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Patmos Day 10001

Patmos Day 10001

(Revelation 21 1)

 

I am here alone

Surrounded by the world

Or so it seems

 

The world tan and blue

The building bleached

In which I rest

Waiting for another vision

 

Testimony

That will not come

I fear

After all

I all learned about

The end of things

 

But there was so little said about

The new

Too brief

The new heaven and new

Earth

How they might be conveyed

For life in the eternal

I want to know

Not as if apocalypse were not enough

It burns the parts of me that

Sight things

Still

 

So I scratch on paper

When I can

A finger in the sand

When there is that

I wait

For them to come

The agents of the Savior

Telling me

 

In perfect love and fear

What to record

That might slip through the web

For all of you to hear

Theophilae

 

C L Couch

 

 

photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

night sky over the church

 

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See and Taste

See and Taste

(Psalm 34:8)

 

When there was communion,

Four times a year,

Small cups

Were distributed,

Clear and plastic

Warm to touch

 

I would take my cup,

Tilt its smallness just a little in my favor

To see four lights reflected

Four yellow dots floating

In and as

Four corners

A square inside a circle

 

One dot for God

One for Jesus, for the Holy Spirit,

And for me

And when I’d turn the plastic cup

Those little lights would merge

To make an errant twirl,

An artwork of gold

 

A swirl on top

A small pool of grape juice

At room temperature,

As if to say

 

Even to the child,

We’re all in this together

You’ve eaten, now drink

And with us

Seal the season

Outside, inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Erica Viana on Unsplash

São Paulo, SP, Brasil

 

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A Game

A Game

 

There is a game

To play now and then

It’s called the future

Something blank is all that’s needed

Not even paper

An open book

Or tabletop will do

But keep it empty

Then place a thought inside

And then another

You will lose your way, and that’s all right

You’ve won by then!

Maybe play again

Or realize

Tomorrow

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Wolfgang Rottmann on Unsplash

 

5

If God Then God, If Not

If God Then God, If Not

 

If God is good

Why is the world so bad?

This is not a child’s question

Only in simplicity

And it has taken faith from many

Over time

There will be some number today

 

There are two things, as is

God and the world

And while we eschew puppetry

We take it right in judging

God by what we do in freedom

 

Nature’s indifference

I can chalk up to a fallen world

That fell with us

Depravity a Calvinist discretion,

How widespread

(the narrator had it slice through Jupiter

Out of the Silent Planet)

So it’s the need to fall

The interest to

That is decided

 

Have faith because

The world is falling

Henny Penny, Chicken Little

All the birds that find they cannot fly

By nature or by nurture

(Chomsky, Skinner)

Or by how thick the sky

Has become

 

We are not the world

And we are

We take it with us

Into our decisions

Which is to say are we at the root of evil

More than the devil?

I don’t know

I cannot notebook hell

But we are pretty bad

And can be pretty good

And, if to be allowed

Either say or way,

Then discretion is not valor but

Needful as air

 

We don’t make heaven or of hell

But I think we can contribute

And each essence must matter

While we do

Come home to one or the other

The invitations must be that dire

Life must be that real

Real choices

We know

Real consequences

 

Choose faith

Sometimes in something

Or release it

Take something or walk on

Must be breathing as an option and

Have muscles

No excuses but our own

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Paul Carroll on Unsplash

 

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Jesus Tells a Joke to Make a Point

Jesus Tells a Joke to Make a Point

(brief Bible study, Matthew 7:3)

 

It’s a joke

A pun

The sawdust in the other’s eye

The log in one’s own

All seeing devices marred

There is no clarity

In judgment

Not without remorse for one’s own,

First

 

The log, however

Maybe Jesus is laughing, who

Would know how to do that

The log is so difficult to see

Around

Much less through

To start

 

Might all these wood parts

I wonder

Come from

The tree of good and evil?

If so

Or if not

The stakes are high

The sanctity of sanctity

The holy qualities we have

But might surrender

So much easier to find

(without clear sight)

The problems with another

 

And I’m confessing, too,

Which does not make me readier

For judgment

That is, to do it

Not yet

(I laugh a little, sigh),

No

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Tim Schramm on Unsplash

 

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Door Prize

Door Prize

 

Through a door to Narnia

For others, it has been a dream

Or through a wall

Something that opens between worlds

Because we have to be there

There is a story half-done, only

We must change something

And be changed

And someone else will tell

The now-whole story

And we who might not go anywhere

Will go through, too

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash

Antigua, Guatemala

 

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Passenger

Passenger

 

I don’t care who’s at fault

As I slip from Earth

There will be rage and judgment

From our advocates in heaven

While we are carried

Souls inside

The fearsome (fearful) wings of angels

 

I don’t care who your leaders are

They’ve all turned faithless

In this, the taking of our lives

I see her, now him

Now small ones,

This is all they have

Yes, it’s glorious

But more time on Earth

Was called for

 

The ground or air will have my body

But I should be walking, still

Upon the planet

Even a nestling of supernal charms

Is difficult to manage

Though we were caught in time

Too fast is fast enough

 

Sad, outrageous, peaceful, stolen

Those who are left, caught here

With the search

For conviction

Have got to know there’s hope

If never own it

Or, if owning it,

Feel it

Rather the irony of forced agnoticism

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash

 

January 8 Iran plane crash – CNN

edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/iran-plane-crash-live-intl-hnk/index.html

2 days ago · Iran plane crash: A Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane crashed after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.

 

Remembering Mohammad Asadi-Lari

Scholarly Kitchen

Remembering SSP Fellow Mohammad Asadi-Lari, who died aboard the Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 that crashed in Iran shortly after takeoff.

 

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Sister Moon

Sister Moon

(song by Francis, metaphor by Zeffirelli)

 

I cannot fathom Clare

Understand her depths

I do not have to

I’ll readily admit

She is beyond me

 

Companion to Francis except

Well, except it was boy and girl

(convicted young)

And in communities

Established one gender from the other,

I’m not sure how much

They could be together

Though I imagine them working

Side by side with nascent followers

And I want to think of them

Playing games as well

Between bouts

Of growing things

(vegetables and campaigns)

Washing the poor

Wishing the church into a better place

For service and to any

 

Could she have gone with him to meet the

Sultan as

A missionary team

In hardship, danger

Doctrinal snares

And opportunities as well

For the sultan (as was the pope)

Was powerful and smart

Well, too much is binary

I should not define one by the other

She was her own

She has it

Who chose to become God’s and his,

The moon in canticle

So sing to the sun

 

Brother, we are here

We dress the sky above the earth

In dreams

In daylight, we work hard

Harder than our flesh can bear

Than flesh can bear all orders of our calling

 

At night and for all times

All things

We pray

 

Be with me, brother, as at Mizpah

When we are apart

Consider the stars at night

I the clouds by day

We are in each other

Inside God’s creation

And the same calling,

The announcement of redemption

While working to save mortal lives

Upon the ground

 

C L Couch

 

 

Detail depicting Saint Clare from a fresco (c. 1320) by Simone Martini in the Lower basilica of San Francesco, Assisi

Simone Martini – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154878

 

2

Peace for All Time

Peace for All Time

(a three-part cycle)

 

1

Machine Language

 

Each moment’s a decision

To exhale,

To circulate some blood

To let the body stir for a while longer

To let the synapse burn

Brightly with mind-fire,

Transactions between what’s happening

And memory

Much of this is done for us

But there’s a partnership, I think

Between all parts

The automatic will take over for

The temporary

When immediacy of thought and movement

Are tired out

Call it sleep

Call it the second cup of tea

Taken on the porch

When for a time there’s nothing else to do

And this has been invoked

Because needed,

The ending of which we’ll debate

 

Peace an invention,

A transaction

Between all partners

Serving on the inside

 

2

Contrition

 

I won’t take it back

Not yet

I need to know the outcome,

Did I get anything I wanted

 

If penance is a prayer,

I’ll do my part

If it’s in bad feeling,

I’m already there

And counting

 

A return to normalcy

And what is that

It takes me out of this

Otherwise, I want

The special moments back

 

But it’s the future, now

Plu-imperfect

 

Please

Say them with me, maybe

All the prayers,

Then let’s move on

 

3

The Answer Is in Someone Else as Well

 

Inner peace

That’s cool

It’s not enough

If I’m in my chrysalis

And have no sight of yours

Or time

 

Where is my peace

If not in you?

This is cheating an invocation,

For it’s not a talk to God

But to you

The one nearby

And not inside

We need transaction, too

And more

 

You need to carry me

And I a part of you

A magic story in which twins

Keep a gem lit by the light force

Of the other

And there’s responsibility

 

In our story,

We will partner differently

That is, for real

Not to prevaricate conditions

But to say push on

Make peace because

We know each other now

To arbitrate

 

And there’s no other way

To build the day

That each must have

Into a present contract

As the future

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jarrod Reed on Unsplash

 

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