’m hot from moving things around

And I wish I had all my pills

In this uncertain time

 

There’s sun today

I hear the virus doesn’t like the sun

If it had preferences

But also doesn’t like cool weather

So my MidAtlantic spring might be

Salubrious for a time

 

Cool, sunny days?

I could wish them ‘round the world

For health’s sake

Light for buoyancy

Of skin and spirit

Enough cold, not too much,

To relax our ninety-eight degrees or so

Inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

recently, I read about the sun and about cold air in two different places where I think crazy people do not write or otherwise contribute

I am not a doctor and don’t play one on television

 

“Cool” by Leonard Bernstein

 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Fenton, United States

 

3

This Is Our Story

This Is Our Story

 

Finally, there’s wind

The static air can move at last

It could be a carrier

Or a cleansing thing

But with sunshine christening

We’re hopeful it’s the latter

We need good days

 

And how idle does that sound

Imagining the waiting rooms

The wards, the angled beds

All the suffering from symptoms

It is a ministry of comfort

Nothing more though that is great

For now

And perilous

 

The problem with the anodyne

Is that it’s ancient hope

And little more

There is no easy cure

And for now there is not an uneasy one

Our prayers and thoughts

Seem not enough

Not to mention less than nothing from

Ones who utter them through angry

Or indifferent mouths

 

Against instead the real need

Some liquid in a tube

Delivered by a needle, disassembling

The cohorts of the virus

Well, we can think and pray for this

And these

With others or the silence

Of our closets

Asking to bless

All workers who pursue the

Necessary, healing good

 

There seems little else to say

No other topic pressing

It is a time of plague

Optimism notwithstanding

On all our houses

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash

Melbourne, Australia

The light was fading as I was flying the Mavic back from another shoot and the symmetry of these streets caught my eye. Love me some long afternoon shadows.

 

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