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)

Speak Peace and Breathe

    In the old domains, vast dark plains
    and strong dominions,
    speak peace and breathe.

    The doors of death and hell
    may be locked and barred,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Doubt is touched and
    uncertainty probed like wounded flesh,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Love pulls us back to the place
    where everything ends
    and all things begin again.

    Speak peace and breathe.

(John 20)

Rituali di Sangue – Friday, 1987

    It was long ago in a time of misremembered darkness and we were reading poorly translated thirteenth century Italian blood rituals by candlelight while heavy metal bikini girls writhed in the late night movie on the TV. It was 1987 and I was fifteen.

    “Baptized as we were into these bodies of flesh and death...” We intoned the words – some of which we’d had to pencil ourselves to fill in lacunae in the translation with our best adolescent guess. None of us actually spoke any Italian, but I’d had a semester of French and Micah knew a little Spanish. We thought we could fake it. A flash of hellfire lightning outside the window briefly illuminated the room and we all jumped. I shrieked. Yeah, like a girl, and then laughed.

    “Don’t break the circle, dude!” Dave shouted as Micah flinched. We’d drawn the protective circle on the floor using Morton’s salt filched from Micah’s mom’s kitchen. I burst into another fit of laughter.

    “It’s not working, is it?” I asked. We’d been holding hands around the circle, but now my hands were damp and sweaty. I wiped them on my jean jacket.

    “Don’t break the circle,” Dave insisted again.

    “Come on, man. We’ve been trying to read this book for an hour. It ain’t happening.” I’d found the book, Rituali di Sangue Per l’apparizione Demoniaca, in the special collections section of the college library – a university library card was one of the perks of taking AP classes in high school – so it was my fault we were spending that Friday night with obscure occult performances. I’d convinced the guys to try one of the rituals, but it obviously wasn’t working. Dave, who needed little persuading, wanted to continue.

    “Keep reading.”

    “Micah?” I asked. “What do you think?”

    Micah, who said very little stood up from the floor where we were sitting and turned on the lights and blew out the candles. I laughed again.

    “Fine!” Dave huffed. He went over to the stereo cabinet and pulled out a vinyl album by This Corpse Alive – some black metal band from Australia, I think. He settled the needle at the first track and turned up the volume. Thick guitars and drums filled the room.

    Step by step he staggers to the skull!
    Step by step he staggers to the skull!

    “Help me clean up this salt,” Dave said. “or my mom’s not gonna’ let us hang out up here anymore.” The room was an unused half attic above the apartment where Dave’s family lived. The first floor was their family’s business – his parents were both CPAs.

    I turned the music up a little louder and the three of us started to clean up the candles and salt. “Don’t put away the wine,” Dave said. We’d sneaked a bottle of wine out of his dad’s basement.

    Follow him down, down to the tomb
    drink of his blood, his flesh consume!

    With the ceremonial accouterments swept up, extinguished, and put away we sat down on the couch together. Dave poured us each a bit of wine into plastic cups decorated with Smurfs and Carebears. “What’s on the TV?” Dave asked as he sat and sipped from his cup. Micah pointed the remote at the screen and turned up the volume. Some hapless blonde was running barefoot and braless through the woods, screaming.

    “Same ol’ shit,” Micah muttered. But it didn’t matter. We often spent Friday nights watching the late night horror shows. And we loved it. All those gruesome films with gallons and gallons of bright red blood and screaming beauty queens with bright red lips. We especially loved the badly dubbed European ones.

    Another flash of lightning and an immediate bang of thunder rocked the upstairs room and the electricity went out. “Holy hell,” Dave gasped. “That was close. Sounded like it was right on top of us.”

    We sipped our wine as we waited in the dark for the power to come back on.

    “Should we get the candles back out?” I asked after a minute. Micah, never so loquacious, nodded and got the candles and the lighter back out from the cabinet where he’d put them. Soon the room was aglow again with the soft flickering light of the candles.

    “How long do you think…” I started to say but Micah hushed me with a finger to his lips. We could hear something approaching even over the howling, screaming wind and rain outside. The room suddenly felt heavy and close. Smaller than ever before. Something groaned in the darkness.

    Suddenly the door flung open. We all screamed and grabbed each other.

    “What the hell’s going on up here?” Dave’s mom said “Good grief, boys. It’s just a storm. And where did you get that wine?!

A Remembrance

    Long ago and far away it happened this way. Arrows pierced me. Liver deep. My indigestion, your indignation. No part of me unscathed, unscarred. Bleeding, bloody on the rocks. Pierced and pecked. Eaten. Devoured

    But there is no long ago, is there? Rewind and playback the video, scratched with static. This is now with my sins stacked higher than my head and pressed by weights. Play it again. More weight. This is now. More.

    Stinking, sinking, festering wounds. I cannot feel the sun, the warmth and the light. I cannot remember how love felt. Where there was perfume, there is rot. Where there was warm touch there is cold withdrawal.

    I am twisted double in gloom and in fire. No secret sighs. The light is gone out. The dance is done.

    Cautious friends with folded hands shun my disease, unease at a distance. There are procedures to be followed. Decorum to maintain. Betrayed by hands I thought knew. The door closes quietly. The car is gone. The house is empty. Who am I speaking to?

    While enemies with traps and snares speak violence. They throw their heads back in laughter. “You have committed blasphemy!” they shout and at once there is an ambush of archers from the surrounding forest. I am arrow-pieced and murdered in my step.

    But I am deaf and cannot hear their threats. I am dumb and dry of throat and cannot plead. There is no water here.

    I have hope, but it is elsewhere. I have hope. I force a smile through the burden. There is something there. I lean back and close my eyes. I know. I can feel the beating of my heart behind my eyes. I have hope. They will not gloat, not for long, even if I slip.

Psalm 38

I Remember (A Love Story)

    I remember the cafe where we met – with used coffee mugs drifting across the crowded tables, a Moroccan wool rug spread out on the old timber floor and walls crammed with books, occulted, occluded, random, and sheaves and sheaves of paperwork, photographs spilling out of cardboard boxes. I wore a red velvet jacket. You wore red lipstick.

    I remember you said, “People like us have to keep a divided existence. Always. Like a map turned over. We are living out.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “We were never what we were. That was never us.” You said, as if it were sensible. True.

    Meanwhile the days died outside. Nighttime illuminated by flashlights in the distance. The fragility of dawn’s magic flickering, flicking off. Darkness. People came out burred – like those French paintings. Crashing worlds blurring and the lights no longer felt quite so safe.

    The words landed. Believed. Disbelieved. But spoken finality.

    “You don’t really believe all that, do you?” I asked.

    “It doesn’t matter.”

    Then there was some business out on the street – unpleasant noise and displeasure. You jumped and turned away from the door then away to one side. Heart beating. Then, in a rush, move about, and kiss goodbye. You were gone.