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Merry Whichever

(x = space)

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Merry Whichever

(greeting)

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Merry Whichever

Happy New Year to your calendar

And all your months,

However they are named

May each day be ingested

With wisdom and

Delight,

Wisdom for the ages,

Delight in the pleasures

Of the day

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May you know love

More than in the abstract

Some good learning beforehand

Wouldn’t hurt;

Might you have peace,

If the worlds great and small

Agree

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Most of all, may

All of you

And any

Know the presence

Over us

So great,

So small as to be

Working inside

Our capillaries

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Call it God

Or the Spirit

Or the impulse of the ages

The human push

Toward improvement

And a symphony of

Maybe out-of-tune,

Asynchronous

Possibility

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May the one

Or many there

Protect you

And keep you

In each other

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C L Couch

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Part of the painting “my take on an ion.”

Photo by Jené Stephaniuk on Unsplash

Los Angeles, CA, USA

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All These Worlds

(x = space)

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All These Worlds

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God, help our

Nation to be good

Our world to be great

The cosmos, when

Receiving us,

Never-ending wonder

And discovery

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Liturgic wishing

Into prose action

New metaphors required

Upon each arrival

In a spaceship

On a new shore,

Bearing guilt and hope

Germs and solutions

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Ready to eat there and

To take some sips from

A silver sea

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C L Couch

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The International Space Station

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

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6

Dire Invocation

(x = space)

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Dire Invocation

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God

Help us

We need you

Because

And when

The world is too much

And we can’t get away

For love

Of being here

Unreadiness for heaven

‘Til you say so

And we can’t live

‘Til you say so

We have to do

Other

We think you made us

This way

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C L Couch

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Photo by Jack van der Spoel on Unsplash

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Out of the Not so Silent Planet

(x = space)

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Out of the Not so Silent Planet

(on a Wednesday)

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On the hump day

(bless the camel)

Or on any day

We might turn to God,

Which can be a matter of

Turning inside,

Somehow

We acknowledge God

That voice inside

And coming from the outside

Coming from you

Inspired or directed

Seeming

Happenstance, perhaps

We listen

We should listen

No matter if there’s sound

We also learn

Through touch or taste

Of other of the senses

Listening in time

Receiving new instructions

That might say

Stop, be here with me

A while

Then move on

Or might say

Move on, now

We stewards of the realm

Will have our orders

In this funny place

Where there is a monarch

Everyone else

A steward charged with

Variously

Caring for the realm

To move it forward

Into safety and progression

For the approval

Of the other worlds that

With our Lord

Do watch us now

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C L Couch

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5

Peer Review

(x = space)

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Peer Review

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Your stories are

Amazing

Amazing stories

Keep sharing from them

We need their wonder

That

Certain metaphors aside

And without exaggeration

Are real

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C L Couch

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Full Disk Earth, Apollo 17, 1972

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

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Catbird

(x = space)

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Catbird

(recalled)

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I’d like to speak

Of God

But sometimes silence

Is called for

To listen to the maybe

Maybe something grand

Maybe single

Bird-call

Can one hear the dawn

Or the vibrations in

The setting sun?

Hearing apparatus

Is not required

So much as to

Open up whoever we are

Enough to gather in

What the quiet Earth

Has to say

A gift for any, all the senses

We may have

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Speak through the Earth

If we are mute

Savor unimpeded,

Unreconstituted wind

If we have lost our

Sense of taste

Let the sun move us through

The day

If we have no movement

Otherwise

What we’ve had,

What we’ve never had,

What we’ve lost

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We have so much

To take in

Then contribute

To the cause,

Nourishing

And strengthening

All our

Good communities

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C L Couch

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On the Road from Stanley to Boise, Idaho

By TonyCastro – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83018649

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Faithful Skeptic

(x = space)

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Faithful Skeptic

(spiritual humanist)

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I sin

And then I go to church

How does that work?

We sing that it is well,

Which Saint Julian proposes

We pray for the world

And for concerns

In the parish

We sing some more

We’ll pray some more

Then there will be teaching

(word and sacrament

for those who have sacraments)

Through it all,

We’re singing now

And thank goodness there is

Justice in that

Mingled with grace and mercy

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Through sin and virtue

Through indifference and zeal

Through exhaustion and desire

There is something

Going on,

Something moving

Call it spirit

Call it the orbit of the Earth

And the pressing down of gravity

Call it God’s

Call it nature’s

Call it ours

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And, yes, through it all

It is well

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C L Couch

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Saint Julian of Norwich is a saint in the Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.  Other traditional Protestant churches recognize her standing.  Many Christians of all kinds respect her work in parish service and the service of the Christian Church, overall.  Her name is not known:  she is called Julian because that was the name of the church in Norwich, England where she lived.  She had a cell there, not a jail cell but a hermit’s.  She had a cat.  Each day people of the town would come to her to speak with her through a window, asking her for wisdom and advice.  I’m sorry, I should have mentioned that she lived and worked from the latter decades of the fourteenth century into the first years of the fifteenth century.

She wrote Revelations of Divine Love, a widely-read spiritual text.  It is also taken as the oldest book written in English by a woman.  Two things Julian is popularly known for asserting are the metaphor of the world as a hazelnut (long before William Blake asserted perceiving the world as and through a grain of sand).  And she claimed that, no matter how grim or unhopeful or destructive the world might seem, all shall be well.  She says this many times.

And all shall be well.

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Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash

Tallinn, Estonia

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Set the Table

(x = space)

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Set the Table

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We need a deal for

Christmas:

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  • Cessation in the

Holy Land

  • Bring children to their

families (everywhere)

  • Maintain a different kind

of readiness

(everywhere)

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There, that should do it

For this year

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Maybe there could be

Codicils

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  • Let snow fall where it

will, again

  • Give something to the

Earth not to forget each

other

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It’s not the triumph of a

Sect,

Though tradition’s strong

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We are given again

A God-given chance

To revel in some revelry

With rules

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  • Give everyone a

turn

  • Give everyone a song

as in karaoke (and as

is often badly),

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Remembering that birth

Is the only way

For any generation,

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Any Earth,

Peace on Earth

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C L Couch

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By דן וינקלר – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68503689

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note

In the original, the bulleted sets of lines are indented. I still can’t get WordPress to let me cut and paste the way I want. Grrrr. I mean, uh, I hope we all have a grrrr-eat holiday! (Now I sound like Tony the Tiger.) I hope the reading’s clear enough.

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Antiphon

(x = space)

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Antiphon

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I hope it’s

A good day

You might be at dawn or

Well into tomorrow,

However the sun

And moon

Are moving

One place or another

On the world

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Our count of day

Is relative,

While the actual

Ebb and flow

Of tides and

Of day and night

Move in

Real relationship

Without

Our measure—that’s

The way it is

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And it is good

As I’m hoping for

Your day

To be

Or, in the uncounting

Time of Genesis,

Become

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C L Couch

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Groume – Le Cadran de Dalí, uploaded by Paris 17, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23114485

Cadran solaire de Salvador Dalí sur la façade d’un immeuble de la rue Saint-Jacques, réalisé pour des amis qui y habitaient.

(sundial by Dali)

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