Consider the Pilgrim

    Do not be thrown to confusion, with a drunken feeling in your mind. Contaminated. Do not be alarmed. Do not be deceived, but in the air with holy hands immortal, and your face to godward be ready for the storms, and gales, and wind. The Day of the Lord (green to gold and gold to black) comes with flaming fire.

    Consider the pilgrim, the bacterial smell of sweat upon him still who the Lord still loves. He suffers tribulation, as you know. Called to glory of the road. Keeping the traditions of the way. To sail upon the ocean and stand upon the sand. Ceaseless steps and ceaseless hope.

    Consider the gardener - sweet mock orange, hyacinth, allium, phlox, and hollyhock. Buzzing, ringing in the soil, listening to the sun – slender sunbeams and yellow flowers in the lawn. The message spreads quickly. Received with blooms of honor.

    Consider the baker and the brewer, both with the scent of yeast. Life and rising bread. Cast your bread upon the water and draw back sweet dark ale to encourage and strengthen you in every good word. Every good deed.

    Be thou saving everything, Lord, be merciful to your people. The Lord of peace himself.

    This is my own writing.

Twilight at Saint Gerald’s – Another Friday, 1987

    Judas the Hammer brings ruin to many!
    Judas the Hammer will capture the city!

    The growling vocals and throbbing, distorted guitars of This Corpse Alive shook the room. They were our favorite band back in 1987 and we listened to their albums whenever we got together, despite our parents objections to that ‘devil-music’ as they called it. We were at Dave’s place – in the upstairs unused half attic of the apartment – our usual spot. It was me, Dave, and Micah. And Allison

    “I appreciate that you’re here to do this, but aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsal, or something,” I asked, twisting my head to see her. I liked her cinnamon hair. And that her older sister, Beth – a senior while we were freshmen – would sometimes get us some pot. She was there to pierce my ear with a safety pin. My mom was going to be so cheesed.

    “Sit still,” she insisted and squeezed my ear with the ice cube to numb it. “Yeah,” she said. “Stupid Guys and Dolls.” She snorted. “They cast me as one of the Hot Box dancers. But it’s not like I can dance all that well. It’s just ‘cause I have boobs.” Micah, Dave, and I blushed and turned away from her and she laughed at us. I sneaked a look at her chest as she squeezed my ear again. Harder.

    “Hold still,” Allison said. “This is gonna’ hurt.”

    “I thought the ice…” I started to say and then she stabbed the pin through my lobe. I screamed, but it was done.“You’re such a puss,” she said and handed me a towel. “Wipe up the blood.”

    Micah brought me a small hand-held mirror and nodded in approval. “Cool,” he said.

    “Are you guys still into that Satan shit?” Allison asked as I preened in the mirror with my new punk rock jewelry.

    Micah shook his head back and forth, nearly dislodging his yarmulke. Dave laughed and said, “We’re not Satanists, you know. We just thought it’d be cool. Not that it worked or anything.”

    “Do you have anything else planned?” Allison asked as she sat down on the couch next to Micah.

    “We were just going to watch a movie. I think The Brides of Betrayal is on tonight,” I said.

     “So. Just another boring Friday night for the Three Investigators?” Allison said with a slightly sardonic grin. Now I almost regretted telling her about my childhood obsession with those books. Almost. She grinned at me and continued. “But what if I said I know how we can get into the old Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital.”

    The three of us stared at her as the This Corpse Alive album continued playing on the stereo.

    My heart is bewildered, a dread overwhelms
    The twilight I longed for has become my terror.

    The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital had been empty – abandoned since before any of us were born. None of us really knew why. There were stories, of course, each more outlandish than the last: human breeding experiments, Nazi doctors, you know the sort… Weekly World News kind of stuff. It was probably something entirely boring like taxes or insurance but the stories circulated. The city kept it pretty well boarded up so that it didn’t become a hobo camp and there was very little graffiti on the walls. A tall chain link fence cordoned off most of it.

    “Hellfire!” Dave shouted. “Let’s go!”

    “But how are we going to get there?” I asked. “It’s on the other side of town.”

    “I’ve got Beth’s car,” Allison said.

    “But no license, right?”

    “Are you coming or not?” She asked and followed Dave down the stairs. I looked at Micah. He just shrugged and followed along. We piled into Beth’s maroon and rust Ford Escort and Allison drove us across town to the Saint Gerald. Micah offered a cassette for the tape deck, but Allison refused it. “No more of that death metal crap tonight, boys. You’re going to hear some real music.” She played some synthesizer Euro pop. Micah just sulked in the back seat staring out the window.

    The Saint Gerald was boarded up and secure – except for one basement entrance that Allison knew about. The iron stairs down to the door were dangerously sloped and bounced uncertainly as we made our unsteady descent. I felt a wash of vertigo as I stepped down, but it passed. At the bottom she pulled away a band of yellow and black barricade tape and pulled on the door. It opened. Reluctantly, but it opened.

    We were ready to enter but Allison held out her arm. “Should we pray first, or something? For protection?”

    “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s probably a good idea. Dave, what have you got in the way of protection prayers?”

    He looked sheepish and said, “I don’t know. I guess we could recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm Twenty-Three, maybe.”

    Micah held his hands in the air with his fingers spread like Mister Spock and began to pray: “Hashkivenu Adonai, Eloheinu l’shalom v’ha’amideinu shomreinu l’chaim. Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha v’takneinu b’eitzah tovah milfanecha v’hoshee’einu l’ma’an sh’mecha. V’hagen b’adeinu v’haseir mei’aleinu oyev, dever, v’cherev, v’ra’av, v’yagon, v’harcheik mimenu avon vafesha. U’v’tzeil kenafecha tastireinu ki el shomreinu umatzileinu atah ki el chanun v’rachum atah. Ushmor tzeiteinu u’vo’einu l’chaim u’l’shalom mei’atah v’ad olam. Baruch atah Adonai, shomer amo Yisrael.”

    “Amen,” we all agreed, though we didn’t know what he’d prayed.

    “Dude, was that from Star Trek?” Dave asked and Allison smacked him on the back of the head.

    “Hold up. Hold up,” Dave said rubbing his skull. “I’ve got something else. I’ve got these.” He pulled out a small wooden box from his jacket. He opened the lid and revealed three communion wafers. “I smuggled these out from Mass when we were getting ready for the summoning ritual.” He looked at Allison. “I didn’t know you’d be with us or I would have gotten more…”

    “Isn’t that blasphemy or something?” she asked.

    “No. We’re doing something dangerous here. We might encounter some evil spirit inside there. We need the holy presence to go with us.”

    “Still seems iffy to me,” I said. But we each took one. For protection.

    “I’ve got something too,” Allison said handing us a piece of chalk. She looked at me and said, “Just like The Three Investigators, right?” She smiled and I melted.

    “So we don’t get lost,” Allison explained and drew an arrow on the wall. She stepped through the door into the darkness and we followed after her.

    Inside it was stuffy and dark but not like a cave. When my family went to the State park caves near here for vacation, they smelled fresh and clean. Living even. Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital, abandoned for so long, smelled dead. I don’t know how better to say it. Our flashlights did little to illumine the facility. There was little to see. If we expected to find medical equipment and blood stained walls we were disappointed. It was just an empty building. Empty hallways. Empty rooms.

    But there was something, some nervous hesitation, some unexpressed unfamiliar dread. “Aren’t these places full of radon?

    “Radon?” Dave said. “What’s that?”

    “Radioactive gas that seeps up from the ground,” I explained.

    “Radioactive gas? You’re full of crap. You know that right?” Dave said.

    Maybe it wasn’t Radon, but there was something. I felt. We all felt it. And my newly pierced ear was throbbing. I think I saw interdimensional flashing lights. Fairy lights and there was …

    It’s here that I mostly have to end the story.

    I don’t really remember what else happened. We woke up in the hospital – the actual functioning hospital, with doctors and nurses and everything. Our parents were there, sobbing and squeezing us until we were nearly crushed to death. Alternately laughing and crying and shouting at the doctors. It turns out that someone (we never learned who) made an anonymous phone call to 911 reporting a gas leak in the area of The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital. Police and Fire Department responded and found the four of us unconscious in the heating system of Saint Gerald’s. They followed our chalk marks, apparently. They flooded the room with fresh clean air and we were revived and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

    I still don’t know how we got into the heating system.

    And, what is more, Saint Gerald’s had been vacant for years, everything shut down. No power, no utilities. No gas. Who made the call? Why was there the smell of gas there? These things we never learned.

Rituali di Sangue - Friday, 1987

Emmaus

    Come risen Christ to the confused
    from light to shadow and return

    Come uncanny Christ seen unseen
    unrecognized and with us all the while

    Break bread and he is gone.
    Break mystery and he is here
    within our burning and broken hearts

    Come hidden disappearing Christ
    live and live again

This Man Only a Moment

    He is on the news again, this man. This man, who never shuts up. This man, this man – is not a man. He is a living lie. Even when he tells the truth it is in furtherance of a lie. Big hair, big mouth in front of the cameras and microphones. But the internal indicators are not functioning. No light. No tick, tick, tick haptic. Whatever you think, or feel, or vote – this is his time. This man, this moment.

    He sits upon the surface of evil – marking divisions and offenses. Using leverage as the key to the deal. It goes like this: with easy way capitulations or hard way negotiations in the back room. The artifice and the fraud become accepted reality. Packaged for grift and for graft.

    This man, this man – mighty before but urgent now with a loss and lack of integrity. Disintegration on the screen in front of us. A living lie falling apart. And we are herded into semiautonomous waiting in small rooms in a smaller and smaller world. Dangerous dimensions. All that sorrow, all that ache. We are thundered asunder. Waiting to be pulled under.

    He never shuts up. A thousand thoughtless words -for a day, a week, a year – like a sword, cutting and slashing anyone at hand. Striking and lashing out at friends and allies as often as his enemies. Active for decades, but soon he’ll be done. Sincere lips endure forever but the lying tongue – this man – with his lying lips lasts only a moment.

Proverbs 12: 18-19

Let God Arise (Psalm 68 Roughly)

(1-6) What Are We Going To Do?

    What are we going to do? That’s what everyone wants to know. Your talking head propagandists, your nationalist social scientists don’t know. These scholars and lobbyists claim to see the invisible hand but cannot see the kingdom of God in history. What are we going to do? We cannot claim the banks and loans and deals and assets on your books. What are we going to? That’s what the managers of decline are asking. That’s what everyone wants to know.

    Have ye not read?

    Do not consider riches as private property but as common good. Your economic philosophy is in practice, godless. Insatiable greed. Domineering avarice. They demand the spirit of men and destroy the breath of women. They deny. They defend. They depose. But they cannot explain the irruption of the spiritual in the physical realm. Fools of one flesh.

    Like the smoke of a fire, drifting gone.
    Like melting wax in a fire.

    Let God arise -Father and defender of orphans and widows. Sheltering the homeless lonely in a holy place. And prisoners too. Freemarket rebels can find their own place in the wilderness. Let them have the bootstrap deserts they have made.

    What are we going to do? Ride through the deserts – let them see.
    What are we going to do? Build a road through the desert for the Rider on the Clouds.

    Sing and play music. Dance and be glad. But – and I love this part – What does the Rider on the Clouds need with a road?

(8) A Sweaty Sky

    Too much, too much. We are overwhelmed. Even nature by fear is beset in the presence and glory of the one who strides across the desert. The wind stops its bluster and blow. The great expanse of heaven gets nervous. The sky breaks out in sweat and rains shower down upon the earth.

(12-14) A Long Sequence of Non-Sequiturs

    Chieftains and kings of armies, having failed in highly confidential negotiations and transactions, having failed to deregulate, or discourage the enemy, are in flight, in flight. Their ambitions in flight. Their strategies are not working. Gathered militias and blockading forces have failed to secure the straights despite the outlandish destruction of material property and the slaughter of civilians. They are loose-tongued commanders with no charge.

    The nuclear maneuvers of fighter jets and submarines turned back and routed. Rerouted.

    Meanwhile the women – fair and beautiful – at home divide the spoil and booty of war -sorting through the pots and saddlebags for free blessings as they sit in the sheep pens. Sheep pens!

    They are singing the good news.
    They are singing and at ease.

    Then there’s something about metallic doves with wings of silver and pinions of green-gold. Victory doves. This is not an assault. Peace doves. This is not an attack.

    Now the snow is falling on Mount Zalmon – which might be something clever about white snow on the Dark One. No more bluster. No more bloviating boast or bluff. Disordered, self-glorifying kings are scattered as the purity of snow falls on the mountain.

(20-23,30) The Contradiction of Blood

    This God of ours, this God we know
    This is the God who saves.

    Take comfort in the Violence
    and the Vindication
    though it seems like contradiction.

    He smashes the heads and long-haired skulls of his enemies, the hairy crowns of psychopathic gunmen. Bullies and bulldogs. Abductors. Exploiters. Captors. Slavers. Smash them dead! Liars. Thieves and Liars. Murderers from the lowest and highest estates. Smash them dead! Dictators. Authoritarian tyrants and Fascist fools. Smash them dead!

    He drags them back from the hills, drags them back from the sea to do it all over again so you may bathe your feet in blood.

    But! A word of caution. A word of restraint. Take warning here: Our enemies may not be his and he will fling far and scatter wide all who take orgasmic delight, all who take profit and material gain, from the horrors of war. You have been warned.

(24-26) A Musical Interlude

    The noble procession proceeds:
    Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease)
    musicians behind
    and in between are
    are row upon row
    of beautiful girls
    beating their drums.

(28-35) Let God Arise

    Take command – it befits your power. This is the way. One way. Take command; it is yours. Reclaim what is yours, most powerful, most respected, inspiring awe and admiration of the entire world. Stop the wars that we have unleashed. Bring unity to the world we have divided. Bring prosperity to the world we have plundered.

    Rebuke the crocodiles in the reeds who lie in wait to devour. Rebuke the bulls who rage and trample over us and our children. Rebuke the silver idolaters trading in secrets and exploiting the mammon-market.

    Sing this song, Play and perform it for the Rider of the Heavens. High heavens. Ancient, primeval skies. Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease), a crescendo of instruments and the climactic pounding of drums. The crash of symphonic cannons and solemn bells and chimes and gongs.

    Then let the reverberations of silence ring long into eternity.

    The Kingdoms of the earth with outstretched hands. Europe. Russia. China with outstretched hands. Latin, South, and North America with outstretched hands. India, Australia, Palestine, Cuba, Indonesia with outstretched hands. Syria, Venezuela, Kenya with outstretched hands. All the tribes and nations of Africa with outstretched hands. All islands with outstretched hands.

    Speak with a voice of power.
    Splendor in the clouds of power.
    Awesome strength and power.
    Blessed be God.
    Amen.

See Also: 
Let God Arise (a sermon)
and
Sweaty Sky (a limerick)