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Dear Earth

(x = space)

x

x

Dear Earth

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I don’t know what to say

One person can’t apologize

We destroy you

And we need you

We like you for you move

Unlike the decorations

On the ancient vase

You move

With beauty

And with truth

x

You have renewing skills

We won’t take them on

Or indeed respect them

We need pollution

Acid rain

Discarded plastic

Unsafe water

Trash as mountains

Outside cities,

All to justify

Our way of life

Our shiny, blindered way of life

That is so good

To look the other way

x

Toward the moon?

Toward Mars?

Is there a hope

A plan

We can leave you

When our destructive preferences

Have finished you?

I think we see the Earth as vast

And it is

You are

So we have time

To reach the corners,

So to say

x

Eventually,

Horizons shall meet

The burning and the melting

From each side

The drowning

The dissolving of safe ground

Between

And overwhelming water

Taking us away,

Which we can’t drink

Or with which to build

To clean

To take our oxygen

x

How shall we change?

How can we say we’re sorry?

We try to change

But we’ve set up our war in this

Anti-polluters fight polluters

With the great indifference

In between

x

Compartmentalized,

There are few agreements

x

Like broken bulkheads,

There is no more breathing

To share

Each box of us collapses

Into an airless deep

The ship of Earth

Of you

Founders and

Shall sink

into gravity, under magnetic waves

Of other worlds

Whose LaGrange we used to share

In orbital mediation

With satellites

Asteroids and meteoroids

Not always in place, admittedly

And comets

Farther off yet neighborly

The suns that also spun out worlds

Other life forms

After here

To try at wholeness

Integration

While there had been us

Who had a turn

And turned

x

Whose only hope

Might be in turning more

Turn again,

Which is repentance

x

C L Couch

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A calving glacier. Witness to global warming.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

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1

Wonderful Counselor

(x = space)

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Wonderful Counselor

x

Should we meet with God

I shall be glad

I might become chagrined

At what God will tell you

While I’m there

But I’m sure the conversation

Will be necessary

There might be understanding and

Reconciliation

Our lives on Earth an untrue experience

Now washed and cleared

The dark glass clean

Through which, if we all will,

All forgiven

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C L Couch

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Photo by Susan Mohr on Unsplash

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Eligibility Requirements

(x = space)

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Eligibility Requirements

James 1:22-27

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What does the Lord

Ask of us?

Many things, I think

That Noah build an ark

That Abraham sacrifice

His son upon an altar

Made for animals

x

That Rahab should save

The spies of Israel

In Canaan

That Mary should conceive

Without her affianced

And then give birth

x

That Cain should confess

That sinners should confess

That we should be

Doers and not hearers only

Of the word

x

That we should seek justice

And do justice

That we should love God

And each other

Be generous with enemies

With material and with prayer

x

I’d like to say it’s easy

As salvation is

Through grace

And belief

But frankly it’s the start

Of a grown-up life of faith

In which there should be joy

And humor, too,

And if there isn’t

Then we have been told

In someone’s catechism

Something wrong

x

C L Couch

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James is a brief, epistolary work in the Christian New Testament.

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Photo by Taras Chernus on Unsplash

“I am from Ukraine, there is a war going on in my country now. Your help is more important than ever.”

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1

And, But, Or, Nor, For, Yet, So

(x = space)

x

x

And, But, Or, Nor, For, Yet, So

x

What do I do

When God is gone?

A question I don’t have to ask

Because it doesn’t happen

God doesn’t go away

I do

I go away when I want

To think of someone else

Of something that I want

That I shouldn’t have

When I need

Or presume to need

Enough to bump out God

From my awareness,

Which qualifies the need

As something else

x

This is straightforward:

I choose to have God in my life

Closer to me, anyway

Since God is there

Creating

Maintaining

Weeping or laughing at

What we do

Preparing for Parousia

Yet

Cherishing each moment

The now we have

We linear beings

Meaning for us

It’s a saving moment

To a saving moment

x

God is close

God is inherent

In electrons

And cellular nuclei

God will become more obvious

As we wish

As we choose

As we ask it so

(the asking’s prayer)

The devil has many ways

To snare us away

It is agenda

Of the kind that pushes will

And understanding

Inside a frame that illustrate

An attitude

Against people and the

Environment

The Earth we stand or glide

Or rest upon

All of which, the devil says,

Is unimportant

When favoring

Profit

Unhuman strategies

(inhumane)

That only matter as

Winning so that the rest

Are losers

x

Who is lost?

The burden’s hard

The burden’s easy

It’s paradox

Of faith

Of belief in God who’s only known

Through evidence unseen

Who wins a case through this?

x

Such contradictions

Such opposites

The world we love must be eschewed

If we would live, there is first

The inevitability of dying

Sheesh

No thank you

Or thank you

Our will to embrace

To choose

To live in love

With the good in everything

With faith

And hard belief that has gentle edges

In what we show each other

(as in manifest)

In what we sense

And how we deal

With everyone

With everything

By which and in which

A spirit accompanies

For good

For upbuilding

For faith

And, yes, for love

x

We live in hope

That God is there

That God is there when we return

Or when we turn around

In attitude

Repentance

Sorry and a new embrace

Of faith

Gove love this Earth

And the extraordinary creatures

That you’ve made

That is each of us

Not that we are perfect

Or perfectly anything

But in everyone

And everything

The three remain close by

The three remain close by

x

C L Couch

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By Finoskov – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109525350

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0

Briefly, the Apocalypse

(x = space)

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x

Briefly, the Apocalypse

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The circle won’t be broken

Angels will hold

The breaking places

‘Til we get there

x

We’ll keep the world together

Until an ending that is proper

Appropriate for

New heaven and

New Earth

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C L Couch

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Photo by bhuvanesh gupta on Unsplash

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Stained/Strained Glass

(x = space)

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Stained/Strained Glass

x

O God,

We believe

Variously

x

Most of the world

(mid- to upper-nineties)

Believe in you

Some way

Somehow

x

I know what

I must believe

But am loath (to use

an antique word)

To insist

That the next one

Must believe as I

x

I’d rather have respect

For belief, lack of belief

And for us meeting

Anyway,

This way

Transacting with each other

And the Earth

x

Bad evangelism, maybe

For us all to meet

With friendship and respect

(as if meeting

friendship and respect

as angels met in

Baucis and Philemon)

To realize

Humanity

Alive on Earth

x

Withholding conscripted hands

By the switch

That only proves

Annihilation

x

So we learn

And maybe for petition,

Maybe gently pushing us

To places where people

Of Earth

Believe otherly

Or don’t believe

But worthy

On both sides

All sides

All around

x

And welcome

To the table

Of the Earth

Amen

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Adam Gonzales on Unsplash

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5

They Wave Farewell

(x = space)

x

x

They Wave Farewell

(Memorial Day, USA)

x

Red

(with white and blue)

Waving over fields

Dropping morning dew

x

For us

It is remembering

A waving day of it

Poppy remembering

x

Nature teaches

And must be

A burying place for war

The fields wave

The children wave

We wave

They wave farewell

x

Nature weeps

With dew, with rain, with

Anything that falls

All of us may fall

And weep

We may weep

For the children

(all are children)

Of the world

x

C L Couch

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Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

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Stone Soup

(x = space)

x

x

Stone Soup

x

I don’t know what to say today

I want you to have a good day

x

And for a while

To know good days

And what to do when days are bad

Beyond the dreaming we all do

x

So that it’s

What we know to do with what we have

Sometimes that’s hard

And hard to believe we have

I’m poor

I know

Too close to the legacy

Of art and artists

x

But I know good people

Am learning to ask

And not gauge heaven by response

Or lack thereof

But to keep trying

x

Also allowing expectation

We live

We are entitled to live

I don’t know about evil people

I know so few

You are entitled, too, I suppose

I am not God

And cannot judge as God

x

But the many, many, many

Of us who are not evil, not pure good

A mix, you know–

Choose a complementary color

We are colors

We color the world

x

And are deserving

You deserve

A good day and another

A whole bunch like bananas

Or corn kernels on the cob

Or other things so many colors

(as I’ve said)

x

Anyway,

A wish is not a horse

Or an electric car

And, drat, we have to try

The curse of Adam, some would say

Eve is cursed as well

But curses are not endings

x

“We have to make our own way,”

I just heard,

Which is true

And there’s so much more

There’s you

There’s me

And any me or you who happens

To be close to you or me

In distance

Actual

Or relative

(and there’s cyber-),

Which is to say

x

A nearness

(actual or relative)

To help make life

One bowl of stone soup

At a time

x

C L Couch

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     Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Statue of a monk and stone soup (sopa da pedra) in Almeirim, Portugal

By Adriao – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7645719

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Flesh, Spirit, and Everything that Matters

(x = space)

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x

Flesh, Spirit, and Everything that Matters

(for Easter)

x

Good Friday becomes Easter

x

Good becomes better

Good becomes goodest

Abandonment is over

The teacher has returned

And the homeowner

And we each have a place in that home

It is so large

And always adding

x

The wounds are healed

There are reminders;

Mainly (surely),

He is alive

x

There was no question that he died

We wept, we keened

We buried

There was a stone

There was a guard

There was no doubt in this

The emperors

And would-be emperors

Clinked their glasses

And sat back,

Sighed

That’s done

The conspiracy is over

Plot succeeded

And we can blame other people

x

God and people are

Reconciled

Through life and death

And life again

The absurdity of the final miracle

Over death inexorable

Unavoidable

x

And NOT forever

What?

x

This is what we know

And now through resurrection

We must believe that

Death is not all

It is not inexorable

It is avoidable

We may die

We might sleep

If so,

We will awake again

How does this happen?

x

It is God

Who has a part in us

Who made us

Who is spirit

And flesh

And everything that makes up

A creator

And a lover

And a savior

Immanuel from Hebrew

God with us

x

We walk a bridge

That wasn’t there

God is on the other side:

In fact,

We can find out

God is on both sides

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C L Couch

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Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

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