Search

clcouch123

I talk you talk we'll talk

Open Search
Tag

God

Invoke the Fool

Invoke the Fool

 

Sometimes a fool is needed

A clown of God

Call the fool

We are foolish in the wisdom of the world

These parts are nothing new

But I don’t like the notion

Of my own foolishness

 

I trained in clowning once

Wore the clothes and make-up

And took my act out there

You know, where you are

 

It was all right

It didn’t hurt

And I didn’t hurt anyone else

Maybe we did some good, together

But it’s a squeamy feeling, all the same

 

Not to talk

Not to eat or drink

Were not the hard parts

It was the openness to whatever:

 

I might be laughed at

Though that was the point

But, depending on the working preposition,

With or at?

 

Then there was

The brittleness, the fragility

In scorn

 

But faith is something funny

Faith in me, faith in you

Faith in God

Faith in humanity

Faith in Earth

No evidence required

But that we cannot sense

The more we demand material,

The more we lose the energy

Lopsiding the equation

 

Fair is foul

And foul is fair

But it’s not that even, either

For faith finally

Is not a seesaw, evened out

But requires all

All we have to risk

For something evidenced so poorly

 

Who would believe this anywhere,

Anyone

But a fool!

 

C L Couch

 

notes

 

There is a sad and beautiful story by Tomie dePaola called The Clown of God.

 

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

—the witches in Macbeth

 

 

(image)

By ingawh, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45210850

Stratford Upon Avon

 

1

Shadrach

Shadrach

 

They traded in vacated virtue

What was left of righteousness

 

Goodness rusted through,

Only a thin semblance, molecules-narrow perhaps,

Which was all right

They decided who could touch them

And how deep

They wouldn’t let me rest a finger

Tied my hands away

And bound my feet

Blindfolded me as well

And did so in a way that, while I could no longer

Move, I still thought I was free

 

I had no skill

I simply wanted to live

God gave me something, maybe

But a yen for freedom is what mattered most

God hurt those who bend the youth inside,

Who masquerade as truth

But mentor lies

 

But, worse, I must ask

That God judge

In perfect love

Remembering all parables

All messages and motives

Manifest

God judge me, too

For collaboration

And anger when the mask burned off

 

C L Couch

 

 

File:Fiery Furnace, Arches National Park.jpg – Wikimedia Commons

 

0

New Year

New Year

(first day in Advent)

 

Lord, I love you

But sometimes

You make things so hard

I’m not saying life can’t have

Its sharpness

We all get cut from time to tome

There are always to stanch the bleeding

But

It hurts each time

And some hurts, well, keep on hurting

Damaged nerves

Wounded organs

Burdens in the blood

I guess I’m complaining

What could I ask for?

Most anodynes aren’t real

And aren’t cheap

And I am not a boy in a cave

Who found a magic lamp

And you are not a genie

 

Some help, please—

Are you listening?

 

I am

You had me at I love you

 

C L Couch

 

 

note

in case you’re counting, which is a point for seasons, Advent starts Sunday 2 December; for the Christian church, Advent starts the new year

 

at A Good Morning Café, Los Altos, California (USA)

https://www.yelp.com/biz/a-good-morning-cafe-los-altos-2

http://www.agoodmorninglosaltos.com/

 

3

Sensate

Sensate

 

I hope you hear me, God

Beneath the words

Not that they don’t matter,

Because they do

And there is accountability for

Them

But in grace there is a filter

Not in people

But in the perfection of

Your senses

And your astounding biases toward love

 

While I cannot expect forgiveness

From the world,

I can count on you

Not for escape from responsibility

But for a way to learn

To keep it

And to live it

 

My soul’s protection does not have to be

On the line

Or if it is, not paramount

There are your ensuring promises

But there is the day-to-day,

My life on this side

I am not kept out like

The match girl,

Though I might share her fate one day

Yet I think you will open me

To bring me in

Where are warmth and companionship

Sustenance from heaven’s hand

 

Give me a chance

To hear and then to act

With those of us who

Wait for you

One way and the other

 

C L Couch

 

 

Melissa McCracken paints what she hears with Synesthesia while listening to music

https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/9npvyc/melissa_mccracken_paints_what_she_hears_with/

 

0

In Aslan’s Country

In Aslan’s Country

(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46014463)

 

I don’t understand

I guess I don’t need to—

Not for mourning

Not for counting

Not for asking

 

A new plane crashes into the ocean

No survivors

 

One missed the flight for traffic

Or other ordinary reason

I imagine there are some who made it

And were considering their luck

 

Half a world away

Right now feels like home

 

Not an issue

Except that God is watching from

A breaking place

 

C L Couch

 

0

At 5 a.m., How and Why

At 5 a.m., How and Why

 

God

You are there

And I am here

The distance between us need

Be no more than a filament

The breadth of a capillary

A pulse between two nuclei

Or the space can be

The width of a world

 

That has more to do with me

Since no qualifying of divine will stands

Beyond the condition you placed upon yourself

For a savior

 

One who redeems as God and a person

Flesh molded with spirit

Majesty in ordinary undertaking

To teach, to heal, to live, to die in innocence

And then all will returns

In death defeated

 

It is a Christian way to know things

It might not be yours

 

But to God

I wonder how you stayed the angel

Who took the knife from Abram’s hand

But would keep it in the Roman plan

To hack a cross together

Display one who dies because

A decision was made

In Sanhedrin and handwashing

Not for justice but for status quo become murderous

 

Abraham was flawed, so was Noah

So was Sarah, so was Isaac, so was Miriam

Yet you made them whole

As all were knit together

Except your child

Who was you and yet was not excused from execution

Out of innocence

 

How do you mitigate your will

And maybe you never do

You allow yourself to bleed

Blood and water, liquids running life

 

You could have changed it all, and you didn’t

Change a thing

I am amazed and horrified

And would never lift my eyes again

Except

You promise joy and peace

And whoever have I been to argue with you

I must be content

 

Allow for Easter

For greater pain unknown anywhere on Earth,

Which splits the universe

And renders understanding into splinters

Of crystalline grace

‘Til grace is all that’s left

With which you save

 

With which you drag us into heaven

From drowning in deep waters

Filled with tendrils from wary sources

Always ready, in fact plotting

To bring us down

Away from light

From one day into eternity

 

I don’t get it

I don’t have to

I am here

You are there

And here

Closer in than I shall ever be

My God

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

 

 

0

Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy Sex Abuse

 

I don’t know how to sound

Holier than thou

When thou art rancid hate

And destruction of a soul

 

It happened to me

It happened to you

I know some of the names

Maybe you do, too

 

They truck with intimacy

Allowing it to slip from God

Into human spirits

Trusting

Even to think the pastor boring

Well, there is another kind

 

Earth weeps enough

And why would God need more tears

From God’s own

Relegated

Abrogated

To the underside of things

Unto the part of us that’s shocked

Broken

Alone

 

C L Couch

 

 

Anil Kumar

HeartBroken – Tears are the Baptism of Soul

 

0

A Season with God

A Season with God

 

I don’t know what happens next

Neither do you

Most of you

I know the lore

I have faith

I think we’re made for now

To think mostly of now

Which is maybe why

Heaven is so distant

And raked over with misunderstanding

Like planting the wrong seeds

Allowing the weeds to grow

Until the harvest

When, you know, wheat and chaff

 

Is there more to say

What can answer doubt

Satisfy speculation

Excoriate cynical perspective

The thing is that

All these things are good

Curiosity deserves an elevation

If security is surrendered on the inside

Outer life might wreck from time to time

Inside life rebuilt time and again

The surgery of synthesis

 

Yesterday, today, tomorrow

Like or as the words by G or S, this kind

Of time

Creeps apace

And should we not be shattered

By bombs or disbelief

The day before takes root

Today become a seed

Tomorrow promises a crop

 

Don’t leave it here

I’d like to meet you later on

And, you know, be met

When time is all time

All days all at once

 

C L Couch

 

 

Season Wallpapers 2 – 1920 X 1200 | stmed.net

stmed.net

 

0

Air and Space Museum

Air and Space Museum

 

Light and space

It’s physics,

And it’s Arabic

It’s need

A vision helping me get by

In a crowded world

That doesn’t breathe enough

Plants to air

Us to carbon dioxide

Back to plants

It goes ‘round, and when

Done right, it’s good

 

I want to be at the Alhambra

Or the Alcázar

Without the Christian overparts

Not to abandon faith but

To find it in the beauty

Of healthy building

 

I don’t know how to reconcile

The tyranny that built it

 

Somehow-dimensions cast to God’s own

As if the architect had been

In Eden when

First designed

All was lush

With light and air

Imagine a veil

Blown under the arch

Of all creation, which was

The promise of

 

How close we might get

Toward living with life’s own

The movement

Without angels yet

To keep us out

 

All is green behind

After we rest, breathed upon by God

We get to go inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

File:Alcázar de Segovia-9.jpg – Wikimedia Commons

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑