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Lent 26

Lent 26

 

Sometimes, when I’m afraid

I write

Or when I’m sad

Indecisive

Or frustrated

But if I looked back through my journal

(I haven’t done that often)

I’d find, I believe, expressions of

Thanksgiving

Sometimes for sleep that didn’t go so badly

Sometimes for coffee in the morning

Sometimes for cold water, when

I’ve arranged it

I don’t know how much happiness I can have

But it seems I can have gratitude

Which has pieces, if only whittlings,

Of the larger parts

Of joy and peace

 

I think somewhere in there

Might be an invitation, which is

Why I write about this now

 

Because maybe

You’ll find something in the formula

I didn’t plan, and

I didn’t plan

 

Simply saying thank you

To the universe, to God

To a spirit, to an angel

For some measure of something

That will, if only as a single pea

(sorry if you don’t like peas, for

I know those who hate them),

Yet add nourishment to the day

 

A pea can accomplish something

It makes a whistle work

And disturbs the sleep of the

Princess

 

Something small can move along the tale

If only silent thanks

 

C L Couch

 

 

Mateusz Tokarski, ca. 1795 (National Museum in Warsaw)

Mateusz Tokarski – cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26953289

(still life with peas)

 

0

Lent 21

Lent 21

 

Have you ever run the sponge

Along the bottom of the sink

And felt the satisfaction?

Knowing that the dishes cleaned

Are in the rack

And the quiet from the running water

Now turned off

Is a pleasure of pressure

On the ears

 

I’ve done that today

You have your own form of this, I’m sure

A small act always needing doing

And for a moment, when it’s done,

A small, small part of the world

Feels right

Feels righter

For being cleaner, a little more at peace

For a time

 

I don’t know if it’s a model for anything

That’s larger

It is its own peace

 

But access to hot water isn’t everywhere

Even soap can be hard to come by

Against a savage promise of starvation

Looming like an open maw, nearing

The family

The one

 

And so might there be peace in this:

That we must invite assurance

Of all things lent us,

Partnering

So the jaw of need is shut

 

For this time and in our keeping

Our maintaining

And our growing

Enough for God’s pleasure in our own

Because we’ve done it right

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jim DiGritz on Unsplash

 

0

The Skiff

The Skiff

(Advent, anytime)

 

It’s the twentieth

Now we count for real

 

Will we have peace—

Will Bethlehem be accessible

This year

 

Peace in the heart

Might be all that’s left

Sometimes it must feel that way

And, honestly, it’s a good place

To start

 

Accent on the time

To find the quiet

Or stop the world another way

Pause it now and then

 

Five days

For remembrance

Make it our own liturgy of

Supplication

Over whatever waters we might have,

Still or stormy

 

Reaching for, and as,

A beacon through the mist

That’s joy

 

C L Couch

 

 

By laszlo-photo – https://www.flickr.com/photos/laszlo-photo/110887318/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5948809

In the early morning, a fishing skiff remains docked on the waters of Santa Marta Bai near Soto, Curacao (Netherland Antilles).

 

0

Commemoration of an armistice.

 

Commemoration of an armistice.

Remembrance, acknowledgement, and honoring of all veterans from all wars, everywhere.  What do the warlords care?  They care for strong backs and arms that shoulder fearsome guns.  But in a democracy of feeling, the rest of us know individuals.  Hopefully, we know their stories and we tell them.

What do I know?  I know their service is a wonder.  Their sacrifice a heartbreak.  Their strength shoulders the mind.

I went to Gettysburg in late December.  I felt it the saddest place on Earth.  How many open battlefields have we?  How many can house or canopy the service of the dead?  The preservation of the living?

Yes, there’s Flanders Field.  Somme and Gallipoli.  Israel and Egypt in week-long wars.  Massacres in India and China.  Killing of indigenous that maybe should be classified as war.

Why do we have war?  Elihu Root claims that it has to do with keeping peace, an irony of iron substance.  The New Testament asserts it’s because we ask amiss.  We ask for things we cannot have.  And so we take them.

I don’t know.  I don’t know anyone who favors war except in movies.  I don’t think real people do that, favor war.  We fight so there’s an end.  We fight so that the fighting stops.

Will there ever be a battle in Antarctica?  Can we keep one place clear?

I hope we cherish veterans of service and of war.  And the peace they promise.

 

note

This is from my journal entry for the day.  I wrote a poem, which I should post.  Not because it’s great but because it’s timely.  When I wrote about the day this way (excerpt above), it seemed appropriate, too.  Hope so.  Hope you’re all, veterans and civilians, really well.  If not, I hope you’re better soon.

 

 

https://albanyvisitors.com/explore/veterans-day-parade/

The Albany’s Veterans Day Parade is the biggest Veterans Day celebration west of the Mississippi.

 

0

Emergency Calls

Emergency Calls

(remembering 9/11 in the USA)

 

Today in my part

We are remembering

A horrific attack on innocents

By crazy people

This kind of murder happens

Elsewhere

My country is not the battleground

So often

Syria, Yemen, Colombia, Myanmar

The Philippines, Somalia

Sudan

We’ve sometimes had a hand in these

That might have made the crazy

People crazier

Enacting their cause here

 

On this day, we remember here

Where death came to passengers,

Firefighters, office people, and

The rest

Companies of normal people

Noncombatants, we would say

If this were anything like war

Between fair nations

 

I suppose on planet Earth

Wars and war-like actions must

Happen in someone’s yard

The playing fields, business places

Farm, and town

We have few dedicated battle zones

The DMZ, maybe ocean surfaces

And depths

Air and now we think to weaponize

Space, above and beyond

 

So war must happen close to home

Inside

And things warlike, if not war

Which then we call killing

We call it murder

And I suppose on someone’s ugly surface

There is a plan to do it again

Pray that we stop it

And praise those who do

 

But as we honor peace

So may we honor them:

The victims, those who ran toward

The concussions of air and sound

And matter

Turned into explosion and horror

Metal, blood, and bone

All those who died first

First helpers

And the many who were saved

Who are with us, still

 

We are here

Remember

Celebrate

Pray for cessation

Pray for profusion

The horror gone

And peace prevail

 

C L Couch

 

 

By United States v. Zacarias MoussaouiCriminal No. 01-455-AProsecution Trial ExhibitsExhibit Number P200066Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Russavia using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15252009

 

 

0

Destiny of Manifests

Destiny of Manifests

 

How we can disperse all hope

Or think we should

Why we think we are the best when,

Point by point, we’re not

Several are more literate, many

More able with math

Many with armed forces

That train and guard more than

They have to fight

 

May peace prevail, the pole proclaims

In many languages

What language do we use

When talking with our neighbors

May implies condition and will

What do we condition

What do we will

 

It is a wonderful statue

So many monuments are

And nearly all espouse a cause

With some nobility

I can drive down to Devil’s Den, now

A reminder of

The awful cost of slaying a

Brother in the split of war

 

And what war does not take a sibling

What part of Earth is not destroyed

What town, what hold for families

Is gone from the roster

Of the world

We all are charged to keep

 

Independence Day is on the way

Many nations have one

They speak to freedom

Of the mind, the will

The charge to make the planet whole

Especially

When we ruin something of it

 

C L Couch

 

 

image

assembling the Statue of Liberty in Paris

 

 

 

3

Good Christmas Friday

Good Christmas Friday

 

Christmas day on Sunday

And in my reformed way,

I feel a new triduum

 

But what to mourn tomorrow?

All the peace that has not

Happened

In the world

Peace on Earth

Worthy of a Tolkien epic

Or a Lewis telling

 

Inklings remembered, a new

Generation nonetheless

Is calling:

 

Severing war ties in the cosmos

Sewing threads

Into the weave of conflict

 

To wear retaining

Wisdom, the innocence in

Relented cynicism

 

The hopes of open-tomb-like

Understanding

Embraces resurrected

Sibling salvation

 

Let us share—let us keep—an

Earthbound feast

 

All

Holy days reconciled

In time

 

C L Couch

1

11, 11 (11)

11, 11 (11)

 

Today is Veterans Day.

Armistice Day in Europe.

Remembrance

Day.  Red poppies to honor

Flanders Field.

 

Recalling that peace,

Even

At great cost, is better.

Better than victory.

 

C L Couch

 

1

Saint Francis and the Animals

Saint Francis and the Animals

(4 October)

 

Eight hundred years

Ago in the

Middle part of Italy,

 

A person walked and others

Walked with him

 

But when he tried to preach

No one would hear;

So he spoke his message

Unto the birds

The raccoons (in my telling)

And all things that crept

Or flew through the air

 

He would return to people:

He visited the pope

He met with the sultan of

The Muslim warriors who

Fought in Jerusalem,

 

Because he hoped

That peace as a cause

Might overwhelm

The rest

That keeps

Getting in our way

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