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Believing God

(x = space)

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I am going away for a few days.  My family is having a wake to remember my older brother who died recently from prostate cancer (detected way too late).  I’m not sure how hotel wi-fi works or if it works or if I work with it, so I’m not sure about being in touch here while I am gone.

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Believing God

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Immortal, Invisible

How much sense

To believe in such a thing?

Like a ghost

We cannot exorcise,

Like love

We never want

To go away

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In something that made everything

And we weren’t there

That guides us if we want

But has an overarching will

At work

Regardless

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Intimate and inside

Glorious in nature

Even when

Nature is terrible

And thus

Capable of fright for a response

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We go there

And shall it come here?

A word

A choice

And we are outcast

Another word

And we are home

In a place with many mansions

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Source of fiction

And nonfiction

Belief on trial

But so go justice

And mercy

As ideas

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Is it everything that’s good

Compelling faith

And then the action?

And is God

The best of all?

The maker, sponsor

Source of everything

That lasts

That’s worth the lasting

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Life

Loss

The spark that’s there

And holding the spark

When it goes out

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Something everyone

Can get and have

Like good stories

Told well

And, well,

This is the best story

We can have

And is alive

All the time

Forever

Gladly for aye

And amen

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C L Couch

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Photo by Lucas Hoang on Unsplash

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certain hymns and verses in John are sources for allusions

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Rank and File

(x = space)

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Rank and File

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Thank goodness

For the discipline

Of fire and cloud

And water

And the path

The faithless wonder

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There is a promise

When we forget

There is a promise

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There’s prophecy

To mingle with

What is before us

In contention,

All the other parts

That make up everything

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The everything we know,

The things we must

Believe in anyway

Sometimes from apostacy

Of fact,

Worse from the inside

Out

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Before external judgment,

We sentence ourselves

For lack of faith

When, reasonably,

How much is there to believe in?

Evidence of what’s unseen–

Thank you,

Says our agnostic

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The normalcy

Of matter and dimension

Fairly

Imposing,

Building what we stand on

For belief

And unbelief

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The believer is the doubter

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We go through this,

We are this

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Often there is more of us

On the other side

Of chrysalis

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C L Couch

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Hebrews 11:1

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Photo by Ruth Paradis on Unsplash

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LoveSpeak

(x = speak)

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LoveSpeak

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What does God’s love say

In the face of danger?

Through many dangers,

Toils, and snares

God’s love says

I’m here

The love is here

The source is here

The host is here

We’re here

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Though there be anger,

Scorn, and fear

From enemies and friends

Alike

Because doubt and unbelief

Might have to have

Their way,

The love of God is first

And follows

Like the currents inside Earth

And over,

The moving pillars

Cloud or fire

That are before

And after

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Alongside in

The truth of companionship

But I can’t see that

You can

It’s more than senses

With which we perceive

As best we can

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Presence and love are better

They are inside

And out

They speak without words

Until it’s time for words

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When we have ears to hear

And cannot hear,

Count on the company

Of the divine

To know us better,

Pick us up

If fallen,

Go with us onward

Leading, should we ask

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C L Couch

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

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“Amazing Grace” (the hymn) referenced above

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The People Walked

The People Walked

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God announces

God’s own birth

An absurdity of prophecy

Things bang together

Light good

Dark bad

(for now

for often dark is good)

People in darkness

Who understands?

God is coming

But God is here

God has been here

From the start

Before the start

God was

And is

And shall be

And now, what,

A child?

A virgin birth,

Come on

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A working together

Of generations,

Places

So that everything

Comes together

Complements

Too much

It is too much

You try the words too much

The documents are old

And sacrosanct

We keep them in a temple

Leave them be

What we believe

Is in the temple

Leave it be

We sacrifice flora and fauna

We dedicate

Our children

We don’t need another child

Or of such scandal

Leave us be

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We are specific

We are everyone

(analogous)

We have freedom

In measure

We hate the other measure

But taxes

And armies

Are the world

It could be worse

It has been worse

We plot

Inside the darkness

In our own planning time

As we say,

Leave us be

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So God is coming

And it’s taken centuries

Ages, if we count

From the beginning

And before

The God who answered nothing

With creation

And now a child

Without instruction

For our training

As a Caesar

(any Caesar)

This is too much

We have our own children

And for Caesar

Charges and complaints

From Spain and France

Morocco, Egypt

To Iraq and Israel

Rumors in Russia, India, and

China

All the world

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Everywhere

And everywhere we know

Is burden

Don’t weigh us down with more

Words and promises

And obligations

Expectations

You expect us to believe?

Unlikely

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C L Couch

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I don’t know how I got to thinking about Christmas while summer is hot on.  Maybe it’s wishful thinking, though I like the seasons as they happen.  Maybe I need a charge of faith, like a CO2 cartridge making soda pop in the soda fountain.  Maybe I need some soda pop.  Maybe I’m preparing what might seem way ahead for liturgies in Advent (the good news and the difficult).  Or maybe a little future holiday (of any number of holidays) is okay for the present, that is, right now.

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Photo by Alistair MacRobert on Unsplash

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Homilies

(x = space)

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Homilies

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Church tomorrow

Virtual and virtuous

Teaching about Lazarus,

I think,

The one from Bethany

Who with his sisters

Was a friend of Jesus

Having hosted him

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Then Lazarus

Gets sick

Or something

Like that happens

Because he’s clearly dying

And the sisters

Contact Jesus

Who delays in coming

Then their brother dies

Martha comes to Jesus

Speaking words

Of faith

While Mary cannot move

It’s all right, Martha

Jesus says

I know it is in heaven,

She replies,

When I shall see Lazarus

Again

Yes, and I mean more

Than that

Mary manages

To say something

Reproachful

And then Jesus goes

To where their brother

Lies, wrapped and

Spiced in burial

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Take away the stone

Lazarus, Come out!

Jesus commands

And Lazarus emerges

From the dead

Into the living

Into his sisters’ lives

Again

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There is a meal

Mary breaks a bottle

Of perfume

And with the oil

And the scent

Bathes the feet of Jesus

Judas reprimands her

For wasted expense

Jesus turns on him

As only love can turn

Teaching him about

The poor

And when it’s all right

To be rich,

Say, when we’re

At the feet

Of Jesus

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C L Couch

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John 11, first part of 12 (in the Christian New Testament)

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Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

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And, But, Or, Nor, For, Yet, So

(x = space)

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And, But, Or, Nor, For, Yet, So

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What do I do

When God is gone?

A question I don’t have to ask

Because it doesn’t happen

God doesn’t go away

I do

I go away when I want

To think of someone else

Of something that I want

That I shouldn’t have

When I need

Or presume to need

Enough to bump out God

From my awareness,

Which qualifies the need

As something else

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This is straightforward:

I choose to have God in my life

Closer to me, anyway

Since God is there

Creating

Maintaining

Weeping or laughing at

What we do

Preparing for Parousia

Yet

Cherishing each moment

The now we have

We linear beings

Meaning for us

It’s a saving moment

To a saving moment

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God is close

God is inherent

In electrons

And cellular nuclei

God will become more obvious

As we wish

As we choose

As we ask it so

(the asking’s prayer)

The devil has many ways

To snare us away

It is agenda

Of the kind that pushes will

And understanding

Inside a frame that illustrate

An attitude

Against people and the

Environment

The Earth we stand or glide

Or rest upon

All of which, the devil says,

Is unimportant

When favoring

Profit

Unhuman strategies

(inhumane)

That only matter as

Winning so that the rest

Are losers

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Who is lost?

The burden’s hard

The burden’s easy

It’s paradox

Of faith

Of belief in God who’s only known

Through evidence unseen

Who wins a case through this?

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Such contradictions

Such opposites

The world we love must be eschewed

If we would live, there is first

The inevitability of dying

Sheesh

No thank you

Or thank you

Our will to embrace

To choose

To live in love

With the good in everything

With faith

And hard belief that has gentle edges

In what we show each other

(as in manifest)

In what we sense

And how we deal

With everyone

With everything

By which and in which

A spirit accompanies

For good

For upbuilding

For faith

And, yes, for love

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We live in hope

That God is there

That God is there when we return

Or when we turn around

In attitude

Repentance

Sorry and a new embrace

Of faith

Gove love this Earth

And the extraordinary creatures

That you’ve made

That is each of us

Not that we are perfect

Or perfectly anything

But in everyone

And everything

The three remain close by

The three remain close by

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C L Couch

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By Finoskov – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109525350

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Next Sunday

(x = space)

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Next Sunday

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I am nearly asleep

I can hear the voice

On the machine

Thanks to Vimeo and Livestream

And presettings

It’s a message about Thomas

And doubting resurrection

What we see

What we unsee

And believe in other ways

Don’t be afraid to doubt

The pastor says

He’s preaching about Thomas

Don’t hide the doubt

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That sounds

Savvy

We’re on an adventure,

After all

Before discovery, often there

Is disappointment

If not disbelief

Then we come upon the X

Not that we have to doubt

There are those who believe

From just off the map

‘Til X

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I thought

I was gone on walkabout

But he’s started talking

About treasure

An old coin

What to believe in

For faith

Doubt is real

Maybe necessary

On the way to faith

(or maybe having left,

walking back again)

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Liberty is a theme,

I think,

In that we are free to doubt

On our own mortal terms

And to believe

With the same set

Of qualities and variables

A search for faith in love

An end to war

Peace talks

At our table

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The singers rise up

The sermon’s over

Captions appear

Soon I’ll have to turn it off

Get on with my distant day

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C L Couch

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Photo by Jiroe (Matia Rengel) on Unsplash

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Peace to You

Now are the times of Orthodox Easter, Passover, and Ramadan.  Praying for blessings to all the faithful.

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Peace to You

(John 20 and elsewhere)

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Peace to you

The teacher showed up saying

Peace

If God appeared

In the room

We were in

Then words of peace

Might be needed

To still our hearts

And keep them working

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God shows up

In the room

Alive in every way

(later we’ll share meals)

Except in expectation

For we had thought

Never to see

Or hear the words again

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Scars from nails

And a spear

Maybe the marks of thorns

On the brow

God appears again

God with us again

Immanuel

The end of

Maranatha

Folk at the center of the world

May suggest

While those outlying

Hear the story

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There is life again

Three days’ waiting

We weren’t counting

We forgot

All prophecy

And understanding

Thomas,

God lives again

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C L Couch

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Cross with Dove and Red Cloth in Pirenopolis, Brazil

Photo by Emily Crawford on Unsplash

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Thessaloniki

(x = space)

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Thessaloniki

(from a skeptic maybe unknowing, maybe envious)

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To the Thessalonians,

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God wrote you twice

Once was not enough

Why not?

All the other cities

Jerusalem

New York

That did not get a postcard

Or a phone call

A telegram to say with urgency,

Wake up

And smell the western Asian coffee

You got two letters

It could be said you’re twice as bad

Or that the urgency was dear

Are you better now?

I should come to see you

How you’re doing

But I don’t have a camel or a burro

And Land Rovers are expensive

I have to see the wall

Through video eyes

Though I hope my prayers

Are real enough

I write my petitions

And read your letters

(I see you’re actually

pretty good)

Hope for the best

And signing off

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C L Couch

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Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

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Photo by Elena Theodoridou on Unsplash

Thessaloniki, Greece

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