A Song of Ascent

    Look at me. I’m not so much.
    Not haughty, not proud.
    Not setting my sights above my stars.

    Except when I do.

    Then it’s all the small vandalism vanities
    hidden from the greater public
    behind the mask of an absurd person
    and my outsized ego banging
    on the walls of my little life.

    Let me be quiet and go away.
    He must increase.

Psalm 131

This Was No Mystery

    We have, in this last hour, this latest hour of perpetual crisis, one conflict after another, come to realize that we have not escaped, cannot escape the horrors of our own making. We are reluctant to go outside. There are NRON QSR lighter than airships hovering over abandoned apartments. Cameras mounted at the intersection to record suspicious loitering. Looking for people and cars out of place. Significance surveillance determines the meaning of our interactions.

    Opened seals and broken deals. A suffering trumpet. Dividing the times and polarizing the populace. We are the prime recipients of a collective malicious ignorance. The little horn spy has an effective vision. The vibration in my heel is an implanted tracking device.

    Observed by reporters. Reported to the police. Uniformed antagonism and the eyes of a man speaking lies. Changing the times. Redrawing the map to reframe his ego without any of the finer virtues of kindness, gentleness, and mercy.

    Why do you marvel? This was no mystery. It wasn’t a matter of inaccurate predictive history. We saw it coming. You’ve heard that the Antichrist is coming. But he’s already here. Now. With many varied reflections. A third of the country has followed a third of the stars swept out of heaven. We called it out. Hoping for the world to calm down. Look! Look! Look!

    But we were shouted down.

1 John 2:18

I Still Have Some Livin' To Do

    I wrote this song on Thursday as I was out carrying the mail. I sang it as I wrote it. Or I wrote it as I sang it. Either way this is how it came out. I sang it at church this morning. 

    The song is at the 15-minute mark in this video of our church service. 

I Still Have Some Livin’ To Do

His mercies are new every morning
but my morning glories haven’t bloomed.
It feels like the whole world’s dying
while I still have some livin’ to do.

There are butterflies in the garden
orange and pink, golden wings.
They scatter and fly away on the breeze
and I’m left alone to sing.

Grace, Lord, grace and love,
goodness to start the day.
Faith, hope and charity,
our strength along the way.

I hear dogs barking at strangers
and sirens screaming down the road,
if I know my brother’s struggling
let me help to shoulder the load.

My heart will keep on beating.
My feet will keep on the way.
I won’t stop though I stumble,
soon the night gives way to the day.

Grace, Lord, grace and love,
goodness to start the day.
Faith, hope and charity,
our strength along the way.

His mercies are new every morning
but my morning glories never bloomed.
It feels like the whole world’s dying
but I still have some livin’ to do.

The Same Agenda in a Different Hall

    It was the same agenda in a different hall. He knew where he was though he’d never been there before. Not that he could remember. His gaze shifted from the window to the closed door. From mirror to the fluorescent lights overhead. Back to the mirror. The glass.

    Scratched across the bathroom wall, a message: WE KNOW YOU’RE on CIA PAYROLL. He read it in reverse in the mirror. He heard footsteps at the staircase. He heard echoes from the walls, the whispered voices of doctors and drug dealers. A scratching behind the wall. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

    Then – a spontaneous displace of rage. Curses! He smashed the mirror and the room was dark. empty. The air was still.

    Was this the same crime scene? Two murders in two weeks. Two different murders in the same room. The same agenda in a different hall. Was it a mixed message? Crossed communication? Did it matter? The sensations were exactly the same. The smell and touch of blood.

    A moment of hesitation and he was back across the hall. Double-backed and empty. He smiled. “Terror on every side! Let not the swift flee away,” he chuckled. “nor the mighty escape but they shall stumble.” He laughed again. “Charge! Horses! Chariots! A day of vengeance and revenge!”

    He was not a religious man, but he liked the liturgy and the rhythm of the prophetic register. He was not a pious man. He was a killer. And a killer had arrived with an appointment for murder. He knew what was coming. And he was ready for it. “I am no one and nothing. Paroled and free to do as I please.”

    He’d received the word, a message from his handlers on his machine: “We have vital signs. That is a 1033 weapons transfer. Legal.” Authority was given. And power.

    Still that echo of a hidden voice. “I know what you did. I know what you did.” Scritch. Scritch. Scritch behind the wall. “Warrior upon warrior. The mighty man has stumbled against the mighty, and they are fallen both together.”

    The fluorescent lights flickered. Hummed at the back of his neck. A horripilation down his spine. The copper smell of blood. The ache in his tooth and burning in his throat. Pain is memory. Memory is pain. He smacked at his head to stop the pain and wailing filled the world.

Jeremiah 46: 2-12

The City Was Not Worthy of Them

    It was barely noon or just after, but already the sky was dark. I shivered and hurried on, eager to reach the city before whatever calamity this celestial portent indicated, but the earth lurched and I fell sideways and stumbled to the ground. I smacked my face against a stone and tasted blood. I spat and saw my blood in the gravel and the dust.

    The earth shook again and I screamed as rocks careened down the hills around me, cracking in half and breaking. A cavern opened in the hillside in front of me. And the wind whipped up. I heard a voice shouting – calling for God, though I could not make out the words.

    And from the newly opened crevasse there came a morbid parade. I saw the bodies of many holy ones walking forth. Their flesh still bore the marks of the pillory and the scourge. One carried her decapitated head in her arms. Another severed torso pulled himself along with his arms as his legs walked alongside. One young man had thorns in his eyes. They wore sheep and goat skins. They were bruised and emaciated. Some still had shackles on their wrists and ankles. I heard the clank of their chains as they marched out of the earth. I smelled flowers as they passed.

    “Media vita in morte sumus,” I stammered as these lively dead entered the holy city ahead of me. And the city was not worthy of them. “Speraverunt et liberasti eos.”

Matthew 27:51-53