Grace Fully
So believe
If you will
And only as you will
Grace
That makes faith real
Is offered freely
And
Exists regardless
Believe in God or do not
Same
With the life of faith
After and
With belief
And
Don’t let any tell you
Another person
Anyway
That he or she dispenses grace
If only you subscribe
Grace
And also faith
Don’t work
That way
The first need being only
You and God
Should you choose
And
Should you accept
Then there is the life of faith
In which you might choose
Healthy
Earthly affiliation
And while to have and keep
Sadly
It’s not
To say the faithful life is easy all the time
While
Through it all
The obstacles
Worldly
Self-styled
Do promise
Spiritually
Well
The Spirit’s ease
And even peace and joy
Be the judge of grace
And faith
To start with God or
Not
And
Don’t let any other take the judging role
Except God
And then remember God is truth
And also
God
Is love
I heard once that church should be rejected because it claims to dispense grace—and also, as such, the church charges something (membership, money, doctrinal adherence) in order to receive the grace if offers, if not dangles. But grace is not or ever owned this way. (Or owed, either.) Grace is from God, and grace is free. It is the free means to receive the saving favor of the Lord. As means or to exist at all, grace comes at no cost of ours, the price for grace, so to say, having in fact been paid by God. We are saved by faith in God. And as if faith were great art, grace is the frame.
C L Couch
Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash
“In the Park”
Kyiv, Украина
[haiku]
ask at all of firsts
from nil gifts to open so
open Earth and us
[out now]
Tranquility: An Anthology of Haiku
by Literary Revelations
I’m not so good at promoting myself, but my work is in this anthology. As I’ve mentioned before, I find haiku an arduous process. So I guess I will say for myself that I’m pleased to have my haiku selected for inclusion in this work.
The book is out now and available at Amazon and appears to have been well-received so far. I’m grateful to Literary Revelations for the publishing and more specifically to Gabrielle Marie Milton for all her art and effort.
The main title, I probably don’t need to say, is the theme for this gathering of haiku. Thank you—any, all of you—for your reading of my work generally and should you read what I’ve contributed in Tranquility.
I think as I’ve written earlier, ten years ago while I was recovering from surgery, my sister gave me a laptop and told me to write something. I decided then to try a blog, though I barely knew what one was.
Throughout my life, it seems that writing has been one thing I can do nearly anytime. Feeling well, feeling poorly. At peace or in great stress.
Who knows, maybe I’m getting somewhere on this path.
Christopher
C L Couch
image from Pixabay with thanks to shell_ghostcage
(x = space)
x
x
Columns
x
Google places e-mails inside three columns of its making. There is the inbox, where go what it has decided has some urgency. Then there is the “Promotions” part with ads for things and notices deemed of secondary or tertiary significance. Then there is “Social,” where go posts from WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Here is where the blog posts go, which I should respond to. I’m not sure how Google decides what goes where, since there is overlap and often I get blog notices in the inbox and advertisements, too. When I’m feeling extra headaches and extra stress from bad neighbors in the building, the kind of stress that presses on my heart when otherwise it needn’t, the inbox is where I go first to catch up on things. How much I might ignore depends on how bad the added pains might be. I’ll go through the promotions next, ignoring most, because it’s relatively easy (because I ignore most of the notices for politics or my money or politics for my money of which I have little, anyway). The column that’s ignored is “Social,” because I should devote good energy there and too often, especially lately, it seems I have none.
I know I’m missing many things. And sometimes “Social” e-mails are slid over to the inbox, and I deal with them there because they’re there and so am I. It’s not much of a strategy or a philosophy, because I let Google decide or WordPress (friends, maybe send things through e-mail). The current time of extra stress and pain has been going on for a while, and it doesn’t help that the new editor at WordPress (the program) is majorly unwieldly. But I keep up the writing and the posting part (parts), because that’s how it all begins. And if you have forbearance, I am
thankful.
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash
x
Here’s News (and a Haibun)
(1)
Here are three news leads from The Guardian:
The United Nations has for the first time signalled its “human rights obligation” over the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people.
‘It’s only working for the white kids’: American soccer’s diversity problem [headline]
Yesterday, a report came out that said more than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died just in the last week while crossing the Mediterranean.
(2)
Everyone on all sides of things is falling down. UN peacekeeping. Soccer, the world’s sport. Migrants we don’t count who die. Doesn’t help my own precarious feelings about stability or sanity in the world. Doesn’t help the fragility in me or mine. On this side of apocalypse (only frightening for some), what might we save? In order to retain poetics, I’ve refrained from news of politics today. I doubt anymore the answer’s there.
(3)
Black box of the plane
Black box of refugee’s boat
Black box of sea’s depths
clcouch123 
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