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Weekend Warring

Weekend Warring

 

It’s Sunday, and I wonder

What to do

Where does an outcast go

To Zoar or another city of refuge

Will I be taken on

And how do I breathe the air

Of those who had abandoned me,

Now empty

 

It’s a search for something

A church without a church

See the steeple

Where are the people

A confessing place

Otherwise, an empty chapel

Would do well

Or a ruin of a larger place

Where faithful life might have been teeming

Once

And no longer

Through caprice

Of ownership or demographics

A tall room for birds now

Maybe those who listened

To Saint Francis

 

I don’t mean to hide

I am energized by people

As sometimes they have been by me

Even though they took too much

Last time

And what is left is wondering

And, yes, wandering, too

 

A walk outside beside a grave

A columbarium, mausoleum

A museum to the dead

Though I think it might be good

Remembrance

And for the living,

We who are outside

Not even looking in, anymore

Each of us stays in place

Waiting

Attending

 

C L Couch

 

 

Leon Martinez

 

1

A Dose of Paradox

A Dose of Paradox

 

They sit next to each other on the shelf

Salt and pepper

In the fridge, mustard and ketchup

Beer and wine

The opposites that don’t attract

But must live near each other

And often used together

 

Complementary colors on the wheel

Yellow and purple

Orange and blue

The colors of Christmas

And the Italian flag (add white)

 

Paradox is ecumenical

I guess I should say yin and yang

But it’s not a coin, you know

Two coins thrown into an ocean, more like

Love and death

Sex and abstinence

Not opposites, not really

Not two sides

Not life and death

But death and resurrection

They must be by each other

On the shelf

They must be used

Both and unevenly

There isn’t a good pattern that we see

Through our dark glasses

 

It’s ecumenical

It’s church

Folk who get together for no other reason

And often reason breaks it down

The Muslim and the Jew

The Christian and the Hindu

The Buddhist and the Taoist

Confucian and Shinto

All those who have a way

And have it rather exclusively

 

Thankfully, the broad shelf is there

The place for all things to dwell

In readiness

No one wins unless

All win

Respect is the spice

That will keep us at the table

Using everything we know

And not so much

 

Mister Marlow said restraint

And he was right

The horror was in letting go

Not knowing there are many directions in

Which to fall

 

Well, there it is

It’s Friday

For those who have one, the end of

The work week

It is finished

Let’s hope for restoration now

Before the work begins again

And those who work on weekends will

Have another day

See, the cycles do not hold

For all

And without doubt

Not in the same way

 

C L Couch

 

 

MiraCosic

https://pixabay.com/en/salt-pepper-shaker-seasoning-food-993111/

 

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Sanctuary

Sanctuary

 

Because one is still

 

Does not mean that one is safe—

Life in one cell is open to

Mutation, loss of parts, disease;

 

Life within a prison cell

Suffers from same dangers

 

In detention and in

Isolation

(Even with others in proximity),

 

Under death-order and maybe death-

Watch;

 

How,

 

Fixed under a demon’s yoke

Whose cause is politics,

Who for an idea

 

Has been taken out

Of actual existence?

 

Toward the Southern Pole

(Closer than most of us will

Get), there is a Russian Orthodox

Church—

 

Ten bodies with ten souls within

May worship;

 

The rest know that the church is

There:

 

Triptychs of spirit and of hope

Inside

At the end of the world,

 

Where there is likelihood

Of living through oppression

 

Wrought by nature or assignment.

 

What sanctuary in the prison cell,

Where trapped mind and abandoned

Spirit are closed maybe for a

Final time,

 

Where fear

The only inner company?

 

Andy awaits

Release of one kind or

Another.

 

 

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/23100

Kidnapped Briton spends 700th day in illegal detention

A British man who is held under sentence of death in Ethiopia has spent his 700th day in unlawful detention, after he was kidnapped and rendered to the country by Ethiopian forces in 2014.

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A Memory of Church

A Memory of Church

The family of God
That is the church

I have a memory:
A small church building
On the edge of town
Maybe on the way
To the next place
Or into the countryside
Or simply on the
Outskirts; and in this
Church, there was
A very pleasant man
The pastor with whom
I had enjoyed an
Ecumenical Bible
Study in the town

I liked that man, and
I liked that church
He and it were simple
(In the best way we
Use that word), set
Apart—the way I
Think the universal
Church should be;

And isn’t—we want
To be in the center of
Town, where everything
Fashionably important
Takes place

We want to be in
And will accommodate
Much about ourselves
So we can be there

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Psalm 2 (and a note below)

Psalm 2

Lord, find me a church
One that welcomes me and
No one like me

One that cherishes who I
Am and who I’m not, who
You are and who you’re not

Our ages, occupations, the
Absence of occupation, our
Injured lives, triumphant lives
Our sorrows and our joys

Yes, our genders, too
And all the tones of skin

The differences and sameness

God made us, after all
And first of all
And is making us, still

A place where can give our
Millions and our mites

Our giving is small, but your sight
And your other senses
Make it pleasing, I think

Help me with a church despite
Myself and what’s happened there
The house of God is where your
People live, and I
Should live there, too

C L Couch

Psalms are songs. Psalms require us. And typically they require God.

So psalms are our songs to God. We read or sing them singly or in the community.

We sing psalms and let them move us how they will. How God might be moved we’ll never know while on this side of things. Yet still we sing. We should.

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