A Meditation A Few Days After Easter

    My song is love unknown, my savior’s love for me…

    The sun is up, the day is bright, crossing lawns of green and blue and purple, and I am whistling hymns into the wind. Thrust forward by the gust. Launched into my daily lurching.

    Oh who am I…?

    This marathon, this long hike, with shoulders back and head upraised. Eyes up into the sky. The wind will not relent. Twenty, thirty, forty-five mile per hour gusts. Tree limbs down and unsecured porch chairs sent flying. Holy Saturday’s sussuras in the pines have become jubilant sibilants and jangling wind chimes. Clanging gongs and cracking branches.

    Resounding all the day Hosannas to their king…

    There are women shouting, swearing from their door and dogs snarling on the steps. There are white nationalists flags ripping away from their swaying staffs. What makes this rage and spite? “You know what you’re saying, boy? You know what you’re saying?”

    Crucify is all their breath...

    And what has changed? The weather (if not the wind)… The world is still at war. The fires still flame. Love to the loveless shown. And am I so fickle, so changeable?

    But oh my friend, my friend in deed... 

    Who at my need his life would spend?



- My Song Is Love Unknown - Samuel Crossman 1629-1683

Neither Way. No Hand

    “Oh, of science we have many and varied kinds, observational science is but one. We have Revelation and Inspiration too, as well as Illumination and Interpretation. We are not unlettered and unlearned here. We have no need for your million pictures faked with photoshop and generative AI. Your sophisticated sophistry.”

    I am beat up and run down before I ever got going. No life. No zip. All ache.

    “There is a spirit that guides them, of course, that’s what makes the conspiracies make sense. They share the same breath.”

    They cannot read out of doors, neither will they hear inside. Screw the inscrutable and doubt the redoubtable. Dig into hell or climb into heaven. Neither way. No hand. Where are the violent upheavals of earth to swallow them up? Where are the she bears from the mountain? No. No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. Not really. 

    “We need new underground bases. Deep Underground Military Bases, right in the heart of the nation. We have seen the lighted triangles on the lunar surface. Dark lights coming to the Earth in the near future. These spirits have habitations beyond the Earth.”

    I saw the news as well: two found dead near Lake Silverado, their bodies within their submerged vehicle. Lovely and Loving but no longer Living.

Ha ha! And Oh Lord!

    “There were an estimated eight to nine million at the No Kings rally …”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb. We don’t have kings. We took care of that in 1776. We’re democracy, dumbass.”

    “Right. You understand, of course, that what we’re doing is trying to protect that democracy from authoritarians who would subvert our rule of law…”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb We’re not a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic.”

    “Yes, but a republic is a form of democra…”

    “Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville, moron!”

    Test the professions to reveal the confessions – or the lack thereof – in our global warming, resource plundering disaster. It’s a moment of crisis for anyone with half an eye or even a detuned ear. But seeing they might see and hearing they might hear. And no one wants that sense. Bandaged and broken. Limping along with sick vandalism.

    “O Lord! There’s never been such a violent, lawless, decadent generation,” says the pearl clutching Evangelical who’s never looked at history. “I’ve seen things I never dreamed possible. World wide corruption. Debauchery in the western world…”

    “Our God is a God of war. A God of battle. And our Christ is the Christ of Conquest. Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?”

    “It’s the same maniacal purpose. The same evil system collapsing. You’ve seen the suicide attempts and people indicted. The law is finally being enforced. At home and abroad. On a global scale. Now why not make it personal?”

    You cannot reason with them. Logic and reason are destroyed. The science fiction writers and prophets were right: the authorities have become as psychotic as the people they hunted. The authorities are filled with hate.

    “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up or not, goddamn it:?!”

The Mystery and the Longing

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this morning
    revealed and unrecognized, misunderstood
    “if you have taken him...”

    Ordinary extraordinary from the grave
    reach out but do not grasp
    further on further into mystery
    truly risen into unsettled perfection
    flesh and wonder spirit rise

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this day
    now named and recognized, realized
    “I have seen the Lord.”

(John 20:11-18)

An Easter Morning Meditation

    How can I celebrate the resurrection when Iran is under bombs?
    When Venezuela is being plundered?
    When Gaza is little but rubble?
    When Ukraine is burning?
    When citizens are shot in the street?
    When immigrant children are ripped from the arms of their mothers?
    
    I don’t know. I don’t know.
    But he is risen.
    Indeed.