Bread and Un-Circuses
(respecting actual circuses)
Please don’t let them
Tell you
They own these
Or manage them
As on
Great stools
In circuses
(for ticket prices)
Grace and miracle
In miracle
There’s grace
In grace
There’s miracle
And they are free
And should go
Wild-seeming
As they may
Go
Outside
Our doctrine
Though we try to capture them
Ring them
As it were
With naming
Precepting
And merchandising
These better
Things
They happen
In the timing of the Lord
Salvation being instant
And grace
Cooperatively
Then the rest
(of grace)
And miracle
As if wild
Breathing and galloping
Over a health of possibilities
Exigence outside
Called in
By kairotic
Signals
And ugently
Once given
Salvation
Grace
And miracle
Let go by God
And without cost
Or a doctrine of control
But
Freely through
The cost
Divinely paid
Against
The worst of human means
Free of us
They turn around
And turn us around
(they turned from assigned or
unassigned
location
while us turned
by repentance
that means
turn)
To come in from the wondrousness
Of wilderness
To ordered Earth
Breaking through the ordered
Or the chaosed
To save us
So then
These
Beyond subscription
So we might do no better
Than
Simply
Marvelly
Even irascibly
Turn from the other intrusions
Rather
To open
Ourselves
Freely
To accept
Freely
Twice as much
To receive
Then
Feely
Twice as much
To give
C L Couch
(the song with “freely, freely” as I’m recalling is a hymn of forgiveness and salvation, composed by Carol Sue Owens)
Photo by Dannie Jing on Unsplash
(x = space)
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Hanukkah Blue
x
Hanukkah
Blue
Blue of certain
Stars
Pretty blue
Thoughtful
Magic
Works its way inside
Protective shells
To say
This is right
This is good
Blue for the miracle
Blue for peace
That should be
No one’s miracle
For happening
For real
Everyone
Upon the Earth
In every season
Once achieved
That point
From
Now on
Blue for jazz
Blue for me
Blue for you
Blue on
Beauty
All the stars
Starting on one star
For
Seasons’
Greetings
Blue on
x
C L Couch
x
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Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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In a Few Days
(Hanukkah)
x
It’s Friday
Lord
The start of
Sabbath
And in a few days
Hanukkah
x
I’ll be ready
‘Cause
It will happen
Anyway
x
Eight days
Of oil
Matching need
With miracle
Inside
The recleaned
Temple home
x
Where we are home
Once a week
Once a life
Next year in Jerusalem
x
We will have
Our meals
Our chocolates
And our gifts
x
We will be stressed
And yet
All shall go well
x
While we remember
Everything
It took
And takes
To have us here
x
Hard-fought
Hard-won
Keeping festivals
And seasons
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash
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(x = space)
x
x
Faith and the General
x
And did Moses
God as the ally
Part
The Red Sea
As a miracle
More importantly
As rescue
x
General Wallace
Wanted all of it
A story
For unlearned people
Awash in ignorance
Wanting
To stay that way
Away
Wet with lies
x
Red Sea
Or Sea of Reeds
The miracle diminished
By sponges
That is
Absorbents
Of reality
x
Or is the miracle
A normal thing
(the parting
of a sea
by wind
in certain
seasons)
Nonetheless
Miraculously timed
x
General Wallace wanted
All of it
A lie
At best an illusion
And delusion
Most of all
The notion that a God
Should want to be with us
Even through
A civil war
And send to us
Something
God and us
To save us
From the monstrous
The despicable
We make
And must be
x
And so what happened
(let the Red Sea
and the
Sea of Reeds
debate go on)
Well
He wrote Ben-Hur
As a fictive response
To how he had
Changed
x
And maybe
A divine hope
In and
For the rest of us
To marshal all the parts
And
Once assembled
Find out what there is
By
The revulsive
And the hopeful
For ourselves
For faith
x
C L Couch
x
x
After extensive studies of the Bible and the Holy Land, and well before he had completed the novel, Wallace became a believer in God and Christ.
Wikipedia (citing sources)
x
Photo by Evan Brockett on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
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Blessings of Lights in Darkness
(appreciation of a Gentile toward the Jewish family)
x
Somewhere in Advent
Hanukkah begins
x
Sundown tomorrow,
I believe
x
Eight nights of blue
With silver lights
That dedicate
The temple
From our enemies
x
They’re gone:
We don’t have to think
About them
x
Now, there’s chocolate
And treats
In games
And gifts,
Small delights
And big ones for the heart
x
Anticipation
Practice
Family
x
My ignorance
Like ignorance
Has walls;
I’d rather be inside
The spirit of redemption
And occasion,
The community
x
The relief in having realized
Somber times
x
The pleasure now,
The fun
Of shalom
x
Eight days
Of miracle,
Of remembrance and the meaning that
Creation is in food
Also in candle lights
And in each of us
Singly
And specially together
Now
x
The one who saves is blessed
And offers blessing
And is the one
As one
Who provides seriously
And playfully as well
x
Is here
Beyond the count of days
And nights
But who is here
Inside these eight,
All the intimate hours
As we draw near to them
To have,
To share
x
Next year in Jerusalem
Then
And now with family
x
From the source of blessing,
Bless
And
Keep you, friends
x
C L Couch
x
x
Call of the Light
Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash
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(x = space)
x
x
A Count of Days
x
The Sabbath comes
And in ten days
And counting more
Is Hanukkah
Lights and chocolate
Latkes and other gifts
Of earth
And from each other
x
Blue and silver
Days and nights
The nights show off the lights
That show the miracle
When we got our temple
Back
To find it desecrated
And no fuel for lamps
We lighted them anyway
And they burned eight days
For us
And for our faith
x
We’re not perfect
We need to keep commandments,
After all
That remind us
And our neighbors
And the world
But we own miracles as well
As the menorah
And the gifts
And the food
And the blue nights
Shall show us
As the first time
The grace and love
And strength of God
For us
In faith
And you
In yours
If we may say,
Welcome to our festival
x
C L Couch
9th of Kislev (after sundown), 5783
x
x
Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash
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(x = space)
x
x
Presenced
x
It should not come to this
But God
Rescue us
With miracle
Maybe miracles all around
Friend and foe alike
Even on the blooded field
Now turned
For fallow ground
Ready for
New planting
New heaven and new
Earth
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Quaritsch Photography on Unsplash x
Philemon’s Pitcher
I wished for more
I prayed for miracle
A job, a home
Companions
A car to get me there and
Back again
For clothes that set and
Looked good
Well, good enough
Food that might hold me
And I might enjoy
And what happened
With these petitions I don’t
Know,
But I think when at I’m the gate or
Once inside
I might be told:
Did you not notice the extra
Potato in the bag
The extra gasoline already in the tank
The fifteen minutes more
Than should not have been available
The one who held the door and
Was never seen again?
The miracles of stories must be large,
I guess
Miracles as molecules
Go uncounted
Unconsidered
And those in between
Not for the book but nonetheless
The provenance of angels who
Entertained us unaware
C L Couch
http://www.icollector.com/ancient-greek-wine-jug-300BC-2280081_i8229518
Our Lady
(12 December, the Solemnity of Guadalupe)
The roses fell
Into his cloak made
Of rough cloth
He took the flowers
To the priest who
Wanted proof before
Believing him
And in the lady
Man of Aztec culture
And holy woman
So hard to believe
Might all our miracles
And visitations
Go over so easily
For fleshly saints
And innocents
C L Couch
clcouch123 
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