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doubt

After I Believe

(x = space)

x

x

After I Believe

x

I don’t know how

     to live for you

I wish I did

I know

     the Spirit is supposed

To guide me,

Though what are

     the steps to take

And practices

     to follow

I don’t know or am

     out of practice

     (hah)

Or never knew and need

Companions

     also in the flesh

To help me

x

C L Couch

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Photo taken from The Nue Co. marketing campaign.

Photo by Finn on Unsplash

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Faithful Skeptic

(x = space)

x

x

Faithful Skeptic

(spiritual humanist)

x

I sin

And then I go to church

How does that work?

We sing that it is well,

Which Saint Julian proposes

We pray for the world

And for concerns

In the parish

We sing some more

We’ll pray some more

Then there will be teaching

(word and sacrament

for those who have sacraments)

Through it all,

We’re singing now

And thank goodness there is

Justice in that

Mingled with grace and mercy

x

Through sin and virtue

Through indifference and zeal

Through exhaustion and desire

There is something

Going on,

Something moving

Call it spirit

Call it the orbit of the Earth

And the pressing down of gravity

Call it God’s

Call it nature’s

Call it ours

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And, yes, through it all

It is well

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C L Couch

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Saint Julian of Norwich is a saint in the Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.  Other traditional Protestant churches recognize her standing.  Many Christians of all kinds respect her work in parish service and the service of the Christian Church, overall.  Her name is not known:  she is called Julian because that was the name of the church in Norwich, England where she lived.  She had a cell there, not a jail cell but a hermit’s.  She had a cat.  Each day people of the town would come to her to speak with her through a window, asking her for wisdom and advice.  I’m sorry, I should have mentioned that she lived and worked from the latter decades of the fourteenth century into the first years of the fifteenth century.

She wrote Revelations of Divine Love, a widely-read spiritual text.  It is also taken as the oldest book written in English by a woman.  Two things Julian is popularly known for asserting are the metaphor of the world as a hazelnut (long before William Blake asserted perceiving the world as and through a grain of sand).  And she claimed that, no matter how grim or unhopeful or destructive the world might seem, all shall be well.  She says this many times.

And all shall be well.

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Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash

Tallinn, Estonia

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Flying, Creeping Things

(x = space)

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Flying, Creeping Things

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I liken the bird

To the Holy Spirit

That flies with grace,

Usually

x

Often arrives

As a surprise

That on good

Days knows the wind

And all the stirrings

Of the Earth,

That often arrives

As shadow,

Serving

As prophecy

Anticipated

x

The Bible kind

Nothing marketed

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We can aim

And shoot

And tear the metaphor

Apart

Or we can listen

Glossolalia

x

A song announcing

God is alive

In fragile revelation

For our sakes

x

Closely attend

An irony of notice,

Trampling the uncertainty

Doctrine or fear

Demand

With the way in

We’ve always wanted

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C L Couch

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Leviticus 11:21-22

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Photo by Agustin Fernandez on Unsplash

Punta Alta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Blessed Insurance [and a note below]

Blessed Insurance

(for anyone on Sunday morning)

 

I sing this while

My world falls apart

My older child might run away

My job is on the line

 

The car needs so much work

I haven’t seen or felt

My partner smile, really smile

In a while

 

I don’t want to know

The balances

I can’t think about what happens next

Can’t think about what else

 

The church organ might be better

Suited at a ball park

The pastor tries to sing along

I think I see the words on the page

 

There is no harm in singing, too

I guess

Who hears, who cares

I know it isn’t that bad

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by PhotoGrafix from Pixabay

 

 

note on me

I’m not in the hospital anymore.  I’ve been diagnosed with infections and am taking an antibiotic.  I still feel lousy.  Maybe less?  It’s hard to tell.  Thank you for your prayers!  They are potent.

 

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

 

God, what shall I say

Of you today?

You are exasperating

You are all hope

You are the center of my faith

You are the labyrinth

I mean to cross

I take my comfort from you

As I take sustenance from food

You are my food

There are no empty calories,

Which on occasion is my deal

I will die

I am afraid

I think I shall meet you there

Or someone from your office

I had an episode last night

To remind me

Though there’s fear

There will be relenting, too

A last litany with Earth

A first step toward

What you deem is next

 

C L Couch

 

 

Froaringus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7633775

 

5

A Song for Those Who Don’t Have Much of Anything

A Song for Those Who Don’t Have Much of Anything

 

I don’t know how to praise you

I am not qualified

I am a ball of sin and regret

Smooth outside, worn

By experience and cynicism

What can I do

That you would want?

What kind of words

What kind of song

What kind of dance?

How would you want me glorifying you?

I can’t see it

My senses dulled

My spirit raw

My hope has fled like the bird who

Is at least is credited with impulse

I have no church organ here

(my neighbors thank me in absentia

for what is absent)

I do not sing

I do not practice

I do not dance (don’t ask me)

Unless you want a waltz

(or, faster, a polka)

I pray in silence, wondering from time to time

How much that counts

 

I cannot fathom what would please you

I am afraid to think on glory

For my failure at it

I leave my zeal mired below

 

Maybe I could read a song of David

Or of a prophet—Deborah? Ezekiel?

Tennyson? Nikki Giovanni? Sharon Olds?

Adrienne Rich?

Reaching for these was homework

Still bearing the cachet

Of lack of will

I read them on my own and more

I think they are beyond me, too

 

I could build something

I don’t have the talent

Sometimes I make something from

What is strewn around

These are on display

And are religious

Maybe extra credit

I could read speculation

Of a world that’s better

Help others do the same

Ursula K. Le Guin (The Word for World

Is Forest), Anthony Horowitz

(Raven’s Gate), Robin McKinley (The

Blue Sword)

Tennnyson again

(In Memoriam, that’s hard)

But the spirit-work’s already done by these

I should give something of my own

For all that it’s performance,

I’m not sure church has it, either

Though I won’t blame for trying

(for being trying, that’s

another story)

 

Maybe I will in my halting way

Land on something that will last

Enough for praise

And even pleasure

From the maker

Who counts sparrows and stems of hair

And might not reckon me

And mine

So bad

Close enough for jazz

Slender spiral of

What might pass for praise

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Amy Baugess on Unsplash

 

0

doubt

doubt

 

doubt’s okay

where would we be without it

the buttons might

be popping off our vests

(and they might be nice buttons)

 

the parent before Jesus

who asked for healing

for the child whose

demon threw the child

into fire and water

 

Jesus replies, if you have faith

the parent cries,

I believe

and I have doubt

and churlish to say

help me with my unbelief

 

and you know what happens next

is that

the child is healed

the upstart comments of

the dad or mom

the bolt of lack of faith

somehow

finding home

 

it must be all right

to doubt

to wonder if we have it all

everything we need to know

or that the world

as it’s known

with all the ways we think about

the world

 

are enough

are in fact

perfect in our thinking

and devotion

 

is it a wonder

that the wind

is both invisible

and forceful

 

there is confidence

although in the desert

on the ocean

wind might falter

so might we

 

c l couch

 

 

 

Sailors aboard the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) spot a life raft at sea near Bermuda after being called for assistance by the U.S. Coast Guard.

U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 2nd Class J. Maurer.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8170538

 

0

Lord,

Lord,

 

I don’t know what I’m doing

I know I often act misdirected

But where is the magic

The spotlight that tells me

I’m in the right place

And on the good way?

 

Came out of nowhere

I just heard that phrase used to

Sell something

A cliché, but it’s poetic

Really

Out of nowhere, ex nihilo

Philosophy

But isn’t that how you create?

Out of nothing appears

Matter

To set new flesh upon a wound or

Fill a gulley in the desert with

Water unheard-of in the

Season

 

Out of nothing I was made

The spark in emptiness that fused

A spirit to new cells,

And I am here

Though you’ve always been here

 

And I can’t say I understand that

How you are in the charges

Of my neurons

And the pulses of my heart

And over Earth

And through the universe of chances

 

Although I still feel useless

And pathless

For the Gethsemani contemplative

It was enough to know

Random instincts somehow speak to

Providence

 

That isn’t me

I’m not so smart

Or self-sufficient

 

Maybe

He wasn’t, either

We both want to know

And what do we find out?

We wander an agnostic landscape

Step toward uncertainty

An answer in a

Moment

And for the next,

Maybe

 

Will that do?

For us, it has to

And bold enough, if cautious

To go beyond the mortal shell

To tread in a fossil sea

To take a walk on Mars

 

C L Couch

 

 

Mars by Curiosity

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040628.html

 

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