And in Conclusion
Believe or not
There’s God
It’s up to you
Wonderfully
Up to you
For faith
In what’s unseen
By unseen
But what’s evidenced
In
Nature
Even by extremes
More so
In love
And everything
Beyond ourselves
Affirming
What is in ourselves
That we know best
As flesh
Combined with
Spirit
My
We really are
Something
And should mean it
Fantastic-made
And beating certain odds
For now
To have been kept
And then
To keep ourselves
And we should know
The value
Beyond chemicals
The market fluctuates
Bur the worth
Of what’s internal
As eternal
Is forever
And the price
As might be reckoned
Also needed
By
The world
It seems
Paid
In faith
And love
And also paid
In full
Perfected in a life
Both human and
Divine
And in divinity
We pray
Our own spirit
And our flesh
Shall pray
Even with life
And life’s devotion to
What’s good
Resisting evil
And when giving in
To evil
Then returning
The question
Which is
Stronger
Which is more
At last
Answered
With wounded conviction
Scarred believing
And we may
Return
Or
Yes
Never having left
And maybe to eschew
When needed
Older
Siblings’
Attitudes
Toward prodigals
We have
We come back
And now
We all remain
In faith
Uneasy in the world
As uneasy
To the world
Which says
No evidence
No faith
According to our rules
Though evidence
Invisible
Like concepts
Be
Working all around
But
Speaking of invisible
To start
At least
Remember one’s
Great value
That is
Your own
And don’t forget it
Stay alive
Forgive
And be forgiven
Knowing that life and love
(unscalable
though scalable)
Keep us
And keep us going
In the valley
To the top
Depth
As well as height
And in the mind
Between
Then knowing well
Of one
Reach out
To one
And then another
And let groups
Of faith have strength
With courage
For each other
Goodness
Do I sound
Like an epistle
Well
Enough courage
In the one
To be
And more
To join
A model
Maybe
Understand of the one beyond
Or go the other way
Let the one
Be model
For you
And for us
Either way
Have faith
Remembering greater love
But keeping oneself
Precious
And unstained
Though knowing
That God loves
The stained
As well
And we should love
The stained
As with the wounded
All around
Such things
As shall be lifted
But for now
Need caring
As with the pristine parts
And also those
As practice now
For everything
All Earth
And heaven
Flesh
And spirit
Renewed
C L Couch
Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash
Nearly
So we come before you
And where is
Before you
We could turn around
And still we are
Before you
Like the breastplate
Of Saint Patrick
You are
In every direction
And inside
If we allow
The paradox of making
Should we owe
Everything
And yet make up our minds
And you
As God
Await
Our own discretion
Free will
We say
An easy name for doctrine
Better doctrine
Both
Explains and serve
Reality
And this is easy
You are God
And you are near
C L Couch
Photo by Steve Lieman on Unsplash
Two intrepid riders jump in the lift bucket for a ride to the top of the Union Congregational Church Steeple to remove the weather vane and directional so that repairs can be made. Hazmat suits needed due to danger of white faced hornet nest inside the top of the steeple.
Groton, MA, USA
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
(from the Breastplate of Saint Patrick)
(x = space)
x
x
Moment Passed
(goes with yesterday’s post, “The Moment”)
x
There is such a thing
There ain’t
No such thing
x
If you had a chance
To meet with God
Then passed
And let the moment pass
So what
x
To find God
How many moments
Guessed at
In a waking day
How many moments
Made
x
Pick one of them
Turn
That’s all
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Chyntia Juls on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
An Excuse Not to Ask Directions
(you know electrics fail from time to time)
x
Back roads are best
They still need
Paving
Until I get
My Jeep or an ATV
x
State routes are
Good
Try Route 8 in
Western Pennsylvania or
Route 22, across
x
Or any road
Inviting small adventure
Maybe there are
Trees
Or a turn,
The end of which
We cannot espy
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Adam Thomas on Unsplash
x
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.
Endure Oregon Protest
They are still in Oregon.
The protest goes and has
Closed in. A leader, Cliven
Bundy, was arrested.
“Cliven” could be a past-
participle word for
“Cleave” (I don’t know
that it was)—an odd word
cleave: on its own, it would
seem to mean to cut into
two, yet it is the word used
for bonding in marriage
talk. Maybe the ideas is
that in marrying we slice
ourselves off one plant
and in a cleaved (or cliven)
state are grafted to another.
From both parts, then, new
growth is hybrid-formed—
and was such unity made
made here? Since one last
leader was taken, it would
not seem so; disunity, like
bad harmony, sounds from
final voices that endured.
Not to say that protest by
occupying and with guns
is a better way, for it is not.
But someone should really
hear what they have to say—
I’m not partisan in this
for feeling for both sides.
I simply wish equality imbued.
Everyone should be heard.
Everybody gets a turn. Not
A game—but how we should
have it. All the same.
clcouch123 
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