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faith

Prized

(x = space)

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Prized

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God’s will

I treat it like a puzzle

A mystery

A riddle

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The prize

For being smart enough

For endurance

For cleverness I don’t really possess

Is success and later on

Salvation

I win at last

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Except I think, liturgically,

That the truth is not in me

Or anyone who thinks and contrives

Philosophy this way

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God is not a puzzle

(I like puzzles

and I hope you do)

There is a clarity

Like the still waters

God takes us beside

Willing

To point out the deep parts

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Skywriting isn’t necessary

(relief for Dorothy)

Read the code for life inside the books

Or listen

Listen, anyway

It’s easy

As it’s easy

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There are commandments

There are two prioritized

There is a parable of sheep and goats

(poor goats)

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These are enough

To take us through the day

A season

A life

And should we like to choose

Life after

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Mysticism, symbolism

Are for other verses

So to coin a phrase

That serves the here and now

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That’s all, folks

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C L Couch

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Photo by dylan nolte 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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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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Eligibility Requirements

(x = space)

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Eligibility Requirements

James 1:22-27

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What does the Lord

Ask of us?

Many things, I think

That Noah build an ark

That Abraham sacrifice

His son upon an altar

Made for animals

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That Rahab should save

The spies of Israel

In Canaan

That Mary should conceive

Without her affianced

And then give birth

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That Cain should confess

That sinners should confess

That we should be

Doers and not hearers only

Of the word

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That we should seek justice

And do justice

That we should love God

And each other

Be generous with enemies

With material and with prayer

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I’d like to say it’s easy

As salvation is

Through grace

And belief

But frankly it’s the start

Of a grown-up life of faith

In which there should be joy

And humor, too,

And if there isn’t

Then we have been told

In someone’s catechism

Something wrong

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C L Couch

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James is a brief, epistolary work in the Christian New Testament.

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Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash

“I am from Ukraine, there is a war going on in my country now. Your help is more important than ever.”

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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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Second Sight

(x = space)

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Second Sight

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Be Thou, my vision

Begins my favorite song

In church

God should direct my sight

I should set my sight

On God

Maybe to the classic hills

Where help does not come from

Though our mortal selves might hope

But from God

Who made heaven and Earth

And those hills

Behind which God will come

If God wills

The will of God

We want to know

We get in wrestling matches

So to know

But the outcome is unclear, as the child’s

Magic 8-ball used to tell us

And then we grew

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God wills

It’s no fun not knowing

Inwardly, we might turn into fatalism

And there are less constructive

Ways

Is there a knowing beyond knowing?

I imagine so

But without genetic arranging

Or supernal training,

I must wait my turn

With the rest

Who want to know when heaven comes

And this be paradise

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Or what to do about tomorrow,

As if clairvoyance

Or supernal understanding

Were a guessing game

Sorry

If such, then such should be respected

All of us may pray, if we may

And we should,

Then use our best impulses

And instincts

Our best use of faith

To go through the day

Hope for tomorrow

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Clarity, the better vision

Direction, as we know it,

And we have ways to know a lot

With faith and allowance

For the rest

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C L Couch

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Photo by Roland Seifert on Unsplash

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The Second Story Mountain

(x = space)

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The Second Story Mountain

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Merton wrote

The Seven Storey Mountain

About his journey to faith

And affiliation

David Brooks has written

The Second Mountain

About the search for a moral

Life that also

Has in it

Brooks’s journey into faith

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There are many such stories

(John Henry Newman, Anne Lamott

Karen Armstrong—I give these folk

in order of reading them),

And high places

Are often an association

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Once we climb, once we achieve

The phenomenal

The numinous,

We end up

On a mountain top

There is, in fact, the mountain-top

Experience,

A trope of faith

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On my way back recently,

I skirted a tunnel torn up for construction

And drove over two mountains

As an unmarked detour,

Taking roads who edges were too near,

Too sharp, too narrow

I was scared

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And wondered among things while driving

How folk could live on either side,

Having these as ways

To take a normal day

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I don’t like heights

I don’t like driving off the road, either

It’s all done now, and if I’m smart

I’ll never take that way again

There was a mountaintop, I guess

There were two such tops

I only noted a change in incline

Down from up

There was not a park or anything

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A pullover,

A bench with an inscription in huge letters

Come and have your mountaintop here

Rather the only words I got

Were my own

That said, don’t look down so much

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I’ll live in the valleys,

I suppose,

And have my faith life there

Or at the oceanside from time to time

It’s not stormy weather

That I mind

Though someday it should take

Me home

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I’m sorry, this is more a story

Than a poem much cleverer,

Not much more

Than talking

In the room

Over coffee or some such,

Should we be meeting

At a table

Or in comfy chairs

Or with both

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I have my life of faith, such as it

Might be

I hope, I even pray, that

You have yours

In a healthy sect or tradition

That suits you and

Creator and

Creation

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Fits you like a story to

Which you return

Time and again

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C L Couch

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The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

Route 641

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Photo by Fabrizio Lunardi on Unsplash

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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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