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spirit

Recollect

Recollect

 

Sometimes the spirit isn’t there

The pressure of zeitgeist,

Although, maintaining

Sometimes it’s just a mortal day

With bread that burns and

Coffee spills,

Liquid things that stain

It’s a day for paying money that

Might or might not exist

(such is the way of penury

to make us all impoverished

mischiefs), though we have to

Try something

 

But then

The spirit’s always there

Always here

God is inclined to stay

Underneath the window sill

Or in the corner where

We pushed the table

(insert a cartoon image)

Ready to intrude

But staying everything

For reason and for love

Until we scrape the bread

And remember that in many places

Still

We can always raise the sash

Or make space in the corner

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Nadia Valko on Unsplash

 

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Body Counts

Body Counts

 

All of which to say

We can be spiritually minded

And love this life as well

Of flesh and blood

And stuff

 

I have a body

Inside’s kept my soul

When the soul leaves,

There is a counting

So many spirits in Virginia

So many from Sri Lanka

More from Palestine today

More from Yemen

There are tries at genocide

If my enemy does not exist, then

I no longer live in fear

The fear of retribution

From another side

Notwithstanding

We say to a better place

But we do not know

We do not know

A better philosophy’s required

To convince us

That somehow all this

Leave-taking is all right

 

There’s a medieval notion of

Purchase for ransom

The devil has our souls

Jesus paid to free us

But what should have been gold

Turns out to be blood

Payment required

For ancient sacrifice

And deals made

Once outside paradise

 

And with his blood mankind hath bought

One of the older Christmas songs

(hence the faulty use of

mankind, though it)

Teaches us,

Which does not mean to

Long for heaven over

Earth

This life is yet worthwhile

It’s all right to guard it

And regret its passing

Not as an end to

Suffering (that’s good)

But as a gift we’re given

And would just as soon

Not have to return

 

It’s all right

The old, old story says

We get to have it

Once the shell is gone,

We’ll get a new one

For now, though, that’s a mystery

And one not to manipulate

Of tyrants or

The gross indifferent

 

Keep us on the inside, Lord

Help us with reasons

With resources to

Live it on the outside

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Schwoaze from Pixabay

 

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Twelfth Night or

Twelfth Night or

(6 January)

 

What You Will

A modest title

For a late, great play

Did he mean the pun about

His name?

 

What you will, Will

Will who was not the starving

Artist or

Unknown in his time

 

It is twelfth night

Or the twelfth day of Christmas

Christmas, in fact, in the east

In may (and maybe your) liturgical

Calendar, Epiphany

 

In some parts I know, there will be

A boar’s head festival

A Christian way to say

We remember our English

And European roots

Deep down as they might be

Unseen for an age

 

What is epiphanous today is

What is found and realized in the

Christ story

 

The magi come to visit with the family

Of Joseph

To leave gifts for the child who

They discover is

The one they were searching for

The sky was writing them about

That was the ink

They were the page

The message now fulfilled

 

No return to Herod

The last part

 

There are other matters of

New knowledge in new light

Years after,

He comes to his cousin John

Whose voice speaks to

The wildness in the wilderness

He splits the world in truth

Those who will believe the one

Those who will believe the other

A parable one day applies

Of sheep and goats

 

Repent

Turn around

Follow his way,

Says he of the one he must baptize

Because deep knowing says they must

Do this

 

A dove descends

The Spirit is involved

To have a litany of three

Whose echoes elicited the start

Of everything from nothing

 

What happened to the gifts

Sometimes I wonder

Over-obsessed, they would become a movie

Like the subjects of both arks

And a spear of destiny

Maybe they were covered in a box kept by his mother

As was her way

To have her son and all that followed, after

 

The season before the season

An ending and beginning

It truly is

A new year

Time for decisions

Whom to follow

In the drama that our forms reflect

The play between all things

The material our due

The cosmos in the universe

Play on

 

C L Couch

 

 

Andrew Atzert from Mesa, AZ, USA – Family of DovesUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11044215

A Mourning Dove parent with two chicks in Mesa, Arizona, USA.

 

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Visible and Invisible

Visible and Invisible

 

The Lord sings,

and there’s a world.

The Spirit shimmers, and love

all inspires.

The Child touches one and then another,

and everything is better.

Healing and teaching,

death and resurrection.

 

There are other personages

in other stories.

I like well enough this tale of mine, which

comes from a people I must own.  I am

content mostly to do so.

 

I want to learn more and more:

to hear the single notes

that rise into a melody

of sacred time

for sacred dance.

 

And everything is better.

 

C L Couch

 

 

CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125333

English: Coptic crosses in Philae Temple of Isis. Aswan, Egypt.
Français : Autel chrétien dans à l’intérieur du temple d’Isis à Philaé. Assouan, Égypte
Image taken by Gilles RENAULT
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Sanctuary

Sanctuary

 

Because one is still

 

Does not mean that one is safe—

Life in one cell is open to

Mutation, loss of parts, disease;

 

Life within a prison cell

Suffers from same dangers

 

In detention and in

Isolation

(Even with others in proximity),

 

Under death-order and maybe death-

Watch;

 

How,

 

Fixed under a demon’s yoke

Whose cause is politics,

Who for an idea

 

Has been taken out

Of actual existence?

 

Toward the Southern Pole

(Closer than most of us will

Get), there is a Russian Orthodox

Church—

 

Ten bodies with ten souls within

May worship;

 

The rest know that the church is

There:

 

Triptychs of spirit and of hope

Inside

At the end of the world,

 

Where there is likelihood

Of living through oppression

 

Wrought by nature or assignment.

 

What sanctuary in the prison cell,

Where trapped mind and abandoned

Spirit are closed maybe for a

Final time,

 

Where fear

The only inner company?

 

Andy awaits

Release of one kind or

Another.

 

 

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/23100

Kidnapped Briton spends 700th day in illegal detention

A British man who is held under sentence of death in Ethiopia has spent his 700th day in unlawful detention, after he was kidnapped and rendered to the country by Ethiopian forces in 2014.

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Passion Play, Act Four

Passion Play

Act Four

 

He is arisen now

Who caused the rising

 

Disciples will say the

Spirit of God breathed

Into his body once

Again

 

So that he might walk

Upon a mortal land

To testify

And heal

 

And more simply to

Take meals with friends

 

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