Mark Tooley and Carrie Prejean Boller

Mark Tooley is a Christian writer whose work I read with pleasure and interest. His commentary on main-line Protestant churches and Methodism have been especially good and informative. Because of recent interactions involving Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic social influencer, Tooley has stepped in to referee or comment on ‘post-liberal Catholicism & Anti Zionism’ – which is a mouthful. I’m always cautious and a little dismayed with the phrase ‘post-liberal’ – I never quite know what is meant, but infer it usually isn’t good. It’s surprising to me that Tooley used the phrase – generally, he knows what he means and expresses himself clearly. But Tooley always has my attention, so off I went into his op-ed column.

Identifying Carrie Prejean Boller as a social influencer is a little more clear – I think I understand that. Her writings appear on the internet where she influences people and she has a following. I would think all writing is ‘social influencing,’ but I get it – this is the internet and there is a special relationship that develops in instantaneous electronic media. One might ask for a moment, is this really different than Martin Luther’s works coming out on the recently invented printing press in the 16th century?  Or Thomas Paine’s pamphlet coming out to ‘socially influence’ a group of American colonies irritated at their king? Anyway, Boller was chosen to be on the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission, and used her position to carry on at length about Israel and Palestine and was accused of ‘hijacking the hearing.’ The issues here are deep and difficult; enormous deaths have resulted in Israel and Gaza from the sequence of events that began with a gratuitous and murderous attack on October 7, 2023. Boller asserted that her vehemently anti-Zionist views arose as fundamental to her Christian and Catholic belief. Boller tweeted that she would “continue to stand against Zionist supremacy in America. I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy.” Candace Owens, another important social influencer, tweeted that “Carrie [Boller] didn’t hijack anything. You [the Commission] hosted a performative Zionist hearing meant to neuter the Christian faith. Carrie spoke truth, as a Catholic, and Christian, the Truth cannot be defeated.”

Okay, the conflict has been identified. I am not a dispensationalist. My eschatology is post-millennial, and was developed from Reformed theological sources, which are critical of dispensationalism. (Their point: Jesus isn’t going to get power or a position based on a future calendar event in or out of Israel because he already has all authority and all power – you can’t get more than ‘all.’) Indeed, I was so impressed and persuaded by these writers that I reviewed and revised my general feelings about Calvin and Calvinism, which had been fairly negative, in so far as they conflicted with 16^th-century Lutheran thought, which is the intellectual path through which I came to faith. But here we were, its 2025, and some fights you can’t walk away from. More than that, I’m half-Jewish, on my father’s side, although he was absolutely not interested in Judaism or any religious faith. But we’re being put to the test now – ‘Are you Zionist?’ Or are you ‘an Anti-Zionist?’ Are you anti-Semitic?  Or do you stand with the Jewish people?  This conflict is being put to us in either-or terms, (are-you-with-us-or-against-us?!).  It’s confrontational and intended so to be.

Tooley’s conclusion though, is disappointing. The problems here are real and hard. His criticisms of Boller and Owens are easy – in fact, his criticisms are rather ‘liberal’ – can’t we just all hold hands and hope for a tranquil world in which the lion will lie down at the lamb?’ One can disagree vigorously with Boller and Owens, but that is not a particularly serious or useful response unless there are some reasons to assert about why they are wrong. Pulling apart Zionism and being Jewish, or anti-Jewish, is going to require more work than that. People are getting shot and killed every day in Gaza and the West Bank of Israel. If there is a war on, that’s not unusual. If there’s not a war going on, that’s criminal. Is there a war on, or is there not?  And can Zionism really be pulled apart from Judaism?  This is the flip side of the question – ‘can the Palestinian people really be pulled apart from Hamas?’

The attack which happened on October 7, 2023 by Hamas/Palestine/Gaza/the Palestinians/a group of Jihadists (who is identified as the perpetrator is the very argument in question) was a surprise attack characteristic of war. The propaganda war began the next day, and it is intense. It’s this propaganda war that really concerns Tooley – he wrote that there was a “growing influence” of anti-Israel postliberal Catholics and Protestants. It’s not clear that theirs is really an argument over land. The theological dispute over whether the Church has acquired all the promises made to ancient Israel is old.  The doctrine that the Church has replaced Israel as the ‘new Israel’ has been called Supersessionism – the Church supersedes ancient Israel and inherits its promises and status before God. It’s a deep and serious debate with theologically learned people on both sides. But maybe we are not arguing about something that deep – maybe we are just arguing over the land itself.

In the Bible, in the Book of Acts, chapter 13, the Apostle Paul is recorded as making a speech in a synagogue in Antioch. Paul was engaged by the synagogue leadership to speak if he had a message of encouragement.

          The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers and made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt. With mighty power he led them out of that country and endured their conduct (or cared for them) for forty years in the desert. He overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to the people as their inheritance. Acts: 13:17-19.

Paul of course knew the doctrine implied by Supersessionism. In his Letter to the Galatians he wrote:

          Neither circumcision [the sign of Judaism] or uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. Gal: 6:15-16.

Paul’s most serious and extended discussion of the Christian doctrine of election takes place in the context of a discussion about the Jews generally (the entirety of chapter 9 of his Letter to the Romans). So if we decide we can’t solve the larger issues implied by Supersessionism, how about the lesser issues – who gets to control the land?  Zionism is about more than controlling land. Zionism is a nationalist, political and ideological movement. Tooley complained that Boller and Owens were conflating Zionism with Jews and Jewishness generally, and that was being conflated with Zionist control, and that Boller and Owens were further conflating all that with the Evangelical doctrine of Dispensationalism. One of the reasons Tooley’s response is not particularly forceful is that he winds up trying to defend Catholics and “many Catholic statements affirming fraternity with Jews.” But Catholics are their own best spokesmen. If Boller and Owens are wrong about their characterizations of Catholic theological or political opinion, there are other people better situated to issue the corrective – that famous Villanova grad, Pope Leo XIV, comes to mind.

I am in a prayer group with some people who are highly supportive of Israel generally. But not everyone in my prayer group is wild about Donald Trump or his approach to anything, including foreign policy. So let’s start throwing things away, out of our decision-making mix. Whatever Donald Trump is or is not, this controversy over theology and this armed conflict on and over the land predates him by a lot. Supersessionism as a doctrine is too deep and serious and intellectual to be a ready guide to this debate. I want to take deep theology out of the mix right now. We’re not going to solve Supersessionism or divine predestination and election here.  I don’t think debating the merits of Dispensationalism helps either, although clearly that is influencing many people within the American evangelical Protestant church.  At the risk of missing the importance of people and political leaders, I want to take Netanyahu out of the discussion. He certainly is central to all this, but only up to a point. The First Intifada (Palestinian uprising) was in 1987-1993. The Second Intifada was in 2000-2005 – neither Trump or Netanyahu were leading their respective nations at the time of either. We could drag in the name Ariel Sharon or Yasser Arafat, but that’s not helpful either. Whatever roadmap for peace ended or coincided with either Intifada didn’t work.  When all the roadmaps to peace fail over a period of many years, there is a problem which cannot be solved by changing leaders.  In the early 1970’s, when I was living in San Francisco, a Jewish friend of mine pointed out that a local convenience store (we would buy sodas there after playing basketball) was owned & operated by Palestinians, who had pictures posted behind the cash register of submachine gun-armed Palestinian militants.

Somebody Gets the Land

Wars end when one side or the other gives up. The most realistic answer is to acknowledge that the language and viewpoints of Boller and Owens aren’t going away, and Hamas isn’t going away and anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel aren’t going away and they can’t be neatly categorized or subdivided – but somebody gets the land. Israel gets the land. If Hamas doesn’t give up, I guess they’ll keep shooting, and Israel will respond with firepower at the ratio of 100 to 1. Neither political leaders, or even the tragedy of civilian deaths and body counts, is going to change something fundamental and possessory. Israel gets the land. Whatever happens after that is the subject of debate and one hopes, God’s mercy and Christian charitable intervention. But our Civil War didn’t end until the South really gave up. World War II ended when Germany and Japan really gave up.

There are large groups of people involved.  How we characterize them and their rights is the subject of the propaganda war.   Israelis and Israeli rights, Palestinians and Palestinian rights, whether characterized by Hamas, European intellectual thought and diplomacy, American evangelical thinkers,  Donald’s Trump emissaries and interventions, or characterized by Boller and Owens or Tucker Carlson –  are all in irreconcilable conflict.  Whether anyone agrees or accepts the characterization of an adversary is beyond the power of commentators to suppress or modify.  Tooley’s fond hopes don’t change anything and he can no more police speech than can the New York Times. The only way there’s going to be peace (meaning, an end to shooting) is when one side or the other gives up. You don’t have to be a dispensationalist to grasp that Israel isn’t going to give up.  That will be equally true when Netanyahu is no longer in office and Trump is no longer in office, and entire political administrations in both countries have turned over multiple times. The names and the intellectual controversy and verbal sniping and re-characterizations of history and political spin (and assertions that one’s position is because one is Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim) may continue until the cows come home. The Palestinians, who did not object to 400 years of Turkish rule under the Ottoman Empire which controlled Palestine, may complain bitterly and even justly, but it will not change anything. The shooting war will continue until one side or the other gives up.  To say so bluntly sounds harsh, but it needs to be said until the conflict really ends and the problems of a displaced people are really confronted.

Boller and Owens should not be silenced and they are not necessarily pointing to a nastier world –  Tooley is missing the point. Boller and Owens are complaining bitterly about the consequences of the conflict, including the tragic deaths of many civilians, and that is speech we should have the intestinal fortitude to hear.  Agree or disagree, people are allowed to, even encouraged to, say what the moral law is.  Even notorious(?) anti-semitic and anti-Protestant figures (referenced by Tooley without him giving a name) get to express an opinion about moral law.  I weary of all people, even people I generally like and agree with, like Tooley, making the fundamental criticism of anyone’s speech based on the idea that they have prejudicial ideas toward this group or that, and hence, cannot comment usefully on moral law.

For all I know, Candace Owens is relentless in her pursuit of influence, but I’m not sure and she’s allowed to speak anyway.  When it comes to Boller, who gave up a position in 2009 based on her opposition to gay marriage, I definitely suspect that however idiosyncratic she may be, she is sincere and not speaking out purely ‘for profit.’   There is some irony in Tooley making these kinds of criticisms of Boller and Owens – in the divisive conflict within the Methodist Church, so often commented on by Tooley, it is the accusation and reproaches of Tooley’s adversaries that he should be more accepting of homosexuality and transgenderism generally, and that if he fails to manifest that acceptance, he is engaged in promoting a ‘nastier world in which religion becomes larges a self-defensive tribe constantly warring.’  Maybe that’s the ‘bad’ reason he opposed so relentlessly the gay marriage and acceptance movement within Methodism, or maybe the reason was he had and retains sincere, personal beliefs based on his reading of scripture (which is rather vehement on the point).

Anyway, two cheers for Boller and Owens, not because I agree, but because I don’t.  Let’s hear from them and Tucker Carlson too and if we don’t agree, let’s say why without throwing around more pejorative names with the obvious implication that canceling them is the right way to deal with the debate.  Over seventy thousand people have died in this October 7 war – we all ought to be commenting about that, whether or not anyone’s feelings are hurt.  Essentially, Tooley’s approach is to call Boller and Owens and their intellectual allies names, like anti-Semitic. He ought to know better.  There are more serious moral problems than that, which have to be heard.  Even if Israel gets the land (including the West Bank) and ends the conflict with a complete overwhelming military victory and gets called all sorts of names – and we all grow up and confront the problems of a displaced people, who are not going to solve their problems with gratuitous, surprise massacres.

The post Israel and Gaza appeared first on Right From The Hip.

DO WE LIVE IN A WAR ZONE?

Music Trak: ‘Flight of the Newborn’ –
Artist: Return to Forever (Chick Corea); Album: No Mystery
(notes: L.E.O. – Law Enforcement Officer; stik – rifle or long gun; Cite Soleil is an impoverished district in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Tranq is Xylazine, often mixed with Fentanyl to lengthen its effect)

This is commentary
Not rap
Can I be like Oppenheimer
Creating a blast so powerful for all the world to hear
Bringing them to their knees
In total surrender
Moving out here in the night
Looking into the vastness
Planets
Stars or galaxies
Universes beyond ordinary man’s eye’s
Wrestling with new theories
New realities
Who remembers
That T.V. show
Where people want to know on what’s seen or heard
A question asked by many
“Do we live in a war-zone
Will I need a bullet-proof vest
Will disaster strike here next
Will L.E.O. be there to protect?”
Global news of Africa’s Sahel
From West to East
Yemen
Rafah and Gaza
Capetown
Allepo, Syria
Mariupol
Donatsk
Latin America
Pictures of bombing
Bullet-hole in walls
Fires or flames
Explosions shattering the peace
Violence
Constant shooting
Blood soaked ground
Carnivorous scavengers scour

– – – Every Night
While laying in bed
Tossing and turning
Trying to sleep
I hear those frightful sounds
Is it an army’s 21 guns
But no this is a bad dream
Because we don’t live in a place called Arlington
There’s heated, hateful controversy or debate
About whose life matters
Listen here
My life matters
Everyday somewhere
in countless cemeteries worldwide
a Bugler plays Taps
such mournful reminder
as flags
the symbol of ideas
constantly fly at half-staff
another soul laid to rest
Clerics speak knowing deep inside
This was another tragedy
Being placed in the hollowed earth
Covered with cold dirt
Fellow squads of drafted combatants
Hardened solders
Standing at robotic attention
When given order sharply salute
In rehearsed manner
One takes the nation’s flag
Carefully places it upon a tearful family’s chest
Eulogies are spoken
They gave their best
Laid down their life
But what about grief-stricken parents
Who for 17 years did invest?

– – – Conflicts over personal opinions
Vain thoughts
Backed through arcane government policies
So complicated politicians don’t truthfully understand
But they get in step
With the brass and drum bands
Crisply dressed in expensive clothing
Enough award medals to sink a ship
He can only walk lopsided
Accolades galore
for honor and privilege
a loved one is no more
this horror is too deep
ain’t got nothing
on Sci-fi
Freddie Kruger
Dexter
Jason or Texas chain saw massacre
It’s a lot of words
So don’t lose your life
Maybe end up behind bars
Due to liars
And some silly 3^rd party chatters
I’m swept away with all the mess
Some fool has to say
It’s real life
Each day hanging in serious balance
Between an assassin’s bullet
Or a surgeon’s slice

– – – People are stuck
They have no dough
Where can you go
Daily in zones of sacrifice
Places studied by scientists
So it’s already known
Where there is a lowered expectancy
For living a longer life
The violence among armed groups
Suicide bombers
Militias
Cults
Kamikaze missions
Lone wolf actors
Damage to property
Policy insurers won’t cover
Impoverished communities
Freeze on normal usual activities
exodus to new lands
Meanwhile
Long term blight
Mad push for gentrification
Dropped value on home or investments
Essential food in high demand
Overpriced inferior merchandise
These make deserts
Because who wants to open a business
It’s always nagging threats
Of someone kicking down the door
Ya better have a .223 or .44
To keep ‘em from robbing the poor

– – – Overfed Oligarchs
Settled hierarchies
Privileged minorities
Redlines
Exclusionary clauses
Havana cigar smoke
Negotiating in palatial rooms
While amongst the common man
Trap houses
Dispensaries
Package stores
Speakeasy’s
Fetty and black
Ice
Diesel
Tranq
Heightened tensions lead to misplaced anger and aggression
Dispute
Disagreement
Disrespect
Disunity
And certain doom
Each time you will hear the sound
Boom-boom!
Experienced when they yapping
Put down by extended clapping
Dealing with these bills
That keep coming in
Can’t take this crap no more
So in all effect
It’s a war zone
Guns like never before
Stik taller than that little boy

– – – So, it’s a war zone
Who will have to put on a uniform
Carry lethal weapons
And a nation’s flag
Do you really comprehend what that means
Be unwittingly sent into conflict
What are my chances
of evading poverty
and early death
I don’t want to starve
Or be isolated
In a tiny square
We seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Aren’t these are constitutional legal guarantees
Not war or gruesome atrocity
Murder capital’s
Mogadishu
Killadelphia
NOLA
Chiraq
Cite Soleil  .  .  .
So the question remains
“Will you buy me a bullet-proof vest
Will disaster strike here next
Will L.E.O. be there to protect?”
No doubt
We live in a war zone
Another slow
Agonizing
Protracted and painful death
Anarchy
Chaos
Financial crisis
Fortunes lost or stolen
Economies wiped out
Widespread famine
Pestilence
Malnutrition
Disease
Pandemics
Epidemics
Plagues
Insect infestations
PTSD . . .

______________

The post “Do We Live in a War Zone?” appeared first on Right From The Hip.

My notes on politics, law and language:

1. If the message is jumbled no one cares about the economic plan.  But to have an unjumbled message is not so easy.  To state and receive any message depends on a shared vocabulary, shared cultural values, shared political understandings, differences which are recognized because the underlying foundations of language are shared.  Shared goals and moral values are required for shared foundations of language.  You can play football with goalposts at either end of one stadium, but if the goalposts, the lines and the fields are a thousand miles apart there is no game.  Then there is only politics and law, with players harsh and frustrated with each other and the game itself.
2. Politicized court cases will be re-politicized.  What starts politically ends there, after a detour through the legal system.
3. It only makes sense to pass laws if they’re going to be enforced.
4. Money is political. The value of government money is changing.  The government’s language about money tells you where the value of money is going. 
5. Any party, group or community needs organizing principles.  The principles are expressed in language.  The language has to shape and define the word jumble of subjective expectations of the individuals comprising the intended group, to have any definition at all.
6. Conflicting principles result in larger judgments, which are the conclusion to court cases brought for political purposes.  The larger judgments are about the jumble because they go to identifying the foundations.  The larger judgments serve as definitions for moral language which is necessary and useful for organizing principles.
7. ‘Speaking academic’ is not a matter of truth or falsity; it is only a dialect of English. Rappers, street hippies and New York City real estate developers have the same capacity to observe events, but they will express their opinions differently than Ivy League professors or New York Times’ op-ed columnists.
8. The philosopher Wittgenstein was wrong to call language a game, because language is more important than that. It is through language we hear about Jesus. But Wittgenstein was right in asserting that no one gets to unilaterally make rules about how language is used or what words mean. The language-game is a shared enterprise among people who often vehemently disagree and there are no proof-tables available. Either you understand what someone else is saying or you don’t, but the players don’t get to throw penalty flags in the game.
9. As the philosopher Kant pointed out, if you assert there is no God, it’s impossible to find a purpose in any of this. The squirrels and Blue Jays in my yard look for no higher purpose between them, seek no meaning to their existence, have no shared political understanding, bring no court cases, do not pray and cannot hurl invective.   With no language there are no principles or foundations.
10. I don’t have to remain in a political settlement with anyone who is canceling me.  Canceling me is the act of asserting my language and goalposts are a thousand miles from theirs. But no matter how angry I grow at another human being, he or she is not a squirrel or a Blue Jay. Related through Adam, even if I am screamed at, or scream back, we remain cousins –  if beyond the scope of discussion, within the scope of prayer.
    ____________
    .   .   .
11. “Through the law we become conscious of sin.”  When the Apostle Paul said this (Rom. 3:20) he was making a theological argument which was later expanded upon by Martin Luther.  Secular domestic law also serves purposes beyond controlling behavior for us.  Domestic secular law, enacted by our elected legislators, compels us to communicate with each under circumstances where the linguistic rupture between the two parties is so deep that most useful communication has ceased.  Today, speakers and leaders among partisan political groups make various assertions, accusations, demands, reproaches, rejoinders, in what only appears to be common English, but it’s not the same language.  The concepts underneath the words are so different as to be irreconcilable.  The concepts involve not only morality and political theory, but theology and anthropology.  Do we stand in relation to anyone or anything else, besides ourselves?
12. Yet we elect legislators, whose legislative action is necessarily presented and concluded in words.  The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” may be interpreted in different ways, but it had to be interpreted to enact it, amend it, adjudicate it, and will be interpreted to enforce it.  If we hate each other so bitterly that we throw rocks at each other, still, for some period of time, we have to get into the same room to discuss what that phrase means.  It must be interpreted so we still need to talk, mutually and angrily canceled or not.  The language game may be conducted bitterly, but it still must be conducted.  To even demand and obtain unconditional surrender from our adversaries on some point or another, one must be able to speak in a useful, shared language.
13. The ontological reality of God is not something which can be placed in a carboard box used for take-out from a pizza parlor. It undergirds our existence and our language. Wanting to communicate with others is hard-wired into the basis of our ontology. For it is the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others; human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. So said G.W.F. Hegel in the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Do the words that often underlie the most bitter disputes, words like ‘law’ and ‘rights’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ have a theological component to their underlying concepts, or not? I think the word ‘sin’ sits somewhere in the conceptual meaning of any of those words and when I use the word ‘law’ I can mean the law as presented by Moses, or described by the Apostle Paul, or enacted by Congress, depending on the context. But the meanings sit on top of one another in my language game. It sounds abstract until we get to the question of whether it is lawful to enforce the laws against illegal immigration or whether it is lawful and morally obligatory to not enforce them. The short form of the debate may be shaped by how we feel about illegal immigration, but the long form of the debate revolves around how we understand the word law. Sooner or later that word law has to sit down somewhere – for me, that word sits down onto the ontological reality of God. But I can’t work that reality into any useful discussion – achieving a comprehensive community of minds winds up failing and separating into component pieces of partisan political groupings. Not wanting to talk about God or sin, we wind up talking about ‘the law’ and meaning really different things, with the phrase moral obligation floating so differently in each partisan camp that nothing is left but to throw rocks at one another.
14. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was a very smart guy. He won his argument (that our experience starts with something prior to sense data) against the British empiricists, David Hume and John Locke, by a score of about 72-14. It’s a shame Kant did not apply his intelligence fully and unreservedly to the Gospel of John. Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John operate on many levels and had Kant read those words over and thought about them, Kant had the intellectual equipment to grasp just how deeply Christ was expressing himself.  The same might be said for the hypothetical of Kant reading the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Kant grew up in a world that theologically was dominated by the thought of Martin Luther. So by virtue of osmosis, if nothing else, Kant would or should have known what arguments the Apostle Paul was presenting and why.  But although Kant is obviously reacting to such arguments, he never directly confronts them except in such a general way that the discussion is superficial. (But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? is a rhetorical question from Paul in his discussion of divine election which raises issues both of God’s authority and man’s identity – Rom. 9:20).

    When I began reading books by authors about Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason, including really useful books by Paul Guyer and Karl Ameriks, it surprised me that no one anywhere in the Kant universe seemed to grasp the direct contradiction and disagreement between Luther and Kant. Of course I was on the Luther side of that difference of opinion, Bondage of the Will being the best theological work I ever read outside the Bible itself, notwithstanding that it is an imperfect book by an imperfect man. But no one else, of all the people commenting on Kant, even seemed to perceive how vehemently the two men differed on free will, or why one might like to ponder that question even longer than the time it takes to pick your fantasy football team.

    The connection here to the general topic of the law appears attenuated, but I’m getting there. After Kant was done asserting his free will, then he sat in his study in Konigsberg and developed in his sole discretion various moral imperatives, which became his categorical imperatives. In so doing, he intentionally made himself deaf to the outside world. It didn’t matter if the Apostle Paul came to him to talk about an experience on the Damascus Road, it didn’t matter to him if Martin Luther called into question just how seriously any created being can assert the idea of free will, it didn’t matter to him if Jesus declared himself to be the Bread of Life – and it certainly didn’t matter to Kant if Moses came to him and said – here is the Law, on stone tablets. Kant was in his study, and the world, including that part of the world which incorporates the law (or the Law, however one views it), revolved around Kant.

    Which brings me to the point here – if we are going to talk about the law, or the Law, whether secular, philosophical or theological – then we begin by talking first, identifying first, the source of the Law. Is Kant the source of the law? Is Kant’s particular set of beliefs, preferences, ideas and cognitions, the source of the law? The problems of any individual so identifying himself as the source of the Law are obvious. Luther was deeply concerned about his inability to keep God’s Law, but that necessarily meant that Luther grasped from where the Law comes, who declares it. God declares the Law. The First Commandment is rather to the point and it is the ontological and epistemological source of all Law.

    And God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Ex. 20:1-2

    The entire Bible is, considered from at least one viewpoint, one continuous diatribe against idolatry. If we are going to have discussions about the Law, or even secular law, the discussion has to begin with the source – who sources the Law, initially, as a first declaration, before we begin to apply it to a specific set of circumstances.  That discussion is equally relevant in the case of the interpretation of secular law.  Judges are supposed to be declaring the law on the basis of statute, precedent and common sense, and fundamental morality and justice.  But the precedent and the common sense start with a declaration of what the law is.  Precedents and common sense derive their power from incorporating, or even sublating, prior experiences and understanding – as Kant would point out forcefully, if you are going to have a discussion about one set of conditions giving way, causing or preceding another set of prior or following conditions, you have to start with an unconditioned declaration from a source which requires no prior imprimatur of authority or authenticity.

    15. And fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clock – Bob Dylan, at least as sung by Joan Baez in Farewell, Angelina. Pop songs frequently ask – ‘When will we meet again?’ – it’s a serious question and the concept of that question underlies the language that we use in having discussions. When parties go into a courtroom to have a dispute judicially resolved, they use legal language and expect an adjudicated result. After they leave the courtroom, they never intend or expect to see each other again. The language of legal finality undergirds the dialect of English which is spoken. To borrow again from Dylan, what is left is a table standing empty by the edge of the sea. There is no remaining relationship between litigating parties when the litigation is over – just silence.

    When Christians have a dispute, there is a mechanism described in Matthew 18:15-17 by Jesus, which involves taking ‘one or two others’ to have the discussion. Underlying the language of Christian faith is the idea of church as a recurring event and concept. Even if the disputing parties leave the church after service on Sunday morning by separate doors, the following week the parties will come back together into church. Church is not like a courtroom; the people who come to worship come there, as it were, eternally and continually. See chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation. The concepts which underlay the discussion between disputing brothers in Matthew 18 are different than legal language for reasons more profound than technical legal jargon. The parties expect to see one another again, unless one of them really is just ‘a pagan or a tax collector.’ Since in most disputes, people do not feel that they themselves are such an antagonist to the Christian faith, the language they use has to reflect the expectations and self-identities which they have. The table which remains is the table of the Lord’s supper, the Eucharist; no one has ever suggested that Jesus’ disciples were always in love with each other.  But the Lord’s table remains.

    In politics, usefully characterized in part as a system of organized hatreds, there is a sense of interrupted continuity. We come together for elections, typically once every two or four years. The organizing activity which looks to those events, and the concepts which undergird political language have that expectation. We expect to compete, contest, even hate – but we also expect some continuous, sporadic relationship. I’m not very fond of Hegel, but you could drag in here his thesis-antithesis-synthesis thinking (which grossly oversimplifies him, but it’s not much of a loss). Each side would like to destroy or at least sublate the other, but each side needs each other. There is no Republican Party without a Democratic Party; there is no Democratic Party without a Republican Party. Substantial changes in the ideological outlook of either party stimulate the most pained and eloquent response from the other party! If they really had nothing to say to each other, why would they care? The language of politics reflects the concepts which inhere in the passage of time. We may hate each other, but we will, indeed, meet again.

    16.  Immediately above this post is a post authored by Darryl Blackwell, a prisoner serving a life sentence for crimes of violence, incarcerated now for about 40 years, called “Do We Live in a War Zone?” Darry’s language speaks for itself – I don’t need to characterize it. He served in the U.S. Army, is a veteran honorably discharged, and among other things, drove heavy military vehicles in Germany, similar to the type which led to the accidental death of four soldiers recently in Poland. Darryl has some commentary to make about “who will have to put on a uniform/carry lethal weapons/and a nation’s flag/do you really comprehend what that means/be unwittingly sent into conflict.” Darryl, as an enlisted soldier then and now as a prisoner is articulate, but on the blunt end of the language ladder.

    Recently I read an article in Foreign Affairs titled How Not to End the War in Ukraine. The authors are Tetiana Kyselova and Yuna Potomkina; the article is dated March 1, 2025. Without delving into the conclusions of the authors too deeply, its worth noting how different their language is. One author is a professor, another a lawyer. The language they use is one of diplomacy. So their article uses phrases such as “enforcement and security guarantees;” “significant casualties;” “strict third-party oversight and enforcement;” “restore compliance or apply penalties;” “enforcement mechanisms;” “security measures;” “security guarantees;” “imposing sanctions;” “joint military peacekeeping mission;” “robust enforcement’” would be necessary to control “a large conflict zone.”

    I could go on here – notwithstanding their academic and diplomatic language, the authors are not hiding the ball. “The war’s frontlines must first be stabilized so that ongoing fighting does not muddy the talks.” The authors’ assert that “Europe needs a seat at the negotiating table; a unified position on the provision of security, military and economic support to Ukraine[.]” [My emphasis]. Perhaps after the provision of that ‘security support’ and the application of unspecified ‘enforcement mechanisms,’ there might be other blunt-speakers singing Darryl’s song. I hope the Europeans understand what will be required of them. There’s nothing surprising about discovering that a former G.I., now a prisoner, uses different language than two authors educated into the dialect of diplomacy. My only point is that these two examples of the use of language are like two ends of the same ladder; when the diplomats use the term security guarantee and enforcement mechanism what the Darryl’s of the world know they characterize as such mournful reminder/as flags/the symbol of ideas/constantly fly at half-staff/another soul laid to rest.
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What has happened because of the attacks on, the suppression of Riley Gaines’ speech, affected me more than most of the issues which bounce around on the media for a few weeks and then disappear. She was threatened and assaulted at San Francisco State University.   The ‘apology’ issued by the administration there dripped with hypocrisy, was saturated in a barely-concealed congratulatory note for the people who assaulted her and for the ‘security personnel’ which stood around and watched it happen.

I took it personally because I spent four years at San Francisco State, 1969-1973.  I did not graduate from there, but every course I ever took on writing or film-making or creative arts, I took there. Some of that is reflected in my writing now.  I know those halls well. This is not the place for my colorful memoirs, but when Riley Gaines was persecuted at San Francisco State, and the administration’s thinly-veiled glee about that was naked and intended to be plain, I was angry.  But – okay – if I’m going to write about lasting issues, you have to let the day’s cruelty, wickedness and dishonesty slide. Otherwise I would never write about anything that seemed to me more important, more lasting.

This morning I read that Riley Gaines has been canceled at Penn State University. This, after the University’s leadership gave astonishing speeches, dripping in hypocrisy, about freedom of speech.  I was born in Philadelphia, resident physically and spiritually here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  This, my state, was founded by a charter granted to William Penn, a Quaker who was persecuted and jailed for his own Quaker beliefs along with many others.  You would think, of any state in this union, that fundamental principles of freedom of speech would be honored in Pennsylvania – here, freedom of speech for unpopular ideas would be taken seriously. You would think here in Pennsylvania we would get conduct from the powers-that-be respecting this principle – not dishonest, posturing speeches about freedom of speech while suppression of speech and spurious cancellations run amok – for Riley Gaines or anyone else.  What a price we pay for political correctness.

Anyway, here I vent.  I stand with you, Riley Gaines and with you, Moms for Liberty. May God bless your work. May God bless your speech and your witness.  And if William Penn were here to express his views, I feel confident I know what his opinion would be as well.
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Postscript

After writing the foregoing post, on November 20, 2023, a guest essay appeared in the New York Times titled ‘Why I am a Liberal’ by Cass Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard and well-known author on Constitutional law. Professor Sunstein provided 34 sets of claims about liberalism in its defense. His essay is to be commended because he scrupulously avoided partisan rhetoric in his presentation and made a serious effort to correctly and accurately summarize what he understood to be liberalism. Responding to all 34 sets of claims would be beyond the scope of my post here, but his first claim is fairly broad and inclusive of all his points, so I will quote it in full:

1. Liberals believe in six things: freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy. They believe not only in democracy, understood to require accountability to the people, but also in deliberative democracy, an approach that combines a commitment to reason-giving in the public sphere with the commitment to accountability.

Applied to the censorship and cancellation of Riley Gaines, her treatment, either at San Francisco State or at Penn State, falls short. She was not accorded the freedom to express her views. The reason is self-evidently because the transgender and LGBT community objected vehemently. They believed that the expression of her views represented a personal threat to them and apparently that view was shared by the administration of both universities. Partisan politics is the obvious explanation for this, since as a single woman, unarmed, the idea that her speech constituted a physical threat to anyone is absurd.

The issue of human rights is apparently ambiguous. Does the phrase mean the human rights of Riley Gaines, or of the transgender and LGBT students objecting, or of the various students who may have been interested in hearing her speak, or the students who objected to her speech but did not demonstrate? The phrase ‘human rights’ has a wonderful ring, but once partisan conflict emerges, then the application of the phrase becomes controversial and subjective.

The foregoing comments apply equally to the notion of pluralism. Whose pluralism? Is it pluralistic to include and incorporate LGBT students, or Bible-believing Christians? The notion of pluralism on university campuses has fallen into disrepute, since the word now means a certain political orientation and outlook and excludes those who vehemently disagree, typically Christians or conservatives. The word has become a parody of itself – it means ‘anyone but a Bible-believing Christian’ or ‘anyone but a Trump voter’ or ‘anyone but a Republican’ or even, more disturbingly and recently, ‘anyone – unless you have the wrong views about the conflict in Gaza.’

The word ‘security’ has an obvious application to Riley Gaines, since her security was visibly and openly threatened when she appeared to speak at San Francisco State. More generally, the term is pliable in the extreme. Security from crime? From illegal immigration? From gun violence? From infection from a communicable disease? From tampering with an election? From alleged misinformation, disinformation or hate speech? How about security from having bad things said that hurt your feelings or make you feel threatened? It’s not a term which helps much in a real debate, as soon as the discussion moves beyond platitudes. I guess we’re all in favor of security but what that means varies wildly from speaker to speaker and group to group.

Sunstein’s phrase, ‘the rule of law’ is more helpful. Although laws and their impact are debatable, that debate generally takes place in a highly-defined arena called a courtroom, accompanied by professional advocates called attorneys, worked out with detailed rules of procedure under the supervision of a judge, usually associated with rights of review and appeal to higher courts. We may not agree with the results of a particular legal procedure, Roe v. Wade or Dobbs being obvious examples (for one group of advocates or another), but at least we’re talking about roughly the same things in roughly the same way. To the extent that belief in the rule of law is a fundamental liberal norm, I agree. I think Riley Gaines would agree also and hopefully, even the people who threatened her at San Francisco State, at least in their calmer moments, would agree. The problem with Riley Gaines at San Francisco State wasn’t simply unruly undergraduates – the problem was an administration fundamentally unconcerned about the rule of law as applied to the safety of Riley Gaines, a speaker presenting unpopular views.

The word ‘democracy’ is obviously a loaded term, so ambiguous and flexible and subjective that it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, often in contrast with whatever a particular speaker feels does not represent ‘democracy.’ The phrase is used by the world’s most notorious dictators and most repressive regimes. It simply isn’t helpful in a discussion, except in such an abstract way we could use the word as a synonym for ‘fair’ or ‘just’ or ‘right.’ Everybody believes in such words – one person thinks democracy means she can get an abortion locally at any time in her pregnancy, another thinks it entitles him to mount .50 caliber machine guns on his pickup truck.

Sunstein uses the phrase ‘accountability to the people.’ Immediately we are going to have some problem about determining who ‘the people’ are. But if we decide that ‘the people’ means everyone qualified to vote, that avoids some of the more subjective and partisan uses of the term. Sunstein’s use of the term accountability is a little unclear – does he mean the rule of law, or something more than that? Does he mean the ordinary political process of candidates running for office, or does he mean something more than that? Would a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court be an example of ‘accountability to the people’ – or does the Court’s decision only count as being accountable if the decision comes out the right way (meaning, the outcome we desire).

Perhaps accountability to the people means reasonable communication with the press and the media. What if the press and media are highly partisan? If an official or a candidate is falsely accused of collusion with a foreign power, with the connivance of the media, what would the phrase ‘accountability to the people’ mean? Sunstein uses the word ‘accountability’ twice in his first claim about liberalism. He seems to believe that this is essential to the defense of liberalism – and all reasonable people are generally in favor of the idea of accountability – but if what he means is justifying oneself to one particular wing or another of a political party, or justifying oneself to one particular set of partisan reporters, or one particular set of university professors, or one particular interest group – then I have a problem with the word. I like to think of myself as being a person who is accountable, but I have some vehement disagreements with some folks on the political spectrum. Did I stop being accountable? To whom do we account? To whom did Martin Luther King account? To whom did Martin Luther account?

Sunstein uses the term ‘deliberative democracy’ and although he doesn’t define it, I think I can guess what he means. Deliberation is a word which is joined with another concept he emphasizes, that of giving reasons in the public domain. Our Declaration of Independence begins with a declaration to the effect that a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the new nation should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  The Declaration is a written statement by a group of colonies, soon to identify themselves as states, declaring a new form of government, not a declaration by disparate individuals promoting individualism, personal agency or an “anti-caste principle.”

Reason-giving in the public sphere counts, but this brings us to the very point of the controversy. If I object to the transgender agenda, I have a reason: there are two biological genders. If I object to abortion, I have a reason: infants in the womb, beginning at conception, are children and deserve to be protected. If I endorse traditional sexual morality, I have a reason – it is both consistent with my religious values and consistent with a stable society. I think liberalism as it is actually practiced in the United States in 2023, and advocated for, is much narrower, and much more reliant on questionable and arbitrary values, than anything I would characterize as ‘American republicanism,’ promoted by Abraham Lincoln.

The heart of the problem is that Professor Sunstein’s claims about liberalism, presented in his guest essay, are vastly broader and more undefined than what is actually presented in the real world of political life today; in actuality, Sunstein depends on the idea that we’ll all know what he ‘really means.’ It never means Donald Trump, it never means Evangelical Christianity, it never means opposition on moral grounds to the LGBT agenda, it never means opposition to abortion on demand. It never means that the faculty of universities are going to be selected on a politics-neutral basis – it always means that the selection of faculty will be done after a review of the DEI credentials and assertions, to ‘weed out’ the undesirables.

Those undesirables, those deplorables, the bitter-clingers, would be people like me. It would seem that a commitment to individual dignity would require the defense of Riley Gaines’ rights and my own – but as we see, not so much. And when I oppose the licentiousness, the childish self-indulgence of this age, on the basis of both revealed religion and common sense, I believe I am telling history to “Go!” – As in, “Go forward, carry on.”  In fact, I don’t think liberals (as liberalism is actually practiced today in the United States) are on the right side of history at all.  No one is more determined to look backward, to the grand old days of JFK and Camelot and the political constituencies and activism of the 1960’s than today’s contemporary liberals.  I was very much part of the 1960’s (noted elsewhere on this blog), but the 1960’s and their political alliances and their self-congratulatory heroics are gone.

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                                               Visionary Christian Idealism

Prologue

Visionary Christian idealism springs from both the vision and the aspiration toward a free state, our state, existing in relation to God. Our vision is not grounded in constitutional analysis or political philosophy. This free state is grounded in Christian faith, in visionary idealism derived from the Bible, including the miracles of the Old Testament and the message of the New Testament. One strand of philosophy underlying this vision is derived from Kant’s transcendental idealism, its useful tools redirected in service to the Christian church. The dialectic of Kant, applied to the Bible, concluding with the last two chapters  of the Book of Revelation, guides this exploration, seeking to express a different structure for our social relations. Those are relations among and within the ‘seven churches,’ starting with the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.  The vision is ours.  With all its conflicts and confusion the journey is ours.  The idealism given by God which pushes us forward is ours – and the Holy City, presented as the conclusion of the Bible, with its invitation to the faithful and its barriers to faithless entry, is ours too.  Political philosophy and even constitutional analysis may be added at the end, but never at the beginning. 

Starting with Theology

The irreducible core of our theology is the first eight chapters of the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans. That is the irreducible theological core of Martin Luther’s writings, and John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion as well. Without attempting to resolve each difference of opinion, those are our ‘two witnesses’ who give testimony to the world.  Conflict with the world is unavoidable and essential.  The first chapters of Romans give the ontology of the Christian vision – how we exist, how all things exist, on what ground we stand, what is the source of our authority, what relations do we have with each other.  The first chapters of Romans give our epistemology as well – how do we know what we know; why we are justified in moving beyond the evidence of our senses; justified in moving even beyond our powers of reason, without falling into into a swirling mudbank of chimera, doubt and confusion.  The soul, having been fed on faith, may anchor in a mighty fortress, its ontological footing and its epistemological communications secured.   As Luther would say (indeed, sing), deriving from first principles of theology – we are given a gift, a sword and shield victorious – with both social and visionary outcomes in view.  These are not neutral or bland outcomes, they represent a dramatically better way to live.  Christian visionary idealism is not shackled to mild improvements.

The fundamental dialectic is the conflict between Jacob and Esau, between the seven churches and Babylon idolatry. We don’t escape that conflict, that necessary dialectic, with social programs or theological arguments or political regimes. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we become, as it were, little Jacobs – we are necessarily involved, whether we wish it or not, with our unbelieving brother Esau. ‘Go make disciples’ Jesus told us and he never said anything he didn’t mean. There is no avoiding either the directive from Jesus or the conflict.  Separation and conflict are central to the Book of Revelation.  That separation and conflict are the necessary conditions through which seven churches repent, reform and regather until as they approach their goal, they travel together as a camp. 

Our pilgrimage advances in opposition. If we cannot see the whole path, we have a vision of the Holy City at the end. Our transcendental idealism is not glued to an impossible individualism which necessarily ends in personal death. The end of the road for Enlightenment self-actualization is grim (but not without having created some useful tools). Our Christian idealism is joined to God, ascending, ever ascending, with Jesus, whose life is a permanent ontological state, not a temporary accident. We are joined with many others because the question – how then, should we live? – isn’t resolved until we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We have to live by faith and our neighbors have to live by faith for this to work.  Nothing works if we are being stalked around our world by the angel of death, like teenage victims in a Hollywood horror movie. Jesus’ resurrection and ascension are at the core of the core of our faith and this transcendental vision. “I am the Bread of Life” said Jesus, loudly, twice, in a public place. He absolutely meant it, and we get an everlasting city at the end of our journey.

The Security of a Free State

There is a community of faith which apprehends this vision.  That community of faith at some point has to express itself politically.  Although I said this vision does not entail constitutional analysis, there is a line of constitutional law cases which are instructive to this presentation, although for reasons secondary to the Supreme Court’s analysis. Those are cases like Heller and Bruen, having to do with the 2^nd Amendment and the various disputes over its application and regulatory limits. The legal analysis presented by the court in those cases reaches back much further than the enactment of our Constitution and touches on issues pertinent and necessary to developing the ideal of ‘the security of a free state.’  It may not seem so at first blush, but 1st Amendment rights of religious freedom and political liberty are connected necessarily to 2nd Amendment concepts of self-defense, which the lengthy historical analysis in those cases discloses.  To the extent we separate the two ideas of rights we assert are inalienable, we do so carefully, as if we were separating Siamese twins through surgery.  An ideal community has rights and obligations of self-definition and self-defense.  It entails a principle or method of security, with recognizable definition of its membership and presenting a means of safe passage in and voluntary passage out – no matter how broadly or spiritually the term ‘self-defense’ is employed.

If we are called to an ideal community which separates itself in some manner from the world, sober questions are posed, which imply political organization and shared spiritual belief. Who enters? How do they organize?  Who has legal rights and what are they? How do they – either free states or individuals – exert such rights? From where do such legal rights originate? Does the Originator (whether speaking of us, or of our rights) have an opinion, a purpose or a goal? What powers and limitations are supplied to, or imposed on any free state with respect to interactions with its own free citizens? How does a free, ideal community interact with the world – its laws, its passions, its fears – its violence?  The underlying rationale of much analysis, understandably, given the lamentable history of the human race, is that the state and the individual are more or less constantly at one another’s throats. Each side has to be on perpetual guard, as if two dangerous criminals were incarcerated with each other in a small cell – each eyeing the other warily.

Suppose many people were trustworthy Christians? Not a few, but universally, or nearly so, within the body politic? The familiar intellectual and theoretical model of frail human character collapsing under the weight of the temptation of power, should differ. One thinks of Daniel’s prayer, which checks excessive optimism. Yet, if we are free, if faithful, our laws, our social, political and legal relations, should be different. If today we are collectively at war with Babylonian idolatry, and the scriptures declare this is a more-or-less permanent state of affairs, could there be an association of societies whose laws differed markedly from a larger society? Imagine seven different churches in Pennsylvania, differing from each other in various significant ways, yet more or less each equally immune from the surrounding civil society and its laws. The promise at the end of the Book of Revelation is about more than immunity or separation from an incorrigible surrounding society – it entails both protection from entry by the wicked and a new set of relations among the redeemed.

In the phrase ‘security of a free state,’ we generally think of security as security from physical harm, from assault, from the imposition of tyranny, from the reduction or elimination of personal rights. We think of police, often assembled in large numbers, of courts and judges, of lawyers and prisons, of state and national guards, of our military forces with its planes and ships and missiles. Necessarily, that is the world we inhabit. We wind up having relations with each other tailored along those lines. Our legislative bodies pass legislation with that world in mind. If we have debates over the extent of the 2^nd Amendment and the right to bear arms and the right of the state to regulate such conduct, we have that debate in the context of the proximity of death, of assault, of self-protection from lawless conduct.  Discussion of legal/political forms we might consider adopting takes place awash in a sea of the threat of crime or hostile entry.  The ‘sea of threat’ provides the unchallenged source of evidence for argument from either direction, from both the assertors and deniers of the right to bear arms untrammeled by government regulation.

Advocating for some spiritual state appears to be childish or naïve. If one takes a random walk through neighborhoods in almost any large American city, especially at night, the penalty for being naïve can be severe.  An understandable despair at improving any of this sets in.  Yet there we have, sitting unshakeable, the Word of the God with its vibrant, visionary testimony of the Holy City, its imagery and graphic symbols larger than life, demanding attention like a flashing enormous billboard.  So I want to revisit that phrase, the ‘security of a free state.’ Being realistic in this world means acknowledging the enforcing sword of the state – and Jacob needs to be realistic about Esau’s intentions and animosity – but it also means the words of the Savior, applied to a spiritual regime whose advent he never tired of announcing. An angel came into our world to sit outside an emptied tomb to ask ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?– and made that realistic too. Security must be realistic or its not secure at all – but there is nothing unrealistic about a transcendental idealism. Spiritual, moral, ethical values exist – and if we turn our back on them, all we get is a society of spiders. It’s okay, I guess (at least we live with it in the absence of a better alternative), until a bigger spider shows up on our web.

Internalizing the Law

Extreme views of human nature are not the most realistic. When a new spider comes onto my web, in the process of evaluating this stranger entering my world, I would like to hear about both – how he loves Jesus – and how he reads the first eight chapters of Romans. Then I will feel confident that he has internalized the Law. I won’t have to keep my sword at the ready. It doesn’t help to love Jesus unless one also internalizes the Law, as it doesn’t help to internalize the Law and hate the life that Jesus represents and conveys. We carry the Law around inside of us so that we may live peaceably with each other as we mutually worship God, whose being, existence and power have no limitations at all. I could begin at this point to speak of the holiness of God, our rock, our staff, the melody of the beguiling flute we hear in the distance – but I might never reach my chief points at all. Like any band of pilgrims, we need to move along in the presence and with the assistance of each other.

To respond to the question, then, how are you different? takes us back to the 13^th Chapter of Romans, the bearing of the sword by the state, and the 2^nd Amendment. We are different because, with respect to each other, we have voluntarily disarmed. The pledge is not pacifism or Gandhi-style passive, non-violent resistance. Violent lawlessness in the world (and lawlessness is always of the world) is to be met with violence directed and controlled by the state, as necessary. To fail to act to arrest violent lawlessness is to collaborate with, encourage and reward such violence.  But we are disarmed with respect to each other – on political or theological disagreement, there is no remedy and no enforcement, except a patient waiting on the judgment of God. To employ a weapon on a theological adversary, on a Christian political adversary, is to be asked by stern angels to leave the holy city.

No one is burned at the stake, not now, not tomorrow, not for any reason. That is exactly what our transcendental idealism transcends. The application of Christian principles to the world is something Jesus directs and commands – but the application of Christian principles suggests the possibilities of Christian disagreement. The application of legal force may be necessary to adjudicate and enforce the law, but that cannot happen in the Holy City – if it does, it is the Holy City no more, but has moved to float above us. The state existing in this world cannot be disarmed – its very purpose is to keep peace by keeping a sword. A free Christian state may exist within and above that state, distinguished by faith and by the absence of force, made secure spiritually by the Word of God.  That faith – and that surrender of weapons of force with respect to each other – is all that is necessary and all that is possible for this visionary state, our free state, to remain spiritual and free. 

The Sword and the Flame

We rely on the distinction made between religious and secular authority in John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, not because we are primarily concerned with the orderly conduct of the worldly state as he was. But because we are engaged with the conduct of our transcendental Christian state and our conduct within it. Here, self-defense is never required. Because we are alive, and that life may not be taken away from us, we are not trapped like flies in amber in a particular political configuration – we may experience a series of succeeding political configurations. The world is going through its own dialectic in the conflict between the churches and idolatry.

We are experiencing our own more peaceful, more blessed dialectic – a range of relations as a result of our presence in a transcendental spiritual free state, where God is worshipped and our Lord Jesus, still bearing his purifying wounds, is our King. The security of the world is premised on things which may be shaken – money, weaponry, power. Our security is premised on that which is unshakeable, the Spirit of Holiness, given by God, secured by Christ. Concealed carry means something different for us in a transcendental state – we conceal, yet carry, the Holy Spirit.

One of the criticisms of any philosophy or practice derived first from a religious revelation is that it leaves the door wide open for fanaticism. That was Kant’s criticism of Locke (fairly or unfairly, implying that any application of concepts beyond direct sense experience was unbounded, undisciplined, unsafe). Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Martyrs Mirror reflect hundreds of experiences of cruel religious persecutions over issues of which no one has direct, sense experience: particularly, is Christ’s presence real or symbolic in the Eucharist? Of course this mysterious question was a symbol or code for a host of disputed theological and political issues and forms of social organization – nevertheless, that was often used as the very point of the angry dispute – do you believe Christ is really present in the Host? – which, upon an incorrect response, would then lead to someone being interrogated, tortured on the rack and ultimately burned at the stake.

So this is the very point of disarming ourselves with respect to each other. The perception of what is fanatical and what is a critical point of theology may well differ in the mind of each beholder. But neither do we carry weapons to make our points, nor do we employ our organized social groupings to enact laws which imply the application of law and force to enforce our points. This is why the Quaker experience is important and why I self-consciously write from the state of Pennsylvania – not because I like Quaker theology, which lacks the cross, the purifying blood, the resurrection and the ascension – but because I don’t. This is why we should offer a reasonable truce to the Islamic community – not because I think Allah is God, but because I don’t. We do not fail to organize – the seven churches are profoundly organized, although that organization is only disclosed at the end – but we organize without guns or scaffolds or stakes to burn heretics. The heretics will go away. The towers of Babylon always fall – the cracks in their structure were decreed by God before the beginning of time.

Essential to this argument is the premise that whatever structure is developed, we, the living, can change it. We are not ghosts, trapped on the astral plane. Our relations may be dynamic, may move as the Spirit moves, as experience teaches, as the intellect operates, as love deepens. We’re supposed to be getting smarter here, because our Lord Jesus wants us to get smarter. There isn’t one right answer, except Christ himself. So our discipleship is moving in relation to our cognitions of objects, of noumena and phenomena, of judgments and determinations, of intellectual systems, but never moving in being fixed on Christ.

Depending on how things are going, I may treat Calvinists or Catholics differently (as they may so treat me) – we may organize and dialogue differently across passages of time – but we all stand in relation to God and hence cannot lose our relation to each other. The soul always stands in relation to God. So somewhere, albeit around the bend and currently invisible, our souls must also stand in some relation with each other. Whatever the flame of God may be at a particular time, it is never again to be used to burn heretics at the stake. Visionary idealism finds one flame – that one which burned in the desert, never consuming the bush, which Moses went to investigate.

My Hippy Love Bus

We start with relationships. If the central problem of metaphysics is to show how it is possible for concepts of understanding to apply to objects of human experience, then we object to the word ‘objects’ and substitute for it the word ‘relationships’ with its attendant implications. The Apostle Paul began his letter to the Romans by describing his relationships – Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle. His description of relationships is essential to understanding – not only the gospel, but Christian metaphysics generally, which includes a direction and a goal. The gospel God promised beforehand through his prophets – regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David and who through the Spirit of Holiness was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. If we’re trying to get somewhere visionary, and there’s a group of us, we’ll need a bus.

When I use Kant’s term transcendental idealism, I am taking it far afield from what Kant meant. Kant’s writing entails a set of metaphysical, linguistic concepts and tools – he provided an admirable toolbox. If a Kant scholar were to accuse me of redirecting and converting his vocabulary and concepts, so as to constitute intellectual distortion, rather than present an explanation or defense, I would have to admit: ‘Your Venerated Scholarship, guilty as charged.’   Before I go further, allow me to present a list of Kantian terms useful to the task. Like Old Testament genealogies, this may be boring to read, but like those genealogies, they are essential to understanding how we travel to our goal.

After Kant’s transcendental ideas, ideals and idealism, we find a transcendental schema; transcendental categories; transcendental cognitions; transcendental intuitions; transcendental appearances; a transcendental manifold; transcendental concepts; transcendental conditions of synthetic unity; a transcendental aesthetic; a transcendental analytic; transcendental logic; transcendental judgments; a transcendental deduction; transcendental understanding; transcendental imagination; transcendental synthesis; transcendental determinations; transcendental apperception; the unity of transcendental apperception; transcendental objects; figurative synthesis; a transcendental dialectic; transcendental axioms; transcendental analogies of experience; transcendental anticipations; examples of transcendental amphiboly; transcendental paralogisms; transcendental antimonies; transcendental illusions and transcendental proofs; transcendental problems; transcendental doctrines; transcendental freedom; transcendental reflection, transcendental noumena, principles which are surely transcendental and transcendental deliberation.

Kant was concerned with responding to British empiricists like Dave Hume and John Locke and ultimately, the extent and limits one could expect with ‘pure reason.’ Notwithstanding the difference between his concerns and our aspirations, he developed a comprehensive vocabulary for a certain type of intellectual task – a task he perceived as fixed, stationary, the starting place for a true metaphysics.  Shameless as a cat burglar, I appropriate his thoughts to construct something dynamic, in motion, fueled for travel, not to establish a beginning, but to reach a destination. 

The destination is like the best poetry, a combined effort of both the Author in providing John’s visionary, apocalyptic language to initiate – and we, the readers, tasked to internalize those images to respond. We bring our experiences to bear in relations which are vertical to God and horizontal to others, making the complete poem.  Many Rivers to Cross sang Jimmy Cliff describing his emotions and his feelings of loss at being distanced, not connected to others or any destination at a deep, personal level.  We too have rivers to cross – with our own imprinted experiences and strong emotions, contributed to the Spirit’s poetical city.  With a partially-borrowed transcendental framework for our travel, more connected than Jimmy Cliff was yet with all his poignant feeling, we share our crossings. 

Calling out a swirling neon-painted love bus as a vehicle for a transcendental trip is whimsical.   But it is suited to a journey which is metaphysical in part, spiritual in part, theological in part, eschatological in part, prophetic in part, political in part, forensic in part, symbolic in part, communal in part, marital in part, psychological in part, literal in part, gathering the strongest of emotions and, taken together, regenerative and permanent before God in all parts.  The City is a statement, a declaration of Jesus’ ontological power, an assertion of the Savior’s will, not whimsical or flimsy at all.  That ontological power, conferred out of his grace, makes our love bus sturdier than it looks.

We will be moving, whether we will it or not.  There really is no standing still. The idea of a necessary motion impelled by God is also found in Luther’s Bondage of the Will – God drives all creation and creatures forward, especially mankind, carried along by God’s own action according to the nature of His Omnipotence – God permits his creatures no holiday from his divine working which puts in motion and moves all, from saints to devils – Luther’s way of making his points about God’s preemptive actions in moving all human conduct,  including the acts of the will.  (Page 227, Cole tr. Summit 1976). 

Whether we have free will with respect to God’s immutable foreknowledge is a question which occupied 16th century theologians.   We are more concerned today with political configurations – without asking ourselves (at least not asking very hard) whether such configurations matter, whether the configurations we think we desire will result in the society and relations we want, whether we know that we can make such configurations so permanent and so superior that they cannot be easily reversed.  We are not inclined to credit the belief that God is driving events to any announced, knowable end.  With respect to our future, we have become a nation of day-traders.

The question posed of how we know things, including those eternal things we long to know which human reason insistently strives for – and know we know them, whether things be metaphysical conclusions, philosophic judgments, logical proofs, spiritual ideas and expectations of existence beyond death, others generally we find occupying the world with us, personal relationships or even raw sense impressions and data, seems rather self-absorbed. Metaphysics can seem that way – the isolated professor in his study, contemplating abstract proofs to which few are privy. How we know we are relating to others, how we know we are traveling somewhere and not just ‘spinning our wheels’ is not merely self-absorbed. My goals and concerns are different than Kant’s – yet he also was concerned with not just spinning our wheels in circular metaphysical speculation. He thought pure reason was the answer, properly limited and constrained to what is knowable which he characterized as a Critique of Pure Reason. I think the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the answer – the entire gospel. But Kant’s toolbox helps – it helps us to picture transcendental ideas, connect them to build transcendental relations, working from the interior of the mind out. We may start out being self-absorbed, but we don’t end that way.

The book of Revelation presents a city at its conclusion and it is a transcendental city. Cities are inherently public and visible. Cities involve many people in a multitude of relations; we tend not to think of cities or the term ‘city’ in terms of individual psychology or personal cognition (although part of Plato’s analysis in ‘The Republic’ employs analogies with individual psychology). The promise and prophecy of Revelation is a Holy City and a Transcendental City, not without certain hazardous conditions to endure and surmount, not without a difficult journey to arrive. If such a city is to exist, then it must ultimately exist publicly, it must come to be and exist in this our real world, within our real space and time. If this city is to exist, it exists in my interior psychology as well. Jesus made this point emphatically. He meant the apocalyptic vision of Revelation, which he summarized on the Mount of Olives, to add to his point and deepen it, not contradict it. The kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ – because the kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:20-21. So this city lays within us and without us, external and subject to actions by others, observable, something one waits for, travels to the meeting place for – yet simultaneously introspective to us. Jesus announced a kingdom manifested psychologically within our interior lives and manifested socially in others.  It is a transcendental ideal.

I already added one more ‘transcendental’ to my list of borrowed word-tools above – transcendental relations. That term will drop us into our hippy love bus (to which you are invited, perhaps a ragged and lonely hitchhiker – always room for one more inside). Later we will want another linguistic and metaphysical tool, which one should think of rather the way one thinks of a river – a succession of transcendental passages of time, without limitation or end. The river changes always, changes constantly, but stops flowing, never – reflecting succeeding changes in our psychology as well as our relations. This transcendental river of time feeds the leaves of the Holy Tree, which are intended for the healing of the nations. Healing entails ontological motion and a spiritual and ethical purpose and goal.  Healing must invoke teleology – our purposed end as part of God’s creation is health, not sickness – the word already implies transcendental principles leading to an intentional and communal end. 

The first relationship is our relationship with God. This relationship necessitates a relationship of the soul – a real relation, yet it does not involve sense impressions. The soul’s relationship with God exists within measurable space and time and beyond measurable time or space. Our space and time exist as created by God, which the Apostle Paul addressed a little later in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans: What may be known about God has been made plain. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. Rom. 1:19-20. The creation of the world is not only a physical and psychological event, but it is a spiritual and theological event. The inquiry as to how we categorize and internalize such multiform creation is important and implicates the action of the soul. As the deer pants for water, so my soul pants for you, says the Psalmist. The soul organizes the personality and captures the unity of apperception, but is not limited to it or limited to rational categories – even if such are a priori of any sense data, since the soul has a transcendent relation with God.   Indeed, the soul could not escape that transcendent relation.

I need to add something here about revelation (in the broad sense), conversion (as in religious conversion) and cognition.  “A concept comprising a synthesis is to be considered empty, and refers to no object, if this synthesis does not pertain to experience.”  So said Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, (A220/B267), but he was wrong.  Revelation (again, the broad sense of the word) is a concept God has.  This revelation comes in a word – the divine Word. (In the beginning the Word was with God and was God).  The Greek word is logos.  We have no means to find such Word or even know it exists; our impulses to find it are real (not empty), but they are also vague, confused, circular, futile.  Once the Word, the revelation, is given, then it becomes a cognition.  It is added to our experience – it is more than added, it transforms our understanding of our past experience and transforms our future experience.  Revelation transforms our future cognition.  We see things differently.  When we speak of a transcendent relation of the soul, the soul seeks such transcendent relation – even without words it senses its own transcendent nature –  which hopes to transform our understanding and interpretation of the past.  Conversion means I have received and accepted Christ as transcendental, eternal Savior and my cognitions are now reflective of transcendent values.  The conceptual barriers which the personal prospect of death imposes are overcome. My past, present and future experience has changed, has been and will be synthesized in a different way, but not due to any concept that I ever had.  The concept came from God.  From the point of view of my soul, I was poverty-stricken, empty.  God filled me.

Transcendental Wheels for my Bus, Selected from a Table

A bus is about motion in time, passengers, a destination – a bus ride implies relationships.  Some instructions or design plans are appropriate. Noah received instruction from God on how to build the Ark before anyone or any animal boarded. Other people are always central; they are required to even get to transcendental relations.  The theological term for such relations would be postmillennial, because Christ already has all power and all authority; the millennium may proceed wherever he situates himself.  These relations imply movement and movement implies wheels.

Kant presented a Table of Categories in his Critique. Consistent with my method, I want to shape and round Kant’s Categories as if they were plastic to be molded, mount them on axles and roll forward in contact with that which might be categorized as grounded idealism.  The meaning of idealism here is metaphysical, not visionary, social or political. These are psychological qualities of the mind engaged in acquiring and cataloguing experiences, existing so that we can use words like I think or I believe.  Part of this entails experiencing ourselves as a unity – each of us a unified intelligent creature of God using the word ‘I’ and capturing by that our entire, experiential, spiritual and moral past. Part of this entails recognizing others in the same way.  Kant would declare such psychological qualities to have an a priori existence in our minds, enabling our interior experience and the way we necessarily conceptualize and present it.  These are qualities which characterize and undergird external relationships as well.  We are perceived as well as perceive.  Hagar saw what was happening to her and her child, which was the result of the actions of Abraham and Sarah as well as the physical reality with which she was confronted, but God saw her.

Kant would ascribe the existence and necessity of these metaphysical categories (or qualities or potentialities, to use some other terminology) to Kant’s inexplicably-arising unity of individual apperception; or perhaps to the central role of transcendental reason in structuring experience and reality within individualized, psychological space and time; or to an unconditioned state or cause which can never be reached by tracing backward regressively through a series of a series of conditions which each further condition a new set of conditions.  I ascribe them to the fact that man is made in the transcendental image of God.  We use these categories to get somewhere.

Unity, Plurality, Totality: The City of God is one unified transcendent body – the Body of Christ. There is a plurality of people, saints, us, residing, living within it. Although the totality of the City is known to God, we can never know the totality, because it includes those who do not yet exist, but are known to Christ, himself acting within and beyond time. Because we cannot get outside of time or experience the future until it happens, the totality of the population of the City is transcendental. Our experience of time and change are successive; God’s is transcendental and incorporates all three categories above, comprehensively in terms of the City, locally in terms of my efforts, my wheels.

Reality, Negation and Limitation: The City of God is real. God has so declared in his Word and his Word stands forever. Whatever our limitations are in approaching the City, it stands, shimmering in reality. Negation is that which Satan initiates to oppose Christ, to destroy the seven churches and the saints, to assault the ‘woman clothed with the sun and her offspring,’ to attempt in folly to suborn Christ Jesus to worship him. That attempt ends in the 20^th chapter of Revelation, a burning lake of fire designed for Satan and his angels. “Fear God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell,” Jesus said. Limitation is that quality which operates through time for us to develop and extend our relationship with God and with others, to expand our knowledge from a limited platform to a more extensive platform. Our relations in this world are limited, but they develop on the bus. If we sit next to each other, we can talk. You can point out some things to me through the window, and I can do the same.

Inherence and Subsistence: The quality of eternal life inheres in God, in Christ made known to us, in the City, and through faith and grace, in us. The gift of God is eternal life and that life, always dependent on God, inheres in us. Our soul has true subsistence. It has eternality because it was given such by God, and it subsists because the judgment which might destroy it has no longer any place, having been entirely satisfied by Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross. When we ride the bus, even our bus acquires, because of its destination, qualities of inherence and subsistence. Our wheels are good – they won’t fall off.

Causality and Dependence, Necessity and Contingency: God calls and causes all things to come into being. We are entirely dependent on God. Christ calls us to be his disciples. This causes us to repent, to change, to move, to follow. The cause of life is presented by Christ in an otherwise death-blasted world, and so causes us to change how we feel and what we think and especially, how we relate to others. We’re not stuck in a dying world, like sad aliens in a horrible science-fiction movie. We are living brothers and sisters, having been caused by Chris to be dependent on him, but in our dependency, getting out of the vast charnel pit that existence would otherwise signify. By dependence on God, the wreckage becomes a living vehicle. God by his power moves all things, but for us, dependent on God, the bus moves through churches and from and with churches, to a City. 

Whether this is necessary or contingent may be answered decisively in the sense that God’s Will is always necessary and necessarily true; what is unknown is when such Will is going to be effectuated.  Whether the timing of this is contingent or predestined remains a legitimate mystery; discussed at length, without being conclusively resolved, in chapters 9 through 11 of Romans.  Who resists his will? is one of the verses within that set of passages of the Bible.  How will they hear, unless a preacher is sent?  Is another such verse in the same set of passages. 

Community: Purified and redeemed by Christ, we subsist with each other in a community. The passengers on my little bus ride comprise a community.  Our local church, any one church is a community. The collection of seven churches of Revelation is a community. The Holy City is a community. We exist simultaneously, we exist in conscious relation with each other – the community exists to worship God, to praise and enjoy Him forever. The community exists as a set of relationships which is greater than the sum of its parts because the community as we experience it is in motion.  The very term mandates interior, psychological two-way recognitions. 

Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and Non-Existence: Everything is possible to God. Nothing is impossible to God. God calls even that which does not exist, into existence. “God quickens the dead and calls those things which are not, as though they were.” Rom. 4:17.  We exist. Motion toward God may not have existed, but it does now. Fellowship together toward a different set of relations with each other may not have existed, but it does (or may do so) now. If the City exists above us now, it will descend to us – God has so promised – and if the highway to the City does not yet exist, it will. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. We are not ontologically, theologically or politically trapped. If we may develop a concept of a new set of relations, then the concept is possible.  And so we have something to talk about – our relations begin with communication.  But not communication in a vacuum or stalled, lost or at stasis.  Communications on a planned bus-ride, savoring of some fragrance of its ultimate destination – implying shared purposes, shared direction, shared transcendental goal, our shared Savior.  God’s grace inherently presents and represents the potentiality of our movements.

(As an addendum to the foregoing, by way of rhetorical observation and question, I note the following.  I continue to substitute the word and concept of ‘relationships’ for the word ‘objects’ in my use of philosophic-metaphysical language.  My rhetorical questions are : Why are objects so important?  Why aren’t relationships inherently more important than objects?  Why is the concept of a triangle, simply because it inheres of some mathematical qualities, more important than a relation with God or others?  Reading commentaries about Kant is an endless immersion in language about objects, appearances, representations, things which may or may not exist or whose existence may or may not be provable.  Which is a more complex, important relationship – a relationship with a bowling ball, or a relationship with another human being? Relationships need not appear solely within the narrow constraints of space or time as Kant would assert; such a position binds all his objects in a whirling orbit around his own perceptions and consciousness. If we are concerned about proving the existence of an external world, or the reliability of our perceptions of that world, where should our attentions begin?)

Security on the Bus

The concept of security still matters.  This is our shared hippy love bus.  No one is assaulted on the bus.  No one is thrown off the bus. If people don’t really belong on the bus, sooner or later they’ll get off.  Our security is in our motion.  People who intend harm, who have ulterior motives, will not be satisfied with our relations on the bus and will not be happy about our direction.  Even moving slowly in the direction of holiness, an inch a day, will be enough to cause the unholy to exit.  Our fears may be phenomenal (that is, a matter of sense data, not imaginary) or noumenal (anxiety intensely felt, yet having no basis in any sense data, having no anchor in the real, sensible world).  But without dealing with the concept of fear, of our vulnerability, which is real, not imagined, our movements are stymied.  There is no magic wand we possess to make death, failure or fear go away as far as our sense data is concerned.  We are gifted by God with faith and as that faith grows, the negative-yet-real aspects of life soften and dissolve, but given the dissolution of our bodies with the passage of time, that faith has to be transcendent. 

The set of relations we would like to achieve are characterized by the Beatitudes, by the Sermon on the Mount.  But to get to that set of relations among ourselves, we will need to move, an inch a day.  The relations are transcendent because they rely on a security of existence which we acquire over time as our underlying trust in God grows.  The growth of trust in God are the axles, the movement of the bus.  We do it together, or it doesn’t move at all.  No wheel goes anywhere unless the axles go too.  The love and kindness implied by Jesus’ teachings are not easily or quickly acquired and putting them in practice can not be an exercise in solitary piety.   

Underlying this is the view that love requires real communications, and real communications require real security.  While our interior minds and psychology are still distracted by the basic vulnerability we are captured by in this mortal world of mortal life, we are still always defending or protecting or hiding or running or gesturing or evading in some spiritual, psychological sense.  We make speeches so people will hear that we exist.  The point of the bus ride is that we no longer have to assert that we exist.  Our existence is a transcendental truth – it cannot be defeated because it is the gift of God in Christ.  As time goes and we believe that, then we will begin to communicate with each in order to hear each other and understand (even if we don’t agree!), not simply to assert loudly, trying to convince ourselves, that death has not eaten up our lives yet.  Security from death has to be a two-way street; dead people don’t talk, dead people don’t listen, the dead don’t understand and no longer care.  The community has to be secured and that means all the connecting threads within the community are secured.  The bus ride is safe.

Your Scars and My Scars

Your scars and my scars are transcendental and epistemological. When Jesus appeared to Thomas after his resurrection, Jesus identified himself to Thomas by means of his scars – the way Thomas knew it was really him, really Jesus. Jesus’ scars transcended his death and resurrection – in his resurrection body, those scars still appeared. Thomas could see them – Thomas could put his finger into one of the scars. Jesus had a real, physical, resurrected, transcendental body. So will we.

While we are waiting for this promised resurrected, transcendent body, we have something to talk about on the bus, among ourselves, distinct from what we might see beyond and outside the window glass. You will know me better when you see my scars and I will know you better when I see yours. Human suffering is not trivial, is not to be ignored. Human suffering is not a distraction from the ‘real story’ – human suffering, starting with Christ’s, is the initial chapter of the real story. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

We talk about metaphysical philosophy for a reason – to build a vehicle which will move us to a place of entire, transcendent unity. The unity of apperception arranging and enabling human experience in accordance with metaphysical categories matters. But the point of beginning is not my perception of an object. We do not begin with objects, appearances, representations, intuitions, cognitions, judgments, understandings, or a mental apparatus to apprehend or gather particular appearances of objects into a manifold (organized structure of sense data.) Whether those objects are noumenal or phenomenal, whether our perceptions imply one object in two aspects, or two separate objects, one of which is unknowable – all of this is subordinated to a greater, more important, more transcendent knowledge. Because Christ’s suffering is foundational, our suffering is as well. The manifold is not a manifold of appearances of objects, but a manifold of relationships with the living. Man was not made for metaphysical concepts.  The concepts were made for man.

We start with relationships and like the Apostle Paul introducing himself as he began his letter to the Romans, those relations exist in a context of surrounding understandings and history. We explore those relationships by showing each other our wounds, our history as well as the cognitive and intellectual conclusions we have reached. God has given us the interior mental and emotional equipment to appreciate suffering in a manner which is bi-lateral, two-way. To think that the tools to appreciate human suffering mean that the tools are more important than the suffering, is to confuse the scalpel with the patient. The patient is more important.

Kant’s metaphysics should be stood on its head – one should start with the people, beginning with Jesus. Then we ought to work outward to those tools, metaphysical, theological, spiritual, emotional, cognitive – the whole array of categories of perception and mental organization – which allow us to know God and know each other. That will be the topic of conversation, the recognition implied by our cognitions, the conclusions reached in our judgments, the results and limitations of our reasoning, as we inch our way toward holiness. We exist in God’s universe and there is no limit to the degree to which cognized appearances, rational inferences or deductions, or underlying powers of perception and interior organization of experience may be stripped away to some new layer capable of being described -there is always another level underneath that. All those activities, isolated without purpose, border on mere introspection. Reality is never a matter of mere introspection, never simply an exercise in stripping back layer after layer of perception and mental organization until we reach some indivisible point, call it the unity of apperception, then declare victory and abandon the field.

Rather, we apply our intelligence and direct our movements to a revealed yet visionary end which captures both mystical and rational elements. Non in legendo sed intelligendo leges consistunt – the Law consists not in being read, but in being understood – a Latin maxim perhaps to be attributed to Cicero.  In our use the meaning of the Law should be understood in its broadest terms and significance, expressing God’s Word as to its revealed ends and almost-inexpressible ideals as well as its relations, ethics, directives and philosophy.  Metaphysical philosophy counts – that’s why we still read Aristotle and Plato – and it contributes to a transcendental understanding of the City God presents, which is both a place appearing in space and time and a consciousness which we may carry onto a bus for relations among ourselves and in ministry to others.  If in our hippy love bus, as volunteers we attend to prison ministry, we will carry the City with us.  We understand where we are going.  We understand why.  

Let’s Start Something New

To do something new, I have to make up a word – several in fact. Words like transcendental or freedom or reason are used in such different ways as to be almost formlessly broad. And I want my words to work and to mean approximately the same thing in three different areas of discussion: Within Empirical Reality (sense data and impressions), the world we live in, which includes generally, the church in all its presentations as well as the nations and various social and language groupings; Outside Empirical Reality, where space and time are no longer limitations and we can have abstract discussions about logical forms of thought and metaphysical relations as well as discussions about the interior processing of human experience, which is both cognitive and psychological; and in Very Specific Circumstances, like loading a bus of volunteers from a particular church to go conduct prison ministry with an identifiable group of prisoners at a specific time and location under the supervision of the administration of a particular prison on a particular day. If we want to arrive at a transcendental city, we have to find a map to move along three planes of discussion in parallel.

If I were writing in German, I could string nouns together until I got to the full concepts I wanted. But this is English, so I’ll provide a full-length concatenated word and then a shorthand word for it. God’s Will-Revelation-Word-Spirit-Reason-our responding faith-understanding- will-reason-freedom is my combination word, but I can’t keep dragging that around in every paragraph, so I’ll just shorten it to ‘freedom’ or ‘reason.’ At the risk of butchering words like ‘freedom,’ and ‘reason’ which mean something starkly different in theology, in political philosophy and metaphysical philosophy, I’m going to start using these words as blithely as a hippy blowing massive soap bubbles at a love-in.

Meant in the way I have just identified, we want to apply words like freedom and reason within empirical reality, outside empirical reality and in some very specific ministry activities. What we do in our specifics will be new because we are relating it at all three levels, both with respect to those we minister to and those we minister with. Even using words like ‘minister’ or ‘ministry’ implies that all sorts of choices have already been made – we are Christians, we do Christ’s work at Christ’s direction, which we know because of Christ’s Word. We intend and expect, as we do Christ’s work, to arrive at Christ’s City with those others, with whom and to whom we minister. Our visionary Christian idealism shows up in this world like a sign pointing to the next.

This will save the trouble of constantly substituting my use and meaning of freedom, reason and will for the use Kant makes of them, because once the substitution is made and understood, he has something of value to contribute to our journey. Every beginning is in time, said Kant (B550/A522); notwithstanding the eternal nature of God’s Word, we insert an ignition key and begin now, this morning. I keep injecting Kant into this discussion because he spent a lot of time explaining what we would normally regard as exterior phenomena like space and time, asserting them to be interior phenomena. Whether we agree with him on that point or not, we have to change how we relate to each other and that begins with changing how we relate to our own experience of the world we live in. Jesus said love your neighbor as you love yourself – we don’t think a lot usually about the second half of that directive, but to start something new, we should do so. Then we can begin with a new idealism which is transcendent – we start by transcending ourselves.

We should be intelligent. An intelligible condition means something that is not the result of a previous (and apparently unlimited) series of natural causes-and-effects, as rigid in their own way as links in a chain. Intelligible means we stop asking Did I feel it? and start asking Can I think it? As long as we know what the word freedom means, we can be free to start thinking intelligently. Our starting decision is intelligible; it results from our act of freedom, reason and will. It should be obvious that this is not a predetermined physics experiment like billiard balls bouncing around a pool table energetically, but never once making up their own minds about what their speed, direction or ultimate resting place will be – but having said that it should be obvious, the implied reasoning and intellectual posture of modern physics has more of an effect on our thinking than we realize. The answer to changed relations is not technology, not a better computer chip, although I admire the way the one installed in my cardiac pacemaker works. We could not invent an eternal destination which is a holy city from above, and it is not the result of cause-and-effect. But once presented, we have reason to go there, and if we have the will, the freedom to do so. Our journey and map to this goal did not have to previously exist; we have the power to act independently of the past – a reversal, an annihilation of causality’s grim iron hands, resulting from our freedom and resulting in further freedom-in-relation.

A causality of linked experiences depends on the conditions of time. Freedom means beginning a state of affairs spontaneously, and this type of freedom is characterized as transcendental. Kant declared that there was no antecedent first cause available to examination by human reason because he did not believe his reason could be simultaneously reliable, intelligible, adequately equipped, and also completely separated from God or theological assertion, to attain to the proof or demonstration of an unconditioned state. Our first antecedent cause derives from God’s Will, but God’s Will does not exist as a result of a prior cause nor do we labor blindly to prove the existence of God or a first cause – we cheerfully admit that these are the fundamental elements of faith. We do not float in the air, lonely ghosts looking for reasons in the sky – we relate to our Lord Jesus, who first sought us, and then to each other. It’s Jesus who ascends into the sky – we only have to follow him. But that following is transcendental, we now have arrived at a place to begin in freedom. Now idealism works.

God gives us today good reason to begin. Transcendental freedom means the possibility of freedom independent of the coercion or limitations of the past. We have the freedom to disconnect from the past if we have reason to do so and a direction which leads to a destination – hence the word intelligible – a key going forward. Our decision to journey is intelligible; our bus ride is intelligible; our relations with each other on the bus are intelligible; our destination, Jerusalem-from-Above, is the source and root of an intelligible reason to move from the dreary (or at least unsatisfactory and temporary) ground we inhabit now. Our transcendental city is both noumenal and phenomenal (knowable). We know it by rendering the Word of God into our experiences, and then crafting from there a plan which is intelligible and communicating that to others. We are never merely engaged in introspection. We engage in original action – we may cause it, because we are free to think it, to reason it, to will it. Freedom does not arise from a connection of sense-data or causal natural or historical appearances. This freedom is a response to God’s Word. Our reason frames itself an order or plan of its own, entailing relationships which are adapted to conditions according to its own ideas. As Kant would tell us, It is at least possible that reason possess causality. (B577/A549).

Prayers beget visions.  Visions beget plans.

If the vision is to be large, then the prayers which give rise to such visions must be large.  The intellect can grasp the world in at least large, theoretical measures – but the intellect also has to control its irritation when a recalcitrant and perverse world makes a whole series of progressively more self-destructive choices.  What I desire is mercy, not sacrifice, Jesus said.  To engage in mercy is to stand in relation to others.  Relations entail understanding – not necessarily agreement or endorsement – and relations are a two-way street.  If I understand why you drink gin in a barroom all night long, you should understand why I object.   There are no hall passes – our conduct together stands in a set of relations.  That includes sexuality – no one’s sexuality exists in a bubble.   If I understand your conduct or inclinations, you understand why I may object.  If someone wishes to fly a flag, mutual understanding implies that the content of the flag may be something I object to, as well as the practice of flag-flying.   To borrow again from Kant: Everywhere in the world there are clear indications of an arrangement carried out with great wisdom according to a determinate purpose . . . there exists therefor a sublime and wise cause, an intelligence acting through freedom. (B654/A626).  In response to the argument this is how I feel, this is my experience – I will respond, great wisdom has acted with a determinate purpose, an intelligence acts and reveals himself through freedom.  As Jesus put it, I am the light of the world.  When Jesus declares who he is, he puts himself in a relationship. 

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Hammy –

The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. Didn’t Habakkuk say that? Inwardly a Jew, circumcised in spirit. Silence is worship – to quietly carry Isaac’s wood. In reverence for the Son of God unveiling his will beyond human tracing. Heaven all around, silent. In the council of the holy ones, God is greatly feared. To quietly, reverently, rejoice in life, unsealed now.

When I was a child I thought as a child, looked on silently at life, shy passenger on an ocean liner, not grasping the voyage.  Unable to read letters on life preservers attached to walkways above my short eyes.  Later, tripping silent too, for different reasons. Tongue-tied, numb. Aging we ask for unsealing.  Oracles – a revelation from God, his purposes, his plans. The caustic corrosive revelation – the naked lunch. Stop eating the news from a long newspaper spoon. Think you see it all. That’s a perspective too, half-steps from bedlam, chaos. In a naked world, in the pandemonium – one moment flashing stars, galaxies splashing along eons, kaleidoscope flowers. Next stop, dark thoughts, throats graves, tongues lie, poison the language. Then the dream train, crystal visions, boarding at track O. Escape out, run anywhere. On half-open streets curses the greeting, misery the marker, peace the stranger.  Zero the number.

Dreams, unburied. Bursting startled, articulated.  Night-bound words, drowned words, returned in sable images. Stone dreams, could not speak. Dreams of my mother, in a maze. Floating, flying, running, trapped in solvent, glue, paralysis. Criss-crossed coasts, in two places, in no places, wandered deep-shaded city streets, furtive thrills. Returning to high school, talk with my brother, midnight diesel engines, spiraling stars and freight cars. Conversing with birds, my mouth a mirror.  Garden dream tree.  Vivid summons unheard awake. Invitation moved from phantasms of dharma, duty, task, from wu and k’ung and climbing secret somber mountain to empty cave opening onto a vacuum-abyss. Now to a meeting altogether unseen –  storm-scarred pine speaking.  Gathered mist, pregnant word.  A ripening fruit.

Bondage of the will. Relentless introspection finally quieted in trust. Cemetery silo-walls giving way, dissolved, unsealed. Efforts, resolutions, some well-meaning, well-intentioned. Some mirror-defeated – just getting high. Hopeless on the best days, helpless on the worst – futile efforts to reform, to change my life. A young king, leering – shaking his fist at a storm not understood or to be escaped.  Forlorn, disinherited, disarmed.  Cursing events, cursing the emptiness.  Angry swords swung at ghosts, closets of shattered lances.  Futile tools applied to broken rusted engines at dead ends – their disassembled parts scattered, strewn like broken hearts.  Mocking-inscrutable highway signs, declaring north and south, crossroads of two easts then two wests, thrusting always toward blank horizons – dragon-stretched to grey nowhere. 

To escape ditches, find trestles over low-road snares – the just man to live by faith.  No fruit in the fields, no cattle in the stalls.  Yet I will climb to the high places.  Hemmed by shadows from tenements long disappeared, vague Fourier-Owen ideals, shaped by kibbutzim hopes and pogrom fears colliding years before I was born, vines of water hemlock circling while a child – until Venus fly-trapped no more. The Lamb opens the 7^th seal – Maestro of future history. Ecce!  Behold the Anointed – look to live!  Himself history-to-be.  He opens the 7^th seal, mysteries unwrap, days come and go. The Seal-Opener remains fixed in being united in being with God.  I will be silent in the presence of my God – holy and righteous. I will praise his holiness forever.  Holiness the flawless shield, the fixed rock, the staff, the beguiling flute in the distance. 

Parents. Cohen – David & Esther. Jewish, secular educated idealists. Named their first son Jayden Benjamin, named their second Isadore Hampton. Socialists, utopian, not radicals, egalitarians. Sojourn in Israel for that reason – egalitarian life. Return to Israel program.  Time spent in school, met there, teaching hospital;  coffee dates joined to earnest cafeteria debates. Energies poured in, sincere, courageous, tireless – yet somewhere the utopia went south. The return was to America. Father a physician, M.D., six foot six, black curly hair. Mother a nurse, a foot shorter, red-streaked hair trimmed, direct, all business. Aunts, uncles, cousins, family gatherings, Bar Mitzvahs for some, but not for me. Parents still determined humanist-idealists. No synagogue or seder, no Hebrew school, religious learning or education.  Long dinner-table ethical discussions about medicine, philosophy, treatments – moral obligation to announce or to conceal bad news to patients.  Jayden would join in, I would listen.

In kindergarten I was on the bus from school and got sick and threw up on myself. I didn’t say anything. Jayden was sitting close by and he told the bus driver. It took me time to speak well – at three and four spoke with a lisp – a blond cherub – but if a relative wanted to ask the two young Cohen boys a question, they asked Jayden. I didn’t shed my lisp, didn’t start speaking clearly until I was seven or eight – Jayden knew what I meant anyway. My mother, careful in details, student of nutrition and vaccinations and warm clothes and homework assignments and parent-teacher conferences. My father busy, worked long and late hours, talked to patients and other doctors at night on telephone calls behind a closed, paneled office door. Jayden didn’t talk down to me  – he knew I knew things from reading. But the rest of the world saw me, if at all, as Jayden’s little brother, a shadow at his heels.  I grew slowly in secret cocoons, happiest at home.

School was not all bad. Oak wooden chairs for right-handers, classroom construction paper pastel-decorated, cubbyholes for lockers, the smell of historied stone Quaker buildings.  First graders, your own pencils, crayons, large-letter workbooks stacked under a desk top, led like ducklings through the school day in a tall world.  Teacher Mrs. Osbourne put us in primer-reading circles, called Robins and Jays. After a few weeks, she told me I was moving from the Robins to the Blue Jays. She seemed to think that was important but I didn’t know why. When I got into the new group – the Blue Jays read out loud quickly, fluently. A child’s day is a universe.  Hours, minutes, days, melted and merged like recess and lunchtime and school and bus rides.  There was just childlike being, each day unrolling, unraveling without any particular or important beginning or ending – until marching years and grades brought deadlines and assignments and marking periods and class rank and achievement tests – timeless being not to be recovered until the Lamb unsealed it once again.

The gentle silence of a weekly Quaker meeting for schoolchildren. The odd belief that a child might have something worthwhile to say – to be heard attentively by a room of older children, adults. Rounded stone walls to divide playing fields and bursting recess-frenzy.  Not always frenzied myself – quietly I nestled, quietly I read, an underground stream, content unto myself, sometimes meeting contentment in others.  I didn’t mind if it rained. Occasionally people understood, other children saw. Jaydon met the world headlong, a charging comet. I was a patch of green grass, soaking up rain-words, each book a cloud. And there is an invisible world the hard-chargers, the extroverted, the award-achievers, never see.  Things are still on the outside but they shimmer on the inside.

Jayden the tall.  The athlete, the star, the captain of everything. Image of father, graceful, handsome. Me,  except in my books and secret fantasy-kingdoms, average, average, average. Never separated from my silver-framed wire glasses. I followed him around, played kickball, baseball when he did, didn’t mind when my clumsy game ended. In first grade too shy to speak. Had a crush on a neighbor girl, never said a word. If Jayden liked someone he went over, clasped a hand – if a girl, he went over, started a conversation. The distance between us more than age or height – my parents talked to him like an adult, a third parent.  I was a tunnel-lair child. Big blocks, toy figures, cars, to build spectral child-cities, stretched across my room where I burrowed holed up.  Pint-sized, four-eyed bandido in retreat. Jayden got into a fight with a neighbor boy, won, bloodied his nose. When I was picked on I froze, waited in fear until I could run, until Jayden would find me. A little older, my world internal, imagined dunes on distant planets, ringworlds, Foundation and the Mule, swords and sorcery, dungeons and dragons, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Adventures in lost mines, mars-fantasy, middle-earth.  Where I was captain.

I heard my father talk to my mother, saying I might be a success, but Jayden would be a success. Jayden raced off on his bike leading his friends. I walked nearby railroad tracks, balanced on one rail, dreaming. It was a small town, our parents let us go our own way – they trusted America, America’s politics, its ideals.  They trusted us in America.  Little talk about Israel, their time there, where they collided with something – not to be brought up.  Palestinians? Ultra-Orthodox?  An ethnic-religious state? Whatever drew them in, whatever sent them out, not discussed. American politics was, but only in an abstract sort of way, like a discussion about characters and plot after a theater performance. My father upset about medical malpractice lawyers, not about taxes. My mother decorated in monochromatic colors, clean lines, glass tables, natural light through large windows, uncluttered living spaces, elegant, sparse vases.  Our living room could have been a magazine cover for Swedish furniture. Prices got her voice up a decibel, perhaps even if we could easily afford it.  Clutter was not acceptable. Once they discussed staffing at the hospital – then got upset, angry, although I couldn’t understand why.

My parents visited my grandmother every month, living down in Pleasantville. Jayden and I spent days at the beach around Atlantic City.  He could swim out far and deep – I brought books to read in the sand. My grandmother Sarah’s house had rented rooms. An elderly Jewish man, an even older Jewish woman, rented upstairs rooms from her, lumbering up and down the stairs no more than twice in a day. The house had a smell, an aroma of matzoh-ball and Campbell’s mushroom soup and old people and their clothes – their photographs, their sequins and neckties and sorrows deposited into closets of the past.  Grandmother’s decorating style was a jumble, full of chintz fabric, knick-knacks, ceramic figurines of fairy princesses, ballerinas and swans in glass display cases, furniture cushioned and uncoordinated.  Her home was like an antique shop – to move around we negotiated carefully to not knock anything over. Outside was safer -the thin soil was sandy with little round pebbles in Pleasantville but nothing was breakable. Our parents brought bikes for Jayden and I – we rode around on bright, sunny New Jersey afternoons, past liquor stores and nail salons and hairdressers and pizza shops and offices for insurance agents and tattoo parlors and martial arts studios and bait & tackle shops and retail branch banks and the grocery store with its sprawling parking lot, kept company by a few squawking sea-gulls, past salted homes 60 years old wearing faded pastel clapboard, mottled roofs, drooping gutters, in need of caulk for shaded windows and patchwork mortar for cracked concrete front steps.  It was a nice town for two boys on bikes sent out to play.

Our Philadelphia suburban home neighborhood had walnut trees lining back yards by the alley cutting through to garages.  Green walnuts fallen from the walnut trees had a smell too – I liked it, would chuck them into a nearby pond, sometimes for hours. Plunk – plunk – plunk, a splash and the ripples moved out in concentric circles, every time. If Jayden came by on his bike and asked what I was doing, I shrugged, could never answer. But he was checking on me  – saw I was content, whatever I was doing – and would ride off to his next adventure. When I was in fourth grade I had a crush on a girl named Bettina with a very German last name, like Mensch. Bettina was slender, with light freckles, an aquiline nose, clear eyes and light eyelashes. She could run faster than me. I never said anything to her, but sometimes I thought about her when I was chucking walnuts. Before I threw the next walnut, the water was still – the pond like black glass after the last concentric ripple quieted.  The tree was still, the walnuts laying on the ground were still, the sun was still in the sky – I held the green-black rotting walnut in my hand with its nearly overpowering smell – the smell was still too.  I liked those moments, when the world was poised at full stop for me.  All its motion was at my introspective, soon-to-be-adolescent command.

All those books I first read because Jayden read them and left them sitting around on coffee tables and nightstands, where I would inspect them unobserved – O’Neill, his Long Day’s Journey into Night, On the Road, madman stuff of Holden Caulfield, Naked Lunch, sally out to Zen, eastern religion, Ashrams.  If he saw me reading one, he might say something evocative, something to make me think. The days changed although I only slowly noticed. Jayden changed and I had to notice that – but there was little for me to say. He was in conflict now, even if I didn’t know why. His world was a battle-field. I was a sapling in a peach orchard, watching the soldiers scramble and race about me, not understanding the terms or point of their warfare or how my brother got involved. If he saw me reading on a window seat he would still say something, but now it was provocative, a boy who was becoming a man by getting ready for a fight.

I had a friend with two first names, Amy Beverly – she and I would find a corner to read and wonder why anyone wondered at us. They teased we were hiding out together, but we only wanted a quiet place to read. Libraries have a certain smell, the isolate repeated tick of a single clock on the first floor a distinct echo, the black spindle-back chairs with their certain feel on the buttocks, the fluorescent light a certain flicker – that was our world. In it we found no fault, no shortcoming. To us, the stacks were rich with words, like walls erected against missiles whose purpose or anger we couldn’t grasp. Amy Beverly would twirl a black knappy hair in her fingers as she read – and other than turning pages, be stiller than stone for hours.

Idealism meeting reality, like an 18-wheeled truck meeting a herd of deer. Not all the deer die at once, but the herd is never the same.  Jayden wasn’t much talking to me anymore. Jayden was gone from the house for days at a time. My parents were lost as to what to do or say. They were passive-frozen, paralyzed in fearful indecision about their man-sized adolescent. They were alternatively resigned, philosophic, dismayed, wishfully-confident, then helplessly agonizing over what to do.  Inept, flaccid in the face of Jayden’s determined, misguided will and their own unwillingness to be disciplinarians.  They wanted it to be all okay again – didn’t know how to act if things weren’t okay – had little way to tell the difference and few tools to employ. Nothing in Jayden’s head, whatever it was, was anything like what had been in their heads, in their adult lives or even when they met in Israel.  It didn’t occur to them that Jayden was taking his ideas from elsewhere – they were under the impression that their own ideas were of their own making.

Older brother Jayden – one day, nodded, made a comment as I was reading Autobiography of a Yogi – next day, gone. Dead of an overdose. Accidental or deliberate. The news was crushing, an avalanche of grief. My business-like mother collapsed shrieking, sobbing.  My father’s face fell into a place I had never seen, spiritually collapsed. Jayden, gone like Allie in Catcher in the Rye –– Hammy, younger brother, carries on – reads Franny’s Jesus Prayer – Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Parents have the heart-stabbing, grief-strangled duty of making arrangements. Identify the lifeless body of their son. There are no worlds to hide in, no words to hide behind. A person beloved at the very center of their lives – so anointed with hopes – their engine of hope – had become a corpse, bluntly a slab of meat.  All too familiar to them, to be tagged here. Moved there.  Autopsied.  Placed in an outrageous box to be buried in some insulting dirt piled in advance under a mocking outdoor canopy.  Warlocks, if I couldn’t see them I felt them, warlocks and witches everywhere at his burial, standing at the crowd’s edge, handing out weedy flowers, holding sharp-pointed shovels, with their gargoyle-green faces making sympathetic noises, shedding a conspicuous tear to wipe away with a claw, to pretend, mock and mime at the grief upon which they demonically feasted.

Parents never got past Jayden’s death. Not in the first year, not in the second, not in the third. Perhaps some religious belief would have helped them to get past the corpse of their son, but they didn’t have that. Whatever dignity or comfort such beliefs might have held was lost to them. Jayden’s room preserved like a museum, a mausoleum. Books still sitting on shelves, school pictures, his smiling face. Excruciatingly sad to go in. After a while, no one entered his room. Parents shell-shocked.  Left to go my own way. We walked around his memory in the house – Jayden disappeared, converted into a grief-spirit in some absurd play where the characters talk to a ghost they never see but are always conscious of and never forget. If not for a bare veneer of rationality, they would have put out corned beef and kugel for him on a neatly-set placemat. But off-Broadway ghost plays are funny and this was just unbearably sad.

Change came to me too. Jayden’s death walked through my reading room, knocked over the shelves, scattered my books. Implacable grief entered, announced – ‘You knew I was always here. From when you were four. Everyone knows.’  I had no answer – that was the story, we all knew it. I drifted into my own scene, wandered away from a life of books at home places. No one came chasing me. The users and the losers were my high school teachers – until they drifted away too. Once in a while Amy Beverly and I would have a sandwich, but something had taken down her soul too. The only black and white she was interested in were black letters on a white page but the world wasn’t giving her that choice. I had choices too, but my choosing didn’t count for much. I would get high and make a different choice the next week but all the choosing wound up the same choice.

I drove west across Pennsylvania for college – the path of least resistance. If I had been another person living another life, I might have found something starkly beautiful in the rural pines, red maples, chestnuts, walnut, oaks, even the brown bears rooting around midnight garbage.  The campus and local town were carved out of the surrounding woods like two handfuls of sand taken from a beach. I found a local park with wild grape arbors and benches underneath, and that was my spot for reading, the sun spackling through the vines onto the pages of my book. Two years as an art history major in a place where deer season was the major holiday and convenience stores the major shopping outlets. Then I transferred further west, waved goodbye to the campus dorms, town sports bar, convenience stores, outdoorsman’s hunting and bait shops along the highway. I had applied to an obscure place for arcane studies, thinking a few hundred miles of the Pennsylvania turnpike was far enough from the entombed séance of continuing sorrow, chiseled into every telephone conversation with home.  After two years, I wanted three thousand miles of Interstate 80 between us.  I wanted the raw edge of a distant ocean that said apply here. 

West-coast living quarters were a series of haphazard communal student arrangements until I arrived at a real urban commune. By then I was finished with a degree that enabled me to talk at length about Botticelli, if anyone asked. My commune mates were older, two filmmakers, psychologist, entomologist, writer turned coffee house barista. Robbie, intellectual, giraffe-like, was the guide. This group wasn’t casual about their psychedelic adventures – they were organized, purposeful. Role play was highly organized – we got costumes – Frosty knew where to get them. We got high quality drugs – Vermy knew where. The interpersonal relationships could be intense or casual – or in the case of G-Lucky, wishful. Meals were prepared – we took turns – I learned to cook for six. The house was not far from Glen Park, canyon in miniature, and I would walk our dogs there, sometime with Weezy and her service dog. California fir, pines, cypresses, ironwoods, some palms with that fresh green aphrodisiac aroma. There were poetry readings, script readings in the commune, a chessboard, round telephone-cable drum coffee table, music scattered around four-foot Bowers & Wilkins floor-standing speakers. An oversized roll of brown butcher’s paper unwound to hang broadly for posting front hallway notes to each other. Tripping on outings – to movies, plays, planetarium shows, picnics on nude beaches, hikes up Mt. Tam – part of the ritual.

Our house was stenciled with green curling vines around doors, decorated with posters from old movies, framed impressionistic art of Monet’s flowers, Picasso’s Guernica, elegantly-framed charcoal sketches of nude models, pastel super-sized flowers cut from construction paper hung high about.  There was an open kitchen cornered with nooks and crannies, stocked with spices, herbs, nutritional supplements and condiments neatly stored in rows on hand-crafted built-in shelves.  There were framed still photos from Robby’s films, x-rated movie scripts from Frosty’s on coffee tables, an oversized glass display of three dozen butterflies with wings spread for display, a colossal water filled hookah with elaborate gilt & coloring.  There was a chessboard with ornately carved chess pieces, a board for playing Go with its black and white stones.

The built-in bookshelves were stocked with metaphysical philosophy, Plato’s Republic, psychology of Freud, psychology of Jung, of Otto Rank and Ernest Becker, pharmacology, biology and chemistry textbooks, field guides for entomologists, handbooks of California birds, still photography reference books, technical manuals on cinematography, political biographies, treatises on eastern religion, the I Ching,19th century novels, Stendhal, Balzac, volumes of poetry from every century, Ginsburg’s Howl, Burrough’s Naked Lunch, confessions and true crime nonfiction of various sorts, Capote, a whole shelf of international erotica and one-dollar grimy paperback porn, Candy, pulpy detective novels with covers of languid blondes and tough private detectives, oversized photographic books of Hollywood comics, Chaplin, Keaton, of silent movies, of geographical wonders, of the oversized photography of Ansel Adams balanced precariously, too large to tuck neatly on a shelf.

In the house sometimes chatter, even extended conversation.  But often a kind of silence -the silence of users – intellectual users, but users – like waiting at a Dunkin Donuts, descending into the Velvet Underground, waiting for your man. Even when users are well-supplied, studded with open drawers of well-labeled concoctions like a home pharmucopia – even when there’s superficial talk at the dinner table, a user’s silence persisted like fog at the curtains. It was supposed to be intellectual, hip, but intellects were melting away.  If there had ever been purpose, a vision for this commune, it was swallowed into the silence of neon at an all-night diner, a cup of coffee never finished, waiting for a connection.  For very smart people, they never quite got that drugs eat up arts, thought, culture like a fire eats up wood. So talk was usually empty diversion – the reality was silence when the needle hit the arm, the vein, the sting, the blood blossomed and appeared like a rose at the top of the bulb. No one talked then. You watched in silence. The rush is going to come soon, upon the instant. Silent seconds, open round waiting eyes really seeing nothing, images turned inward pregnant with unfocused death. The crystal ship being filled noiselessly, dropping human petals overboard as it glides. I am glad we have here come to a different kind of silence.

My soul ached for more than one reason. I walked the streets of the city late into the night. I ached, walked more. Wore out on the psychedelic trips, wore my eyeballs out looking through windows turned to waving transparent jelly, wore out floating in a crystal sea, waves breaking, reforming, breaking. Wore out on steady decay where psychedelics and smoke came out every evening like cards from a blackjack dealer.  Wore out on the subterranean tides we swam, tropical fish darting around reefs of wasted introspection. Wore out on ever-reshuffling tarot cards, affairs like fireworks, one-night stands pursued blindly through caves. Wore out on the sexpassion-drama with its pseudo-suspense, gossipy emotional vandalism recurring but never resolved.  There was a bout of repentance after our escapade at the planetarium but it was the repentance of Nineveh – dramatic, but it didn’t last.  We lapsed into further episodes of the cycling opera bouffe.

My futility was like surrounding flocks of sea gulls – I chased them off but they came back single, returned in groups.  Charged arm-flapping to shoo them, read fervently about gull removal, engaged falcons for intimidation.  Introspected in so penetrating a way it would have done the chief Gull, Sigmund Freud, proud – still found myself surrounded in the same spot with the same flock one year to the next, bird-droppings of pointlessness, laced with vacuous uric acid, etched in my hair.  A day came when I said to myself – too many gulls.  Repeated, unrelenting frustration accumulated in feathered layers.  When I said goodbye to my communal mates, no one was surprised – no one said ‘wait’ or ‘stay.’  Perhaps Weezy was sad, but she was sad about so many things. She put the leash on her service dog without a word and went for a walk. I packed in a few days and left as silently as a shadow.  

I had been away from home.  Ghosts waited in Pennsylvania – at least I stopped the ghastly process in California.  Hoping I was ready to talk with my parents about Jayden.  Anticipating, maybe it would be something of comfort, of purpose, maybe just a long silence.  In the teeth of grief, I found out something- if anything hurt that much, it was important.  I wanted to say it to them to say it to myself.  A dead brother laid into a box is more serious, more worthy of thought, than yet another drug fantasy.  If life with intellectual hippies was a useless band-aid, because the wound was so deep and no answers were ever provided, just mystical platitudes – I had to have some real soul-wound bleeding on the inside.  We all did – the entire human race – something inside more than a clever, insouciant, insolent appetite for thrills, for grandiose fantasies, for a kaleidoscope of deep insights that barely lasted a day, to the next trip, another day at the amusement park, another ride on the merry-go-round. 

Driving back was silence, reflective as snow on surrounding cliffs, accepting pain like lightning strikes, feeling imaginary forests crash.  My emotional redwoods absorbed the jolt, the sound of their stately irresistible fall reverberated, put motion to swaddling cradles of interior mountain lakes, shimmering crystal-icy, startling birds, painting ripples onto shocked blue mirrors of water – then there had to be something inside, deep, to start. We were not squirrels, not even clever, educated squirrels, could never be sedated enough – even perpetually-introspective psychology-reading squirrels couldn’t have so much pain.  Loss is a stern teacher – the symbols on her butterfly wings signal dread.  Silent grief did that much for me.  Melancholy in the night, the sadness of long highways, of the sparse, distant taillights of the isolate trucker far ahead.  Driving across country was time to think.

I arrived home in Pennsylvania, fighting stark-evil thoughts – alternating with ephemeral lightness. Blind prodigal Isaac, carrying wood, repenting of I knew not what.  Didn’t understand why or where to point the wheels, only to a place well known once, alien now.  Flocks of starlings rolling over storm-billows. Nightingale singing under a shroud.  I brought along bone changelings, shadows I could not peel away or shed. Unpacked for my empty corridors, deserted bunk, incorrigible dreams in nightmarish lodgings fashioned like a hospital ward. 

My anonymous rented room, laboratory for tattooed flaws of my mind – hex symbols drew themselves across my walls – I scrubbed out invisible pentacles on throw rugs.  Pushed away clutching dreams, naked on broken bottles in the alley.  Sordid self now in revolt – madness not hidden, emerging in majestic delusions, stretched naked across linoleum floors, roped to blandly drawn blinds.  The cup, the plate, the single setting for a chair sitting alone against a pressboard table.  Vacuum of the soul, voluntarily self-committed to bare walls.  But then – if the room was cheap and sordid, if the soul was empty, filling was possible. If demons stalk the night, if pain is great, they can be dispelled, it can be ended.  Wasn’t there grief because something, someone, was lost?  If my visions were estranged, only horror and nothing else, half the landscape had to be missing.  

In the midst of death-story, sunline of morning – not prayers, not yet – but something. Reading Job and the Psalms. The silence of God spoke.  Job put his hand to his mouth in silence before God.  Almighty God, Holy and Righteous – in wrath, remember compassion.  I wasn’t the only one returning to a confrontation, returning for a meeting whose purpose I could feel but not understand.  I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.  Remember mercy, when you visit me in judgment.  Plague goes before you, O Lord. Your silence measures my travels. You scatter fire-line scarred mountains – the cedars crash, the perpetual hills bow. The ways of God are everlasting.

I saw many tents of America in affliction, and my own. Why was it, O psychedelic sea, that you fled? O pseudo-Jordan, impersonating, disguised, why did you turn back when your mask was removed?  You unmoving stone mountains, why did you skip like lambs – if there is only empty?  There was trembling at the presence of the God of Jacob.  He could turn rocks into pools, hard rocks into springs of cleansing water.  After a few weeks, I calmed down a level or two.  And yet  – 

There’s something Jewish about carrying grief around with you – luggage you can never unpack and never find a locker to check it into.  I couldn’t process it emotionally, I couldn’t process it intellectually either.  Isn’t God in charge of things?  Couldn’t Jayden have been influenced by better friends, waylaid by benign thieves, arrested pre-emptively by diligent cops, counseled by mysterious strangers, smitten with the flu, tempted into other diversions by some prostitute, on his way to the drug mart to buy the dose that killed him?  Arguments about free-will seemed absurd to me.  If Jayden had free will to kill himself with a drug overdose, what happened to my parents’ free will?  Where did that go after Jayden died?

What happened to my free will? Where did that go? Jayden crashed that too. Suppose someone had asked me, on the day I was born – would you like to live in a house with a ghost – or not at all? Is that a free-will choice? One death ripples so. To run around and chatter away about free will – it seemed like astrology, like attributing to the stars our characters, mates, lives, fates – an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition at the charge of a star. And what if our dispositions are not only goatish – but tragic, self-destructive, laced with despair? What if our dispositions are just what’s left over, after the idealism dies, after the deer of fond and foolish hopes are left as carcasses by the side of the road?  O mighty free will.

I read Isaiah.  Lord, you were angry with me – isn’t the affliction of grief the most severe form of God’s anger?  Has your anger turned away?  You have comforted me. What was this comfort, that I could feel, but not explain? Surely God is my salvation. I could not make head or tail of that, but it reverberated too deep within me, not to mean something. I will trust and not be afraid.  The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song. There were no songs for a long time – what was the new song? He has become my salvation. What is this? Why does my salvation help with Jayden’s death?  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

And in the midst of my stark visions, I had a dream about a tree, the very tree that stood in my front yard. The tree and I dialogued, as if I were Chuang Tzu exploring the inner chambers – but purified, sealed. The pine tree had its own mission – included me and more than me.   There was a reality I turned to mush, now trying to recapture. If drugs turned thoughts into wild flocks of birds beyond capture, then something else recaptured, re-centered those visions, might extract out of a strange dream a word true or useful. There was coming a wind to take the tree away, but held back for me. The tree was posing questions to me. And who was I, to have a tree in a dream pose riddles to me? 

Sing to the LORD, he has done glorious things. Now I was in a world with no road map, no explanations, but something was here that made me dream.  My only job was to ripen – like some fruit.  And if all of this seemed bizarre, it was so vivid, so powerful. It was a message, a directive, a direction – that didn’t depend on me at all.  No one told me to stop mourning for Jayden. I had many pictures of God – some drug-fueled, some sober. But I never had that picture of God. I wasn’t supposed to do anything at all. Just listen and ripen. While dream angels sealed many, including me – and dream trees spoke to be carried off by great winds – where being and un-being went to fight some battle of ontology.

I went into Valley Forge one day to walk. It was Palm Sunday – although that did not figure in my calculations of the day. The Holy Spirit came over me, gently, comprehensively, experientially. My mind was changed for the time period of a two-mile walk – its forward orientation was reconfigured – as if one took a north-south bar magnet and turned it, faced it east-west. God was omnipresent at all times, ever-where, everywhere – as if I were having a direct perception of God. God’s being was being – the being of God was, is the being of Jesus.  Flowing Father, Receiving Son. I walked and there was a family picnicking near the macadam path. Playing mildly, they kicked a peaceful, errant ball in my direction. I retrieved it and threw it back in shimmering, palpable peace. As I crossed Gulph Road, walking along a stone lane that ran parallel to Joseph Plumb Martin trail, I was passing as if through a door. I realized I was going to be a religious man. This was not what I had expected of my life. I’ve had many experiences but the kindness of this experience was different – drug experiences have an element of being harsh, make your head big (Grace Slick sang go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall).  This experience made me feel vulnerable, small, condescended to, not out of meanness but only because of the enormous difference between me and the Spirit who loved, protected, descended over me. It was as if I were a young boy playing baseball and Babe Ruth came to visit me. I was a small child being tenderly touched with fingers of the Spirit, spiritual, spread open, gently descending. Peacefully, like a summer ocean tide, the experience – God at all times, ever-where, everywhere – receded.

It wasn’t long after that – I just showed up at a church, chosen more or less at random. I said, ‘Will you baptize me?’ And they said, sure. They asked why and I said I felt as if I had an experience with God. The pastor asked could you tell us more and I said, no. And the pastor, a nice young man, said, well, okay, next week. They baptized me on a quiet Sunday morning in a church with a small congregation and not a lot of discussion. The rite and ritual was out of a green book and the pastor followed the book. Not without some trepidation, I repeated the words he prompted. (All that renouncing stuff – I was hopeful but not overwhelmingly confident). I got water poured on my head three times and the Trinity was pronounced – baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The pastor made the sign of the cross on my forehead. Like my experience in Valley Forge, it was both comprehensive and gentle. The congregation came around to shake my hand afterwards and invite me to lunch at the church picnic. I didn’t really know them or even the type of people they were -as a social, cultural group, we were far apart – but they were warm and inviting and they seemed to think I was one of them. Things started changing in my life after that.  The human experience is an interaction with God.  Later on, I had a conversation with my parents about Jayden. I’m not sure it did much for them, but I think the effort was worthwhile.
___________________________

Quasimodo –

Silence. The silence of the opening, the unveiling of the mystery, breaking of the code. The coronation of the Prince. The child of Mary asserts his position, his power, his authority, omnipotent, omniscient, ascending to that throne from which all light emanates as the seals are broken, to the very last, even the hushed 7^th – to the outermost reaches of his Father’s ordination of time, destiny, life and peace. Rejoicing saints inherit an overwhelming gift.
Totum venerabile, sanctum silentium.

I had a child’s daydreams in Bel Air, nestled between metaphorical castles of the Army – Antonio Brendan Quasimodo – little-league nicknamed Quasi to all friends. My Italian father, Pietro, swarthy wrestler build, Petey to all, my Irish mother, Kathleen, slender, looked frail but wasn’t. Two older sisters, Mimi, frail, lightly-freckled and wan herself and Lizbeth, dark ringlet curls, copper-skinned.  One younger sister, short, glasses always until old enough for contacts, lithe, eventually a model, forever known as Chuckie.

Parents started out intensely religious, devout, regular at Mass, loyal to our parish, devoted to the sacramental life of the Church, to all mysteries joyful, luminous, sorrowful, glorious. Later on, quieted somewhat, pull of events, friction, disappointment of life, but neither did without last rites. My father had been a machine operator, made good money, got his right arm chewed up in a CNC machine. Worker’s comp checks and the product liability settlement. My mother worked for the defense department at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Didn’t say exactly what she did, probably wasn’t allowed. Her passion at school was mathematics, a passion which did not transmit to me. Spacious ranch house, breeze room, two-car garage, gazebo surrounded by red and purple azaleas, rhododendrons in back yard. Played summer badminton on the lawn. My father played good badminton with his left arm swinging the racquet like a windmill, his right arm dangling, his injured Italian pride emerged in sending the shuttlecock into orbit.

Some of my daydreams revolved around my friend’s sister. We were children, eleven years old, religious children, Catholic children – but Brigid pulled her skirt up over her knees to show me in the basement. In the dim light, unseen by that cloud of witnesses that always seemed to hang around a Catholic life, I touched her hand. I rested the tips of my fingers on the palm of her hand. She held her hand open for me. We were both shocked by the moment – the electricity of the touch – no one really explained this reverberating sexuality – you experienced it. It ended quickly – somehow the cloud of witnesses re-appeared and we ran up the stairs. Her brother was still in the backyard digging up something. In the kitchen I asked if I had to go home. I don’t know she said and ran into her room. I went out back and her brother asked if I was going to help – there were tunnels, some burrowing creature in the backyard he wanted to hunt down. I helped dig for a while but my mind was elsewhere – not just on his sister, but on some element of life that didn’t seem accounted for in the expansive, well-organized universe I inherited, inhabited.

There were undercurrents in our house that were difficult to understand, erupted without warning. One Saturday morning in late December, for inexplicable reasons, my father decided the cars had to be washed. It was near freezing outside, our neighbors didn’t care, no one cared – everyone’s car had road salt and cinders from melting road-snow and looked grimy. Ours weren’t any better or worse-looking than anyone else’s. My father insisted, shouting that we were all going to wash the cars, especially the wheels and wheel wells. All four of us had to go outside with buckets of water, sponges, soap and rags and get down on our knees to scrub out the wheel wells. My mother was distressed, or ashamed, or angry or sorrowing or retreating into her own feelings whether of guilt, anger, self-pity, righteous indignation, I knew not what – she could keep an inscrutable poker face and I was trying to read everything in her eyes. But she didn’t object so we spent an hour with our hands in near-freezing water rinsing away road grime and salt. Chuckie was crying. We were all miserable, our hands hurt and none of it made sense. But there was never an explanation.

I was riding with my father one day from a little league game and he announced, without preamble, that he wanted to go to confession. So we took the short detour to our church and he did – he had me wait in the car. I waited patiently enough, it was a summer day, I rolled down the window, contemplated my at-bats in the game – on base four times. When he returned he seemed calm, unburdened and we carried on. He didn’t say anything to me, didn’t ask me not to say anything.  I had no reason to talk about it either.  There was something I think my father expected me to get – if you were a man and you did something wrong, you dealt with it. Didn’t cry, didn’t complain, you navigated it. That’s what the Church was for.

When we came in my mother was reading a book by a woman, Jane Wilde, whose name matched her disposition, collecting ancient Irish legends and mystic charms. I remember they were both pretty generous pouring out wine at dinner that night. Near the end of the evening, I thought I saw my mother give my father an evil eye – but like everything else in our family, things happened like unseen riptides.  If something died in our house, be it a pet or a certain feelings among us, there were no headstones marking the grave.

Age 12, my world was expansive, well-ordered by the Catholic Church, by our parish and parochial world, by nuns, priest, deacons, our lay teachers, by a bishop and archbishop and Cardinal somewhere, by my swarming, chattering, exuberant classmates, by the physical building of my school, its playground and ballfields and central standing crucifix, by my baseball team and Catholic lay coach and my father in the stands, by the crucifix on a slender silver chain around my neck never removed.  My world was further defined by mother-demanded diligent scholastics accompanied by religion classes in school with regular questions from her about my progress with special attention if any aspect of Irish literature was in view; by regular Mass attended by both parents and my sisters and generally on Saturday evening and its haunting mysteries and family gatherings where every aunt and uncle and cousin was Catholic, by our priests (always addressed with the title and first name as ‘Father ___ ‘) with their vestments and Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s, by organized prayers and novenas, by a world that presented itself in broad physical display but held also within it a mysterious unseen life and presence.

This sacramental life at age 12 was not altogether lost on me hidden from visible sight though it was.  Even precocious 12-year olds may attune to the central mystery of the Real Presence of our Lord and Savior in the Mass who was raised from the dead and instituted Peter as the first Pope, to the Easter celebrations of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, to the Immaculate Conception and Marian devotions and prayers for the intercession of selected saints for selected problems, by a calendar of feast days and observances for these saints and important events in the life of the Church. Further, there were relics and statuary of Jesus and small groups of people who met who had great interest in such things. 

There were physically detailed white alabaster depictions of the Crucifixion and crosses or crucifixes everywhere, by regular recitations of ancient creeds, by a tension with the world at large which never went away but never got too out-of-hand, by a superintending structure leading right to the Pope, Christ, God, by surrounding Catholic cemeteries with large impressive monuments which seemed just as connected to the entire structure as anything else.  There were spontaneous interactions and informal talks from priests and nuns and deacons because they perhaps sensed I was a bright boy and they always seemed to want to talk to me about something without always being exactly candid as to what that was but they seemed to be sounding me out about my future life interests. It was a very complete world.

In a few years I started fantasizing. No one talked to me about that. My fantasies grew quickly like well-fertilized weeds until they were monstrous, beyond the pale. They swept over me. I didn’t have any way to compare my imagination to anyone else’s – instead, I was restless and sick. I conducted precocious orgies in my 14-year old mind and loathed myself. I was a baseball-playing Orioles sports fan, top student Catholic adolescent in one world – and engaged in gargantuan, deformed sexual fantasies in another. My sexual imagination stretched the limits of reality – or at least I thought so.

My two worlds were not to cross – kept at a distance, until an echo in the brothel of the imagination burst images into my thoughts while sitting in class, or on a dugout bench waiting for my at bat, or while sitting in my living room watching the Orioles. For 60 seconds, for a few minutes, every image of my heart was showered in lust, in physical contortions and penetrations. It went on during Mass with my parents. The ornate tapestries of the church, the singing as we entered, the commencement of the responsive liturgy, the candles, the robes and vestments, the stained glass, statuary and the images, were cardboard backdrops – props in a raunchy theater for one-act porn dramas. My attention separated into compartments; the priest’s words of institution – and lewd performers strutting impudently across the nave – the visible evidence of the grace of God – and corrupted, licentious ghosts carrying on at the altar, invisible to all except me. Inflamed visions never doused – I hid my erections under hymnals and church bulletins. What could I possibly explain to my parents? What would I confess to a priest?

I was filled with shame, in a state of mortal sin. My fantasies were defiled, brutish, orgiastic, humiliating and surely all too satisfying. At night I would bring them to a masturbating conclusion in my bed, guilt-ridden and stained. In my imagination was a baffled, prowling beast, obscene presences moved irresistibly, subtle, murmuring.  One hour a boy becoming a man, taking my at-bats, eating pizza with my team, talking about curve-balls and catcher’s mitts, then in silent, sporadic fantasy and then despair. Life darkened, was a maze of narrow, dirty streets intersecting with whatever was normal, customary – where each succeeding sin accumulated guilt – and then I would re-emerge onto a sunny baseball diamond, to a classroom where I knew the answers, knew who Yeats and Swift and Joyce were and what their major and minor themes were.

Repeated sermons on sanctifying grace did not make one drop of it penetrate to my soul. It made me think more about actual grace, but actual grace was hopeless. I was too ashamed to pray at night. I had neither analytic or theological tools to address any of this, so I concluded that my soul lusted in a rage to seek its own destruction.  And my contact with my world, divided into two distinct pieces, started to drift. My spirit was on a sunny baseball diamond fielding my position, filled with chatter for our pitcher, signaling with my fingers how many outs, where the play was if the batter hit a ground ball to short and the runner on third took off, and hunting whores in a slum for degraded acts.

All this, at the age of 15. And although there were many people around, there were none to say – it’s okay. You’re 15 years old. We get it. We were 15 once too. You don’t have to explain. But nobody said that. I tried a couple of conversations, vague, indirect, with pious, religious people I knew. What I heard was that Mary was the refuge of sinners. She would feel sorry for me. I should pray to Mary. Seek her intercession. Recite the rosary. The glories of Mary would make it better. You were not supposed to question the glories of Mary. People didn’t yell, but their eyes narrowed, the tone of their voices got a little firmer. If you did that, questioned Mary, you were not only not really being Catholic – perhaps you were no longer a nice person – their suspicion was you might be a mean, fundamentally unpleasant young man. You didn’t believe in Our Lady. What kind of person doesn’t like Mary? A rhetorical question with no answer but a very clear point. She’s at the tender heart of our faith. Not even James Joyce questioned Mary.

My two worlds separated wider. The bridge between the two became more slender, tenuous. I was developing some sharp, caustic edges, learned how to mock quietly under my breath while nodding my head reassuringly and saying what my listener expected to hear. You could lay words in front of people to lead them along.  You could hide things.

None of that, at the age of 15, did anything for my imagination run riot. There was no balm in Gilead. Concocted images spun up, lewd cotton candy. While the litany of saints was recited, I had questions. Fear, terror, death, judgment, words blew like a harsh desert wind, like a corpse, feeding rats. A confrontation with a child’s vague notion of God turned into a sinner’s more studied concern. The Judgment Day of God Almighty did not seem so remote.

Where would my imaginary jewel-eyed, scantily-clad harlots flee on that day? Would I carry them with me in my mind to heaven? Would my phantasm paramours squeak like mice in terror and flee?  People in my family, mother, father, even my elder sisters, may have intuited what was going on with me – but they didn’t have a means to recognize, acknowledge, communicate with me either – both our larger culture and family culture imposed a kind of omerta, a law of silence, on sexuality in practice or in thought.

Hell started to take on a more palpable form. Darkness, horror, stench, torment, fire, the company of the damned, mocking devils – deprived of gracious Light, separated from God’s affection, loathing myself. Would I feel sorrow then, too late? Because I would not abandon my unspeakable, polluted, degraded, defiled, vivid but nearly entirely imaginary teenage sins? I began to acquire an interest in the afterlife. An Irish gene inherited from my mother’s literary soul began to perk up at this line of thought. If the Church wasn’t providing a direction perhaps Yeats or Jane Wild would.

Eternity! And hell. A great ticking clock – ever to be in hell, never to be in heaven. I had learned the religious doctrines in the Church in the same way I learned to conjugate Latin verbs – the teaching was engraved in memory but I had little prior need for it. I had much, but not trust. And trust is not so easy for an adolescent – trust takes time, maturity, slow, accumulating experience. As useful as the sacraments might be, they never resolved my imaginary orgies or developed in me any trust that God got it, understood the problem, intended to fix it, wasn’t going to strike me with immediate lightning bolts, had been gracious for a long time to other adolescents who had the same problem and that the solution which might be impossible for a 15-year old would gradually emerge over years and in the meantime it was okay if I continued to play third base and bat clean-up as long as I kept my grades up. I learned that useful message, but later, in a harder school.

My interior landscape was bestial, reeking – convulsed in sex, nauseated in excess – and simultaneously, could be arrested in a moment when I stood up from the bench to get into the on-deck circle. I developed and improved my melodramatic exaggerations –  how my degraded imagination was assuredly ravishing my soul. Who are equal to the Irish in floridly describing their misery? I rehearsed woeful speeches, composed pages of lavish words chastising my incorrigible moral collapse. I resolved to confess – transports of lurid imaginary sin were well-suited for excesses of lurid, emotional guilt.  A poet was born.

Following my father’s example, I resolved to use the resources the Church provided to deal with my problem. But I needed to find an anonymous place to confess my lecherous exploits with squadrons, platoons of nubile, long-legged pornographic actresses. I certainly wasn’t going to expound sordid details in a litany with our home-church priest who knew me, my family, my teachers, my baseball coach, my teammates, for years – Father Jim even came to see our games.

In our Bel Air church there may have been a vow of silence or penitent’s confidentiality – I needed an audience with a confessor who had taken a vow of amnesia. So on some inventive excuse at age 16 I traveled to a more-or-less randomly chosen Catholic church halfway between Baltimore and Washington near Bowie, for a recitation of my licentiousness. That was one advantage of being Catholic – spiritually speaking, the same lineup & batting order are provided nearly everywhere. Even driving down, preparing to confess and repent, to make a clean break with my porn-licentiousness, to cleanse the poison from my spiritual well with a sincere, yet poor/naked/blind wretch’s account, to throw myself on the sweet mercy of God being sacramentally offered to me purely out of His grace, images of lithe young women poured into tight sweaters and very short skirts came into view.

To confess everything! It occurred to me that if word leaked, no matter how improbable that was, my coach would find out, would take me off the starting team and bench me. That would be completely humiliating, soul-crushing. I re-applied my intelligence and resolve – this was important, it was critical to my eternal soul – and there was no way the coach would find out. But how does one start? I was ready to weep for the childlike innocence I thought I had lost. I was still an adolescent – if all my bestial, imaginary sins, my demonic dreams, leading down to the black, cold wasted void, generally took place in 45 minutes, then my confession and repentance, ushering me back into a state of heavenly, radiant grace, so dear to God, should take 45 minutes too.

Long, slow movements of God, soul-measured over decades, were still far beyond me. The acorn was ready to wait 45 minutes to become a mighty oak, halfway between Baltimore and Washington. It never occurred to me that my sexual fantasies were symptoms of something that was both more problematic and more promising – an interior spiritual life is not a game or a joke. I needed to interact with God on another level. Going four-for-four at the plate does a lot for self-esteem, having lurid sex fantasies is negative to that self-esteem, but there are some things that neither of them touch.

I approached the confessional meek and humble of heart. I confessed my sins, Masses missed, prayers not said, lies. Then I began with my sins of impurity. It was quite a list, a lengthy narrative of fantasies, erotic adventures in the mind, couplings, triplings.  Even summarized, it took some time to go through. But I wanted to say everything, to confess the worst. I thought that if I could say these things, I would acquire power over them. I had never previously used hyper-sexualized and indecent language, vocally described such acts in detailed, audible words before, so I stuttered a little – uncharacteristically, as normally I can scatter words, talk to people – the captain of the team giving the pep talk. The priest listened patiently.

I daresay the fact that the priest had never heard me before was not lost on him, that he knew he wasn’t going to hear me again. I blushed at providing descriptions so graphic – but it didn’t work if I didn’t say it plainly. Being vague and general and circumspect was one of the reasons my previous discussions had not been useful – my listeners didn’t really hear me – didn’t really grasp what I was saying. Instead my points and problems were declared explicitly to the young, unknown confessor-priest of the Bowie church, right down to the last-act windshield-appearing, phantasmagorical clinging blouses and skin-tight short-shorts of my ubiquitous imaginary companions.

When I finished the priest did not respond to the lengthiness of my confession. He directed me to an act of contrition, told me to give up my sins. He told me to pray to Our Blessed Lady. He asked me to make a solemn promise to God, not to intentionally repeat my sins. The priest spoke the words of absolution. Then the priest asked me in a calm and serious tone, as part of my penance, to pray also for him and the entire Church, from priest and bishop to Pope and to do so for seven days.  I felt as if I had entered the confessional as one person, but left as another.  I didn’t immediately leave the church, simply found a corner in a back pew to sit.

I completed the prayer for the first day, kneeling, praying in a corner of the dark nave of the church – I felt my prayers ascending from a cleansed heart, like perfume streaming upwards from the heart of a cleansed soul. When I went out, I found the streets glad, even in the dark. I drove home, conscious of grace suffusing through me. I was pardoned. My soul was made fair, holy and happy – it reminded me of being a toddler and my mother reading out loud to me from some Irish writer – I had become a young Dubliner of the spirit.

It was beautiful to be alive in a state of grace, to have and to hold a life of peace and virtue, even forbearance with others. I came home and entered quietly, from happiness. My life had come back, and lay open before me without the interior warfare. I planned to attend regular mass, to lead a life of greater piety. Over the next months my sisters noticed some change in me, observed my altered conduct – they were in a state of some surprise, but since I was less irritable than usual, it was okay with them. If I weren’t snapping at them sarcastically, curling my lip as they claimed – then praise God for that. Every part of creation expressed God’s power and love – and I saw that creation beyond the confines of a baseball field. I made real efforts to resist my uncontrolled fantasy life. Even frequent and violent temptations were proof that my soul was still in God’s grace. I was fighting the good fight.

I could not free myself altogether from a restless feeling of guilt – but I didn’t understand why.  If I conquered my obscene interior fantasy life, didn’t that right all serious, or at least mortal wrongs? Why would there be anything else going on, other than whatever had to do with sexuality and the struggle against that monster?  Someone in our parish life, whom I knew, but not well, Monsignor Stephanos Doudulus, asked me to meet him in his office. Monsignor Doudulus was well into his eighties, frail, slender, a living window into a world that was either entirely past or not past at all, depending on your viewpoint. I was consumed with the thought that some sin of mine had been discovered, ironic now that I had made so much progress overcoming them.  Some anachronistic challenge was going to be presented to my piety.  Even now, my confessions had not been adequate, my sorrowful repentances not sufficiently sincere. Young men can set very high standards for themselves.

Underneath my zeal, I feared the announcement that I had fallen short. How can you amend your life when your sins, even restrained, were escapades into fantastical orgiastic daydreams? It wasn’t just a problem of what I did or what I imagined – it was a problem of who I was – a problem I was far from solving. Perhaps the Monsignor was going to assist. Because I was 16, I did not fully understand that other people were observing me – I did not fully understand that other people had plans, that they were more observant of others than I was, that my self-preoccupations, whether with fantasies or battling them, my self-evaluations, were not everyone else’s perception of me.  Adolescents discover themselves – it takes time to discover others.

Monsignor indicated he wanted to speak on an important subject. His tone of voice was sober, but not angry. His movements inviting me into his office to have a seat were slow, dignified, fragile.  There was a large crucifix on the wall behind him, along with framed mementos of his achievements, awards, honors. Of course I answered respectfully and waited. Have you ever felt that you had a vocation, a calling to the priesthood? he asked. I was floored. I was just barely over, if at all, the most bizarre and grotesque fantasy life. I never thought of becoming a priest, any more than I contemplated growing gossamer wings and flying to the moon.

I was stunned, but one is supposed to answer a respected elder, an ordained, holy priest, so I stammered ‘n – n – n – no, sir.’  Momentarily a stutter had returned. If I had been more alert – if I had paid much attention to what anybody else was thinking and spent any effort trying to understand that – I might not have been so shocked.  But one non-sexual consequence of my interior life was that, without meaning to be selfish, I was entirely preoccupied with myself.  I never saw anybody’s signals.  So Monsignor’s question dropped me. I should have read the perceptions of others better – another way of saying I shouldn’t have been 16 years old, but I was.

He spoke quietly – sometimes there is a boy whom I observe, who it may be possible, that God is calling to the religious life. When I see a boy marked off from his companions by his piety, by his intelligence, by the good example he sets for others, I pay attention. I have prayed for you – did you know that? (Of course I did not.) I have prayed for your vocation and God’s direction life. Perhaps you are that boy, a young man now, whom God designs to call to Himself. To receive that call is a great honor.

I could not connect, not even in the remotest reach of my imagination, me, taking confessions, celebrating the mass, instituting the eucharist, invested in priestly robes, calling the congregation to prayer, dismissing them. I would know the sins of others, hear them in the confessional. I was being considered – I was being invited. Would that mean I had to stop playing baseball? And what if I became a priest, and had a bad day, a bad week, of sexual fantasies? I had just struggled to climb across one imposing cliff – celibacy would be another.

I was confronted with something else, not sexual, not even Monsignor’s invitation to consider a religious vocation.  I stopped being a boy on that day, although it would be years before I became a man – what kind of person was I?  A phrase came to mind out of an old book, one that became an indecent movie – a clockwork orange.  I did not know who or what I was at that point but I knew that the answers being provided to me were superficial. I was not a clockwork boy. That much I saw – with the shock of having been blindfolded and walked up to a great cliff and suddenly having the blindfold removed. All of it – baseball – school – raw unbridled fantasy sex – the invitation to consider the priesthood – all of it, was like a saddle being fitted on me, one saddle after another – but the horse wanted to know what the rider was like, without the saddle.

But you have to be quite sure, the Monsignor told me – you must be sure you have a vocation. It would be terrible to be mistaken. Once you are ordained as a priest, you are always a priest. When I left his office I felt flattered, but escaping like a bird flying from a cage, a rabbit outrunning the fox exhilarated by the near calamity.  If his question seemed to him an invitation – something to consider – it appeared to me, astonished at his apparent judgment of me, the jaws of a trap.

Not having religion was dangerous – demonic fantasies took over your mind.  But having religion was dangerous too – people might lay heavy burdens, enormous obligations onto your back. I felt nostalgic for just being a kid – wanting to be ten years old, with nothing more important to do than field some grounders, shag a few fly balls hit by my father in our back yard. I began to be guarded, seeing snares in every direction – ropes on all sides. I started looking for a new way out.

I took a survey of my interior life and for once, dropped sports out. My mother was the intellectual one – she was the one who tutored in me analytic geometry, who knew every Irish writer’s biography, who dropped their books casually around the house which I read equally casually. Math was not my cup of tea and I knew by then the Orioles were never going to draft me for their farm team.  Where to go?  And then the answer seemed obvious and natural, the way I casually picked up every book around the house to read, without giving it any importance, just something to do between baseball games and school.  I was going to be a writer, a poet forging a new being, myself, soaring out of the sluggish dirt of the infield.  Right or wrong, smart or dumb, it was mine – my direction.  No one handed that to me. 

Wild ambitions passed through me. I was floating, soaring in new air. I would escape incorrigible imagination and the straightjacket of obligations, trudging penances, rites, dawn prayers, the must, the should, the ought.  I was keenly aware of how undisciplined my imagination was – I was not yet aware how undisciplined my conscience was.  So at 16, making serious decisions for the first time in my life, not simply handing up my ticket to be punched by someone else, I came to my own conclusions and consulted no one. I would flee the vengeful oversight of Catholic conscience, marking and indicting guilty sin, beating the drumbeat of duty.  Whatever remedies there were to life, I would discover them elsewhere. I would create and self-create instead.

With a wild new song in my veins, something different, an anger, lurked in my heart. Soon after I had a confrontation with my little sister Chuckie over trivia – borrowing my team jacket and throwing it on the floor in her room. I lashed out at her and called her a stupid little twat. It wasn’t just the words – she cried because of the truly hateful tone of my voice, the contempt leaping up and out to hurt. The family was outraged at me – I was grounded for a week. My older sisters were going their own way too, for reasons not identical to mine, but related. At the core of our family, some things were cracked. I started writing poetry and submitting it to literary journals – it was always rejected, but occasionally I got some encouraging notes and my English teacher handed me top grades and personal accolades. When it came time for teacher recommendations on college application forms, she wrote a lengthy, sincere recommendation that discussed several of my poems – as if I were a real writer.

There were other elements of my character to be discovered. Teenage boys purloin alcohol – generally, as long as no one is driving around drunk, a misdemeanor, a venial sin, not a felony.  An appetite, a taste on my tongue, a thirst, emerged.  Not altogether shocking – not the first of Irish descent who lifted a cup and didn’t stop. I had a new highway now, saw a new road sign – poetry, artistry, creation. I would be a writer – a title held in high honor. It did not occur to me that the problems I was having with Catholicism, with its looming duties, with my own imagination, with family fissures never surfaced, with a stillborn spiritual life, related to anyone else.  I did not know and did not think to ask whether anyone else may have had such problems. Nobody knew what was going on in my mind and I didn’t say.  What transpired in my interior life might be misguided, naïve, but it wasn’t childish – some problems are, indeed, hard.

My exit from family and home to enter college was short in geography, long in psychological distance. I  quietly prepared during my senior year – took the largest financial aid package offered by a nearby college without murmuring or lengthy consideration, because I thought it peripheral anyway – I had another direction in view.  Come away, o human child! To the waters and the wild – with a faery hand in hand, for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. So said Yeats and conjured for me a parting song. Christian religion made an insensate foil for passions, fantasies, Irish legends – my mother’s occasionally strange Irish nationalism, buried for years, erupting in a moment, extended into a plan.

On leaving home without my baseball gear, my father resorted to a kind of paisano, barefoot Italian boy identity, fueled with wine, lost in space staring out a window like a man staring at the Abbey of Monte Cassino after it was bombed to ruins. Just as in the battle, his enemies were hiding in the rubble, more fortified and intractable than ever. Dark folk were gathering in my soul like bats in dead trees. Yeats would lead me out to Tara, where faeries danced under the Druid moon to tunes danced in an enchanted circle. Ireland was the excuse, not the reason – the point was escape. Yeats wanted to escape In the Beginning, wanted to leave the Nicene creed behind. His everlasting Voices called. I heard them too.  My fertile imagination took off running in a new direction.  Partial poems, shards of lines, emerged unbidden.

A silent man with a hazel wand came forth out of the past to change me.
In the darkness I met the Boar, grunting,
rooting out the sun and the moon,
bringing in the end of the world like a suicide pact.
The Horses of Disaster plunged into the clay,
shadowy, clinging, creeping, weeping,
sighing as the West passed away.
Yes, it was possible after all to enter the twilight of another world,
the Valley of the Black Pig.
Unknown spears. Fallen horsemen. Perishing armies. Seen through a flaming door.
The most drunken were the most blessed.

Dreams were defeated and reborn, reignited –
the stars blown about by enchanted vapors.
The only thing holy was the wine-vat.
Red dew flamed in a windless world on a grey shore.
I could pass by Christ, an immortal passion in mortal clay,
could bend down to loosen my hair over him,
a lily of death-pale hope, rose of a passion, but I wasn’t going to stop there.

Spiritualism loves playing the tourist with the Gospel.  Death was more than an invitation, it was romance, it was command. Were you but lying cold and dead, rhymed Yeats to his beloved, and lights were paling in the West.

I knew of leafy paths that witches take – knew their secret smile.
I knew of the soul-swans, coupled with golden chains,
the hopeless king and queen, wandering, deaf, blind.
I sailed in a shroud and steered from a gaudy stern.
I saw the crowds on the shore running nowhere
as I left them in a wooden ship.
I cried in the glittering sea, searching in ecstasy for Death.

I was fickle, I needed no constant or guiding star. I was free, I could drift in and out of life, in and out of the church, or faith. I looked for a light beyond the grave and hoped to find something to replace what was lost. I could drink with whatever poet-girl was there at the moment. We could get sloppy drunk, fall into each other’s arms, pass out after a short fiery passion, find ourselves queasy in the morning marinating in raw smells with not much to say and little reason to speak. There were no rules – not in my Ireland-of-the-imagination – more unconstrained than ever.  As it turned out, actual sex was never quite equal to my previous fantasies, but I had moved to different realms anyway.

I wanted to change the tune, to turn my flesh to its native-wild state, on the galloping horse of spiritualist poetry, defiant, unconverted, pagan. Sent out naked on the roads, punished, stricken by the injustice of cold heaven. Uncontrollable mysteries to find, secrets to peer into, crypts pried open to gain hidden knowledge.  I was learning to hate life.  Life was noisy, life was filthy. The cradle was an insult, an accident. Everything I once held of value was but a pissing post for dogs. I pissed on life, a perfumed silk purse of filth – or at least, that’s what I thought I did, at the ripe old age of 21. And I drank. Drank myself sick, drank myself nearly blind. I expressed anger by getting drunk and cured my sorrow by staying drunk.  Remarkedly, my intoxication did not affect my grades.  Even hung over, I showed up in class, made a few comments, asked a few questions, which compared so favorably to other students that my grades were stellar.

Gone drunk, I straggled onto barren ridges past the goat trails where daemons convened.  Sober, I was depressed.

Long wavering bodies on the moon,
crone-witches, centaurs, Irish giants, as fantastical as ever,
came, dissolved, all vanished.

Left was a bitter headache, a sick stomach under a timid, ignorant sun.  Life was wanton, its flailing end the repository of knowledge of its pointlessness. Ghost-alone, I haunted a sandy bank. To be a poet, Irish-American, awakened from the common stale dream to dissipation, occult legends sketched with gargoyles – presented in loquacious, highly ornate words of despair, a spired and collonaded tower for poetical goblins.  

I called out to mysterious persona, my imaginary double,
walking wet sands, whispering poetry, hidden like night raptors.
Floating on whiskey, I crossed bridges where a tower cast a shadow,
images delirious under shifting phases of a spell-cast moon –
heard a rat splashing under rushes,
my destiny.
Each phase of the moon filled with cryptic significance –
creeping, crawling, unveiled eyes reflecting in the slime.
Dark moons, full moons, new moons, crescent moons –
arcane knowledge kissed on a spectral channel.
Death I courted, death I chose through phases of the moon.
Walking corpse bearing Cu Chulainn’s hero’s crescent –
then helpless, then frenzied,
still falling into the labyrinth of self.

I was too strange, too lonely for the traffic of my college life, cast away beyond the pale of evening coherence. Properly drunk, posted between a tower of Jamison and a pint of Guinness, I was the voluble and colorful poet in my isolation.  In the morning, the body was coarse, the body was a drudge, a deformity dragging down free flight beyond the verge.  A few pills helped.

Somewhere dark I cried out, a cave-bat.
Changing my body in dream after Tarot dream.
The last crescents of the moon were the hunchback, the saint, the fool.
I dealt the cards, I spread them out, read them to find
the Major Arcana, the Minor Arcana,
my card, the magus-hermit.
Yeats led me to the castle door, I saw the light in the tower extinguish.
I was burning, raving, broken on the wheel.
Obedient to the hidden magical breath of his poetry.
I saw a dead girl dreaming, dancing.
I saw the sphinx lash her tail, eyes lit by the moon, gazing.
We spun like tops, time overthrown.
My body was meat with a beating pulse,
caught between the dark moon and the full.

I lived willfully in my self-ruined house. On and on it went – I published first poems, graduated, obtained a Master’s, was hired as adjunct faculty in Binghamton NY. The next year, Knoxville, the year after that a position in San Jose, where I stayed longer. The itinerant non-tenured associate professor-writing instructor, have resume, have publications, will travel.

While dragons sheltered within a foul world,
screaming, terrified, invisible beasts or birds,
alcohol fueled nights, pill-driven days.
A spider spinning webs, laying stinging traps for pain,
creative paralysis, death of the poet.
Anything I loved too greatly was to be taken away.

My life, falling – my center could not hold – lacked all conviction, my worst impulses empowered a passionate intensity. I saw a different Second Coming – not the Son of Man, selfless love, motived to self-sacrifice, his blood for purification –

I saw the beast of this world, disjointed head of man,
bleak, pitiless in his expression, ponderously approaching.
Indignant, desert birds screeched – darkness dropped for me.
Electro-shock sleep, convulsed nightmares,
advanced to announce another rough beast.
Its hour finally arrived, slouching toward me and all that was mine –
the second waiting to be born of the first.

I drank more, collected Egyptian books of the dead, gathered grimoires to myself, read the incoherent nonsense of Nostradamus, tutored myself on crystals and the astral plain, probed deeper into the knowledge of death.

Still, I was writing poetry. I was going to conferences to listen, read my own poetry, network, drink. For a couple years I had no teaching position, lived in various places in Wyoming, supported myself doing odd jobs in sparsely-populated locations set in the foreground of astonishing mountain ranges, and concentrated on writing poetry, drinking nightly and studying the occult. Conferences could be fun, until they closed the bar and lonely I had to go back to my hotel room. I met Lenny at a conference in Reno and had some fun with him.

Trumpets play – no country for old men,
the derelict song – no refuge for young men either
where every fantasy begotten, dies.
The gin-kamikaze gnosis insatiable, a tumescent chase
never satisfied.

Always one more salt wet fetish to pursue,
one more occult-erotic image to capture.
Yet another ghost in fishnet stockings,
platform shoes, nine-inch heels, cherry lips, imperious eyelashes
calling.

Statuesque, she beckons, thanatosis-Kilimanjaro secrets
across the dune-guarded coast highway,
down to the freckled beach,
to dark water, rolling ribbons of moon-colored dancing whitecaps.
down.

Cultivate the Mor-Rioghain nymphomanic,
lipsticked crow-smile across her grimacing skull,
floating across breaking waves,
swimming away to a thrumming drumming metronome, deeper.
Always deeper.

Peek. The next occult secret was hovering, peering
from behind a half-closed illuminati door.
The first-promised apple, yes.
She entices, further reveals her curled, intimate privacy to the initiated.
Disrobing, yes.

Old men go under the ocean.
Young ones are called too – yes, now,
go down, fool – yes,
go under.

After my adventure with Lenny I wrote that poem. As it turned out, my communications with Lenny were going to outlast any conference.

After my sojourn across Wyoming I found another teaching position at a second-tier university campus in Colorado, then in Florida the next year, a continuation of house-sitting in a series of professor’s homes left empty while they took sabbaticals.  I liked rambling around in towns with undergraduate bars, tucked-away clever coffee shops, a few sophisticated restaurants, admissions offices, multi-purpose gymnasiums, field houses, classrooms in old buildings, new classroom buildings for the science department, buildings under repair for liberal arts or being constructed within sight of new student dormitories.

My labyrinthian perches of solitude went with me. I was in a polite rage to murder the swans, but in a sensitive, literary way, a mockery of everything. Street-light shadows sketched me across moonlit alleys that provided the rear, parking-lot exit from whichever blue-collar bar was the current choice.  For all of that, I didn’t mind teaching freshmen about American lit and poetry – if I got to move the topic and talk about Yeats or Joyce, I really didn’t mind. Life wasn’t all bad, even with the hangovers.  I kept writing my own poetry, perhaps obscure, perhaps unread – satisfying anyway.  That gave me pleasure too.

For reasons that have no clear explanation, I decided to visit a Pentecostal church one Sunday evening. I was thinking of poems and wanted to throw the Pentecostals in as characters, foils.  I was searching yet unwilling to admit what I was doing. Whatever the combination of motives, I played the tourist, the poet-anthropologist visiting a distant and obscure tribe.  True believers were hidden in a cultural jungle whose ways and customs were grist for my poetry mill.  I could be intellectual, analytic, condescending – and what is more fun than that?

I encountered a mass of people about 75, that appeared to me to be all related, some of whom had extraordinary voices (apparently their arcane customs included musical training). They were being led in song from old hymnals – they used two different sets so the number of the hymn had to be identified in the two separate hymnals, with a brief discussion if the stanzas didn’t perfectly match. The worship space, a rambling 19th-century home converted to church uses, was loaded with children, strewn across couches and up stairsteps, infants in arms, teenagers listening, kicking from behind my chair until I had to politely ask her to stop, which she equally politely did. They were led by a pastor in his mid-sixties and it appeared his parents, based on the visible family relationship, was looking over a clan that might equal Abraham’s.

A chair was quickly found for me, a book handed to me, and I started singing too, quite astonished at this family’s musical sophistication, the participation of so many different ages and stages of singing people, the infants being held in many arms. On some printed material appeared the name Overcoming Church of El Shaddai, our Rock and Core.  I was sitting on a folding aluminum chair, had put my hymnal down for a moment, they were dancing in a circle in front with the pastor joining in.

Instantly I was overwhelmed with the presence of God. !Fear! of God.
Fear-awe, fear-dread, fear-raw in its power turned me around –
I knelt.  Faced toward the chair, my back to the altar and the dancers, my head bowed.
Praying in abject Fear with my folded hands on the chair seat.
I had no thoughts, searched no explanations, a man struck and driven by a tsunami.
I could not bend my head down far enough –
the seat of the chair stopped me from bending my neck down any further.
If there had been room I would have fallen flat on my face prostrated.
I don’t remember the words I whispered in prayer – whatever the form or content,
all they really expressed was !Fear, raw, overwhelming Fear of the Lord
who had shown Himself spiritually revealed, exposed, to me,
to me, emotional, spiritual presence-power that permitted neither comparison or explanation. The experience could not have lasted longer than two or three minutes. The wave of emotion passed, my head bobbed up like a swimmer coming up for air. No one was paying attention to me.

I gathered myself, stood up, turned around, and reseated myself on my chair, trembling. After a few moments I picked up the hymnal again but I had no idea what hymn we were singing. The dancers hadn’t stopped. I sat there, quietly stunned. Again I looked around – no one around me seemed to think anything unusual had happened at all.  The lack of attention was almost as astonishing as the experience – as if an ethereal grenade went off which was perceived nowhere, touched no one, except to blast me.  I had the sensation that my mother stood next to me, observing curiously, sympathetically, with a touch of parental satisfaction, but offering no comment or explanation.

At the end of the service I shook a few hands, accepted a few invitations to return, and made my way back to my rented off-campus house. The effect of this experience on me was more subtle, slower, than one would expect from such an onslaught. The experience quieted my soul. I didn’t immediately join a church, but I began drinking less. I didn’t, legally or illegally, refill my prescription of wake-up pills. I began to read different books – some books on the philosophy of religion. I still drank, but with less compulsion to drink myself into oblivion. I became a quieter person. The raw fear of God woke up something or somebody in my soul. I read the Bible at times, the Gospels, rather as if they were literature – but literature which now interested me, different than the mandatory reading from the lectern at a Sunday service.

At one point I read Jesus’ words, “fear God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”  Of course I’d heard those words before, was familiar with them. The idea of having my body destroyed was acceptable – of course that’s what death was, the destruction of the body. That’s where I’d been going with alcohol anyway –  I rehearsed for the event every night. But the destruction of the soul captured my attention – I’d more or less expected to drink myself into one last stupor ending in eternal unconsciousness – my little life rounded with a sleep.  But if my soul were being destroyed – how did that work?

It seemed as if my soul continued, if it continued being destroyed.  And instead of discouraging or angering me, oddly, it created a kind of hope. Perhaps death wasn’t the end.  Perhaps the dialogue with God continued.  I’d rather not have my soul eternally destroyed, but the eternally continuing nature of this dialogue, with this Lord whom I had just met, had a personal experience with, intrigued me.  Without making any giant decisions, my visits to barrooms decreased from once a night to once or twice a week – and I began visiting churches, picked at random. I was no longer the poet-anthropologist studying the peculiar customs of the local indigenous tribes – I was a worshipper too.  An obscure worshipper, stepping into and out of the church like a shadow, but there was nothing wrong with that.  It was the same way I wrote poetry.

I visited the local Catholic church too, so familiar to me. Of course I knew my way around and I took the sacrament, celebrated the Eucharist too. I was glad, it was comfortable. But it was a group setting – the Host was consecrated for the group, the priest invited us up as a group, we were blessed as a group. The experience was a group, a collective activity. I fully credited every word and declaration the priest said, every song, every confession, accepted every blessing, made my offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, thought the people were warm, the service was holy.

But something had happened to me – to me.  My connection with the Lord was personal, fearful but intimate for that reason.  The fear of God was a communication in a breakfast booth for two, not a ceremony in a great conference hall with hundreds gathered for a great feast.  If I had the bacon and eggs of fear of the Lord, sitting in a small breakfast booth, then it was the two of us, face to face.  He was communicating to me, with me, no one else, me – and the continuation of that unique, deeply personal relationship was implied in my soul and declaring itself in my mind.

Although I was a kind of mysterious stranger in various small independent churches, I began communicating with distant people via email based on posts they made, things they wrote I read. My religious discussions were always via electronic communication – that’s how Lenny and I started communicating. He had questions to ask, was affected by our mutual drunken adventure seeking out the afterlife on the astral plane in the Pacific Ocean. I thought the whole thing was a caustic lark, an elaborate practical joke for which he was the perfect foil.

But he started asking me questions as if I had answers.  In answering him, I was answering myself.  So I carried on in question and answer with him. I visited tiny little churches and heard a broad variety of sermons, participated in a wide assortment of worship practices, bowed my head for many prayers. I missed sometime the universality of a large church with its sacramental life with a fixed liturgy and fellow congregants all around the world.  I remembered my visit to Bowie for anonymous confession there. I read my thought-provoking, eclectic philosophies of religion.  I wrote poetry that was mine, unique, not in imitation of others and made new applications for other non-tenured literature instructor positions. And I treasured the fear of God – who in one instant shocked and frightened me, turned me around to kneel in a room of people who paid no attention – to call me out of my highly-individualized, poet-of-the-latter-day-Yeats coffin.

From there I arrived with a new position in San Diego and found gone-for-sabbatical temporary housing in extraordinarily scenic La Jolla.  After some period of visiting churches I found a large evangelical church which seemed to fit. I didn’t talk to anyone about my experience of the fear of God. It was an experience beyond words, without words.  This church organized its activities – they had a baseball team and they let me try out without asking me a lot of questions. They asked if I ever played before and I answered some and they asked what position and I said third and they said well here’s a glove go ahead we’ll hit you a few grounders and directed me toward third. It was a well-equipped church – they had a nice field with real dugouts and even some bleachers. They hit me a few easy ones, then they kind of looked at each other and hit me a few harder ones. After about ten of those they said, okay, third, and I was on the team.

The left fielder was one of the associate pastors of the church named Brooks, from Little Rock and still had some of his Arkansas accent. We would come a little early before games and loosen up with some throws from left field to third and back. One day when he came back in I asked him what was involved in getting baptized in the church. They did baptism by full immersion a couple of times a year and once a year in August they did it in the Pacific ocean. I asked him if it was a problem that I was already baptized. I didn’t say Catholic but my last name probably gave it away. He said no because the point was my adult commitment, my confession and declaration in public now.

I told him I wanted to think about it. Not only was I taught that one baptism performed by the church was the right baptism, but it was the only baptism. But I didn’t want to have a theological disagreement in my head. This wasn’t a theology debate. My experience at the Overcoming Church of El Shaddai had changed me.  I didn’t have words for the change, but I wasn’t on a first name basis with any bartender in San Diego either. I had stayed out of baseball for a while, years, but when I was ready to try out for the team, then I did so. If you’re going to play for the team, you get a glove, you walk onto the field.

I didn’t wait for the ocean baptism experience. After a couple of weeks I told Brooks I was ready and I got dunked on a Sunday morning and made my profession of faith. Brooks performed the baptism and asked me as we were beginning, with me standing in front of the congregation, why I wanted to be baptized, to make this public confession of my faith. My answer was my own, maybe a little surprising, even to Brooks.

I fear God, I said loudly for people to hear, with no stuttering. Who can cast both body and soul into hell.  Jesus is my Lord and my Savior too.  Brooks nodded and smiled, the way he did when he first saw me trying out for third base. Then he did what he was there for as a called and ordained minister and I presented myself to be publicly, maturely and volitionally acted upon, which is what I was there for.  This was full immersion, three times, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost – all the way under – Brooks made sure of that.

After I was baptized I told a couple of people, including Lenny, still unmoved from his mountaintop or jail or nest in Cornfield. He started to ask some questions from time to time which were a little startling, at least out of my area. He asked isn’t everything we do the product of our minds? Why is rational thought different than what you call revelation? I struggled to answer that. Another he asked – why wouldn’t my set of feelings about my religion, whatever it is, be fundamentally any different or better or worse than yours? I decide for myself, you accept what someone else says – is there really any difference? Aren’t we all limited by our sense data anyway? Another question – Doesn’t language define or constrain reality? Or at least what is possible? Then he asked – do you think there are forms? Like ideal forms – you know the form of a cat, which all cats share? Or do you think there are forms in language, so it makes sense to say Socrates is a man, or Socrates is mortal, or even Socrates is my pet cat – but it doesn’t make sense to say Socrates is an isosceles triangle – because the interior structural forms of reality and language are shared?

He asked if I thought Plato’s experience in the beginning of The Republic, talking with his friends about an ideal city, was like Moses’ experience in the desert at the burning bush. At least I had some answers for that, had a personal experience I could relate to. All I can say is I did my best to answer him – but more important was for him to articulate the question, to ask. My answers weren’t that important. He was working out answers in his head. He asked if I agreed with John Stuart Mill about liberty and freedom of speech and development of the self. Then he asked about the death of Mills’ wife – and although I can’t remember my answer, I remember thinking he was digging deeper into his own questions, questions we mortal beings all share. At times he was like an inquisitive 8-year old, asking his questions non-stop, like a phase my sister Chuckie went through, just to hear me answer, without much concern for the content of any particular answer. He asked if there weren’t some single, moral categorical rule we should all follow. He asked if I thought that such a rule would make an ideal society. He asked what was wrong with Thomas Jefferson crossing out the miracles in the New Testament.

When he asked questions about poetry I was better at answering. He asked me if I thought Walt Whitman loved America. He asked the same question about Allan Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath. He asked if Holden Caulfield was supposed to be a Christ figure. He asked what it meant for some literary figure to be a Christ figure – why did we keep seeing that? Why was it important? He asked if I liked Faulkner, asked if I read As I Lay Dying. He didn’t ask anything about Hemingway. He asked if I liked Charles Bukowski and I remember struggling to answer that, not because I didn’t understand the man or his poetry, but because I understood it too well. He asked if I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry – another one I struggled with, because of my associations and curiosities about things occult. Giving him answers that separated the poet from a spirit of death or despair or unbelief was no small task. He asked if I liked Edgar Lee Masters and Spoon River Anthology with its cast of characters and theological speculations, and William Carlos Williams and his book Paterson and mixing poetry and prose together. I mentioned Louise Glueck.  Lenny wore me out with questions.

One day he asked again about my baptism. Whatever answer I made, then he switched topics and announced he was going to be attending a conference in San Diego in August and asked if it were okay if he stayed with me. And as it turned out, he was baptized that August. I was still working out some things on my own, about my own poetry, my own career. I had some questions too and occasionally talked them over with Brooks. Some of them had to do with small churches, and big churches, and a universal church. The Son of God, who saved me from the wrath of God by means of the fear of God, was unwrapping a scroll. I didn’t have all the answers I wanted either but I had enough to go forward and step out onto the field, ready to handle my position.
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The post Four Introspective Saints appeared first on Right From The Hip.

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First, a poem, by way of warming up:

O Mary, Bounce on your Donkey

I didn’t send an angel to make an astonishing announcement.
Didn’t overshadow myself with the Holy Spirit.
Didn’t convince my betrothed I wasn’t unfaithful.
An angel did that, in a dream.
I just bounce along on the donkey.

I didn’t issue an edict that all the world should appear for a census.
Caesar August did that. Quirinius obeyed – governor now.
Didn’t order that we should all go to our hometown to register.
Came to register with Joseph, to our hometown.
My whole job – bounce along on the donkey.

I don’t know where we’re going to stay.
Joseph doesn’t look too happy about our prospects.
There’s not much I can do.
Didn’t make myself Jewish.  Or even a young woman.
All I do is manage the labor pains – and bounce on the donkey.

Didn’t issue promises to Abraham, or rescue Isaac or wrestle
an angel with Jacob. Didn’t meet God in the desert like Moses.
The promises made were passed on to me; didn’t hear them for myself.
Took them to heart, I heard and believed.  My receiving
but not my doing. What I do is bounce along on the donkey.

Wasn’t there when Isaiah counseled Hezekiah about the Assyrians.
Wasn’t there when the Babylonians took us off to exile. Daniel had
visions about the Son of Man. When we came back from exile, didn’t
rebuild Jerusalem. Alexander conquered the world and spread the Greek
language, Greek ideas across vast miles. I bounce one step at a time.

The Romans came and built roads, crushed enemies.  Including us. They
instituted laws, harsh, efficient to impose them. They conquered peoples,
created vassal states, imposed the Pax Romana. At least we can travel
the roads safely.  Didn’t do any of that. There was rebellion against Rome
and bloodshed.  Wasn’t there. My job is to be pregnant riding on a donkey.

Perhaps when this child is born, I’ll sing a song. Perhaps when this child is born
we will be delivered out of the hands of the Romans. The angel made some
extravagant promises.  I haven’t forgotten one. But now my sole duty and
only job, the one thing to do for this kicking son, for Joseph – for us and
for the Jews – for the whole world, is to bounce carefully on this donkey.

Someday your kicking son, now grown, a wedding guest, is going to say to you,
“Woman, why do you bother me?  My time is not yet come.”  Overheard.
And because you knew him well, you will give a surprising answer.
“Do whatever he tells you.” Whatever the servants thought, they did as they were told.
You did not debate your son.  You understood, you knew the power he held.

Jesus had two more terse statements to make – one to you, and one to John.
“Woman, here is your son.”  That will be on a day when a sword is piercing
your own heart as well.  The depth of that piercing would fill many poems.
“Here is your mother.”  In agony on the cross, Jesus spoke to his beloved disciple, 
making one last disposition of love  –  ending a most memorable ride
on a donkey.  One for you, and one for him.   Yes, welcome into our home.

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                                        Daniel’s Prayer 

(prepared as a 10-minute Bible Study for PrayerWorks at Christ Community Church.  If done in a group setting, suggest that people take turns reading the italicized portions.)

The prophet Daniel was deeply concerned about the Jewish people exiled in Babylon and so he prayed. Beginning in the middle of Daniel’s prayer, after he recited some history in his prayer in Dan. 9:15-19.:

 Now, Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong. Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us.

Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.

An angel, Gabriel, comes to give an explanation to Daniel, while he was speaking, praying, confessing, and making his requests. Gabriel’s explanation starts by saying,
Seventy sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression,
to put an end to sin,
to atone for wickedness,
to bring in everlasting righteousness,
to seal up vision and prophecy and
to anoint the most holy.
Gabriel’s explanation has been the subject of much discussion and at times, differing interpretations. Daniel had questions.
I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked,
My lord, what will the outcome of all this be? Dan. 12:8.
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The prophet Habakkuk starts his book with some difficult questions.

How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ But you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?

Habakkuk waited patiently for his answer. Then he received an answer he did not expect, but understood well.

The Lord answered: “I am raising up the Babylonians, that bitter and hasty people, who sweep across the whole earth . . . guilty men, whose own strength is their god.” Hab: 1:6, 9.

Habakkuk knew what that meant for Israel.

I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound;
Decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.

Hab. 3:16

Habakkuk received a further, unexpected answer to his questions:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
Though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

Hab. 3:17-19
____________________

In his letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul had something to say about spiritual Judaism:

“To be a Jew is not just to look like a Jew, and circumcision is more than a physical operation. The real Jew is the one who is inwardly a Jew, and the real circumcision is in the heart – something not of the letter but of the Spirit. A Jew like that may not be praised by man, but he will be praised by God.” Rom. 2:28-29.

Paul also wrote about topics that involved having answers to our many questions to God. Rom. 11:32-33:

For God has imprisoned all men in disobedience,
so he could have mercy on them all.
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out!
 For who can know the mind of the Lord?
Who has been his counselor?”

Three men were concerned about God’s will and had questions for God. Daniel didn’t fully understand his answer, even after an angel appeared to explain. Habakkuk understood the answer he received, but it wasn’t what he wanted or expected to hear.  In fact it was all too clear – it was deeply disturbing. The Apostle Paul praised God for a divine wisdom and knowledge beyond anyone’s understanding and beyond any particular answers. Yet all of them – one who didn’t understand, one who did, and one who jumped past human understanding – were circumcised in the heart by the Spirit, Jews perhaps not to be praised by men, but to be praised by God.
_________________________

We worship and know Jesus, the One who holds, guides and directs the outcome of all our questions.

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. . . .

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

Rev. 6:1, 8:1.

Our prayers may have different answers – at least at times and for some time – but they go to the same God.
Rev. 19:11, 16.

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. . . .

On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

We pray whether we have our immediate, sought-after answers or not – whether or not we like, or understand, the answers which do come. We are to be circumcised in our hearts by the Spirit and become inwardly as Jews, with the true, interior circumcision of faith, and trust in God.  Then we have feet like a deer, for the heights.

Then we can be praised by God. And we have our answer to all questions because our Lord Jesus opens the 7^th seal. He absolutely has, holds and directs the future – which is sure, because it is done.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. . . . It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. 
Amen, come, Lord Jesus.

Rev. 21:1, 6
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                                        Repentance

David. Repentance restores our relationship with God. David’s relationship with God was broken after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. David’s prayer of repentance is a model we can all follow. He does not defend or excuse his conduct – he doesn’t wallow in guilt either. He looks to God, who can act in connection with his conduct, his conscience, his soul and his spirit.

Have mercy on me, O God,
According to your unfailing love;
According to your great compassion
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
And cleanse me from my sin.

Do not cast me from your presence
Or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
And grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

In your good pleasure make Zion prosper;
build up the walls of Jerusalem.
Then there will be righteous sacrifices,
Whole burnt offerings to delight you;
Then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Psalm 51: 1-2, 11-12, 18-19. What is interesting is that an intensely personal prayer of David’s will end with a prayer to God about a city, about Jerusalem of the future, where there will righteous sacrifices, a symbol of our right relationship with God.

Jonah. The word of the Lord came to Jonah, and commanded him to go preach in Ninevah. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and found a ship for a distant place. A violent storm arose, so violently that the ship’s captain despaired, after throwing all the cargo overboard to try and save the ship. So he rebuked Jonah:

How can you sleep?
Get up and call on your god!
Maybe he will take notice of us,
And we will not perish.

The sailors knew that some curse had come upon them, and determined to cast lots to find out why.

“Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. Jonah answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” This terrified them.

“What have you done?” they asked him. What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

Jonah acknowledged his sin, the beginning of his repentance. Actions have consequences.

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm.
I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

From inside the belly of the whale, Jonah’s prayer of repentance was heard.

“In my distress I called to the LORD,
And he answered me.
From the depths of the grave I called for help,
And you listened to my cry.

You hurled me into the deep,
Into the very heart of the seas,
and all the currents swirled about me;
All your waves and breakers have swept over me.

Jonah went to the great city of Ninevah and preached the message God gave him. The Ninevites believed Jonah and believed his message from God. They declared a fast and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. Jonah was angry the city wasn’t destroyed. God had sent him a vine to protect him from the sun; then took the vine away. Jonah was angry about the vine. In fact, Jonah declared he was angry enough to die.

“But the Lord said, ‘You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

Jonah 4:10-11. The message of God is never arrested because the compassion of God is never limited.

Nahum. What started with Jonah and his intensely personal flight from the word of the Lord, ended with a great city. Finally though, Nineveh fell away from repentance and the worship of the Lord. Nahum would deliver a final prophecy over Ninevah, completing the warning of the Lord.

Woe to the city of blood,
Full of lies,
Full of plunder,
Never without victims!

Nothing can heal your wound;
Your injury is fatal.
Everyone who hears the news about you
claps his hands at your fall,
for who has not felt,
your endless cruelty?

Nahum 3:1, 3:19.

The Seven Churches of Asia. In the New Testament, the Seven Churches in the province of Asia are called to repentance: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. They are real churches which existed then, but John’s message intends us to hear because they are also a symbol for all our churches, which exist now.

The seven Churches are commended for their strengths, encouraged in their trials, but also called to repentance for their shortcomings:

Ephesus: You have forsaken your first love.
Smyrna: Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer.
Pergamum: Do not eat food sanctified to idols; do not commit sexual immorality.
Thyatira: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who misleads my servants.
Sardis: Strengthen what is about to die.
Philadelphia: I know you have a little strength.
Laodicea: You are lukewarm. I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Between Chapter 4 of Revelation and Chapter 20, there are a great many difficult conflicts, persecutions, tribulations which the Churches endure. At no point is a specific reference made to describe any of the churches repenting of their specific weaknesses. Yet they must persevere. And in their perseverance, they must overcome. Gog and Magog appear for the last battle of Armageddon:

The Camp of God’s People. They [Gog and Magog] marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. Rev. 20:9. Disconnected churches, each with its own problems, had become one camp, one city that God loves. How or when they repented isn’t stated. What we know is that they persevered.

As in David’s prayer of repentance, as for Jonah, what begins individually, or locally, ends with us joined together, the camp of God’s people.

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. Rev: 21:2, 22-26.

Repentance, confession, thanksgiving, praise, are the bulls we sacrifice, the splendor we bring, coming into the great City of God.
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                                 Visions from God

Our church (and our prayer group), as yours, might want to seek a new vision from God to carry out her ministries. The following visions from God are presented powerfully in the scriptures and can be a source of inspiration as we pray.  There are other visions of, or from, God in the Bible; these seven were selected (three from the Old Testament, two from the Gospels, two from the New Testament) as exemplars.   After reading the initial written prayer, prayers are open, as the Spirit leads.  In our prayer group, we began with a song about the glory of God and ended with a song echoing Isaiah’s statement: ‘Here am I!’ 

Isaiah’s vision. Isaiah was in the temple when he saw his astonishing vision:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
The whole earth is full of his glory.
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. . . .

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

Isaiah 6:1-3, 8

Prayer. We should pray that we will be as willing as Isaiah, and cry out to the Lord, ‘Here am I. Send me!’

Ezekiel’s vision. Ezekiel was among the exiles to Babylon, by the Kebar River, when the heavens were opened for him.   Ezekiel saw deep and brilliant visions of God and the Glory of Israel, overwhelming in their power. His book captures the presentation of how God and his angels may be ‘other’ than we are.  We will not see anything like it again until John’s visions recorded in Revelation. Ezekiel’s visions are particularly powerful, almost disturbing, certainly enough to cause us to feel a sense of godly fear.  I have spread out the verses on this web page, as if they were poetry, to try to capture the immensity of Ezekiel’s vision and its impact.  If we think we have God figured out, Ezekiel reminds us we have not. 

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north – an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light.

The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked four living creatures.

In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze.

Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, and their wings touched one another. . . .

Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. . . .

As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel.

As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn aside as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around. . . .

Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse, sparkling like ice and awesome. . . .

When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty.

Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man.

I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him.

Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown.

Ezekiel 1:4-18, 22-28.

Prayer. Let us pray that we are filled with fire, that we follow the leading of the Spirit, without turning, following the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.

Daniel’s vision. Daniel had visions at night in Babylon which left him puzzled. But he continued to look, to seek God. Then he had this vision, which is well-known, one which was consciously in Jesus’ mind, who frequently referred to himself as the Son of Man.

Thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.
A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated, and the books were opened. . . .

There before me was one like a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14.

Prayer: Let us pray that we worship God the Father, the Ancient of Days, God the Son, who was (and is) also the Son of Man, one of us, who comes on the clouds of heaven. Let us pray to be part of his everlasting dominion that does not pass away, and part of his kingdom, one that is never destroyed. Let us pray that our worship will set an example and be a model for others.

The vision of Jesus Transfigured. As part of his ministry, Jesus took three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them.  Peter still doesn’t quite get the point in suggesting that Jesus is so important that he is the equal of Moses and Elijah, but his intentions are good, and Peter’s respect, reverence and piety are endearing. 

Jesus’ face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. Listen to him!

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up.” He said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

Matthew 17:2-8.

Prayer. Lord, we pray we might see you as you are. It is good to be in your presence, here in prayer. There is something so awesome in your divinity, when revealed, it causes us to fall to the ground, terrified. Come to us, Lord Jesus – touch us. Soothe our fears with your gentle instruction. When we look rightly, you are all we need.

The vision of the Ascension of Jesus. After Jesus suffering and resurrection, he showed himself to his disciples over a period of forty days. Jesus gave some final instructions to the disciples when they asked.  The disciples were still thinking about Israel. Jesus’ answer moved their thinking into another plane.

“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Jesus said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After he said this, he was taken up before the very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going. Suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee, “” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:3-11.

Prayer. Lord, we pray not to know times or dates, but to be your witnesses, from Jerusalem wherever that may be for us, close to home, to the far ends of the earth. You have given us convincing proofs of your life, and it is our life now, too. In your Spirit, we will prophesy, we will see visions, we will dream dreams, all of us who are your servants.

Paul. A man named Saul, a fierce enemy and persecutor of the Lord’s disciples, was on his way to Damascus with letters authorizing him to take Christians as prisoners to Jerusalem. On his way, near Damascus, he was confronted, overwhelmed, by a vision:

Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul – why do you persecute me?” “Who are you Lord?’ Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city. You will be told what you must do.” The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing.

Acts 9:2-8.

Later on, now taking the new name of Paul, to reflect his new identify as a disciple of Christ, Paul had another vision and revelation.  This is a reminder that the fiercest enemies of the Gospel, the Church and the Word of God may be converted and become the most devoted of apostles, friends and advocates. 

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows. And I know that this man – whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows – was caught up to Paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.

2 Corinthians 12:1-4.

Prayer. Lord, grant us your light from heaven. We may have been blind once, but now by your grace we can see. Give us the command to ‘get up.’ Send us where you would. Tell us what we should do. When we do your will, Lord, we will be caught up into the third heaven. In your presence, we will be caught up into Paradise. Teach us inexpressible things, Lord, in accordance with your will.

John’s series of visions and revelations. The disciple John, a brother and companion in the suffering and the kingdom, now an old man imprisoned on the island Patmos, had a revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.

On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. . . .

I turned around to see about the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a Son of Man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I was dead, and behold I am alive – for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hell.

Revelation 1:10-18.

The Apostle John had other visions, many visions.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. . .

Then the angel showed me the River of the water of life, as clear as a crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Prayer. Lord, your eyes blaze like fire. You hold stars in your hand and your words are the sharp words of Holy Scripture. Your face shines like the sun, brilliant. Grant us your grace, Lord, and we will show others the River of Life, the twelve crops of fruit of the Holy Spirit. The leaves which are for healing of the nations. Help us, Lord, to receive your visions and to do your will.
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                                 Spiritual Growth and Psalm 119

Psalm 119 is the longest psalm and its topic is keeping the Law of God. But this psalm is about spiritual law, and spiritual law is different than natural law or laws which come from the government. When we pray, we are not in a courtroom – the idea is more like steps of a ladder. As we grow spiritually, we stand on one step and our growth allows us to ascend to the next step. There is no negativity in spiritual law – it helps us to grow and become free. So we ought to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

Psalm 119, in which each section begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, gives us steps in prayer for us to grow our interior spiritual lives. We take step by step in our prayer lives, so we learn our ‘spiritual abc’s’. For we “watch and pray” (Mat. 26:41). Our Lord Jesus “continued all night in prayer.” (Luke 6:12). “He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray.” (Mat. 14:23). “He withdrew in the wilderness and prayed.” (Luke 6:12). This is a ‘round-robin’ for spiritual growth.

Aleph א

Psalm 119:1:       Blessed are those whose ways are blameless
                                Who walk according to the Law of the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, we pray you might guide us into blameless ways. Guide our lives and our prayers so that we may walk according to your Law.

Beth ב

Psalm 119:10      I seek you with all my heart; 
                                 Do not let me stray from your commands.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that we would seek you with our whole heart. We pray that we would not stray from your commands.

Gimel ג

Psalm 119:18      Open my eyes that I may see 
                                 Wonderful things in your law.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes, that we may see. We pray that you would show us wonderful things in your Law.

Daleth ד

Psalm 119:32      I run in the path of your commands,
                                 For you have broadened my understanding.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that we would run in the path of your commands. We pray that you will broaden our understanding.

He ה

Psalm 119:37      Turn my eyes away from worthless things;            
                                  Preserve my life according to your word.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that you would turn our eyes away from worthless things. We pray that you would preserve our lives, according to your Word.

Waw ו

Psalm 119:45      I will walk about in freedom, 
                                For I have sought out your instruction.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that we may seek out your instruction, so that we may walk about in freedom.

Zayin ז

Psalm 119:55      In the night, Lord, I remember your name,
                                That I may keep your law.

Prayer: Lord, in the night we remember your name. We remember, so that we may keep your law.

Heth ח

Psalm 119:58      I have sought your face with all my heart:         
                                 Be gracious to me according to your promise.

Prayer: Lord, we seek your face with all our hearts. Be gracious to us, according to your promise.

Teth ט

Psalm 119:71      It was good for me to be afflicted
                               So that I might learn your decrees.

Prayer: Lord, it was good for us to be afflicted, even if it was difficult, so that we might learn your decrees.

Yodh י

Psalm 119:73      Your hands made me and formed me;
                                 Give me understanding to learn your commands.

Prayer: Lord, your hands made us and formed us. Give us understanding to learn your commands.

Kaph כ

Psalm 119:83      Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke,
                                 I do not forget your decrees.

Prayer: Lord, truly, we are like wineskins in the smoke. Even so, Lord, we do not forget your decrees.

Lamedh ל

Psalm 119:89      Your Word, Lord, is eternal;
                                It stands firm in the heavens.

Prayer: Lord, we know your Word is eternal. Your Word, Lord, stands firm in the heavens.

Mem מ

Psalm 119:103      How sweet are your words to my taste,
                                   Sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Prayer: Lord, your words are so sweet to our taste! Your words, Lord, are sweeter than honey to our mouths!

Nun נ

Psalm 119:105      Your word is a lamp for my feet,
                                   A light on my path.

Prayer: Lord, your Word is a lamp for our feet. Your Word, Lord, is a light for our path.

Samech ס

Psalm 119:116      Sustain me, my God according to your promise, and I will live;
                                   Do not let my hopes be dashed.

Prayer: Lord, sustain us, O Lord our God, according to your great promises, and we will live. Do not let our hopes be dashed!

Ayin ע

Psalm 119:124      Deal with your servant according to your love,
                                   And teach me your decrees.

Prayer: Lord, we are your servants. Please deal with us according to your great love and teach us your decrees.

Pe פ

Psalm 119:130      The unfolding of your words gives light;
                                   It gives understanding to the simple.

Prayer: Lord, the unfolding of your words gives us light. Your words, Lord, give understanding to the simple.

Tsadhe צ

Psalm 119:140      Your promises have been thoroughly tested,
                                  And your servant loves them.

Prayer: Lord, your promises to us have been thoroughly tested. Lord, we are your servants, and we love them.

Qoph ק

Psalm 119:147      I rise before dawn and cry for help;
                                  I have put my hope in your word.

Prayer: Lord, we rise before dawn and cry out for your help. We have put our hopes in your Word.

Resh ר

Psalm 119:156      Your compassion, Lord, is great;
                                  Preserve my life according to your laws.

Prayer: Lord, your compassion is very great. Preserve our lives, according to your laws.

Shin ש

Psalm 119:165      Great peace have those who love your law, 
                                  And nothing can make them stumble.

Prayer: Lord, send us that great peace which comes to those who love your law. Lord, in your peace, nothing will make us stumble.

Taw ת

Psalm 119:176      I have strayed like a lost sheep
                                     Seek your servant,
                                    For I have not forgotten your commands.

Prayer: Lord, we have all strayed like lost sheep. O Lord, come find us. We are your servants. O Lord, come find us, for we have not forgotten your commands.
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                           Verses and Prayers for Healing

Not long ago, Maria began a prayer which began “Lord, prayer is easy. You want us to pray.” This touched me because it confirmed something I was reading in a short book called Guidelines for Prayer, written by an Orthodox Christian, Father Matthew the Poor, head of a Coptic monastery in Egypt. He wrote:

True prayer, which gives you access to God and allows you to be in His company, is not a purely human act. For, more than anything else, it is a divine call to which you are merely responding. God is always ready to accept you back. He incessantly calls you: “I have stretched out My hands all day long.” (Isa. 65:2); “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28); “The one who comes to me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37). This is because God finds pleasure in your company, continuously – if ever possible!

We often pray for healing, for others and for ourselves. Our prayers should be easy to pray, offered humbly, boldly asking yet also accepting God’s will. So here are some Bible passages and verses for healing with some short following prayers for us to read, round-robin style:

(1) – –

     Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: ‘Go at one to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food. . . . So there was food every day for Elijah and the woman and her family. . . Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. . . . ‘Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord . . . The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. . . . Elijah picked him up and gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look your son is alive!’” 1 Kings 17:9-22.

Lord, we pray for life and healing for those in families which are close to us, where there are people who have provided for us and helped us out of the goodness of their hearts. We cry out to you, Lord, to touch and heal their loved ones now.

(2) – –

     Now Naaman was commander of the army of the King of Aram . . . He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy . . . When Elisha heard . . . [he said] Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, ‘Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.’ But Naaman went away angry . . . Naaman’s servants went to him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great things, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tell you, ‘Wash and be cleansed!’ So Naaman went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.” 2 Kings 5:1-14.

Lord, we pray for healing for those who come to us, from wherever they come, and as they do so, we pray they may be cleansed – as we are cleansed by the blood of Christ, and so also, according to your will, we pray they will be miraculously cleansed like Naaman.

(3) – –

     When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the man was cured of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” Matt. 8:1-4.

Lord, we pray for healing, rejoicing that you have told us that you are willing. We will be clean, Lord, when you make us clean, and cured, because you have cured us. We pray for your miraculous power, your healing hand and touch. We don’t understand why you told the man not to tell anyone, yet if that is your command, Lord, we will obey. But we will offer our gifts, as a testimony to your power and grace.

(4) – –

     When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.” Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.” The centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But just say the word and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” . . . Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go!” It will be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour. Matt. 8:5-9, 13.

Lord, we intercede in prayer for those we are close to, who may be suffering. We lift up in prayer these others, for whom we care so much, for your healing word of authority. Like the centurion, we are not worthy for you to come under our roof. But if you just say the word, Lord, those we care for will be healed. We are all under your authority, Lord. We seek for others your healing power.

(5) – –

     When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He toucher her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. . . . He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases. Matt. 8:14-16.

Lord, our families are in need of your healing touch. And we pray, Lord, that as the fever leaves our family members because of your touch on their hand, they too will arise to wait on you. We all are ready, Lord, to rise up and wait on you.

(6) – –

     Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – Then he said to the paralytic, “Get up. Take your mat and go home.” And the man got up and went home. When the crowed saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.” Matt. 9:1-8.

Lord, in prayer we bring those in need to you. We know that dealing with sin is uppermost in your mind and you start there, by forgiving sins. We pray, Lord, because you have made prayer easy and you invite us to pray. We are filled with awe at your grace and power, Lord. Healing is impossible for us, but easy for you. You have an authority, Lord, that no one else duplicates. We bring the sick, the wounded, the paralyzed, the suffering to you, for your forgiving, healing Words of life.

(7) – –

Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If only I touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment. Matt. 9:20-22.

Lord, we lift up those who have been suffering for long years. We lift up those in prayer who have illnesses that are deeply personal. We lift up those in prayer who have been subject to bleeding, physical bleeding or emotional bleeding. Our prayers are like the secret thoughts of this woman, Lord – we are so desperate, yet so hopeful. We are vulnerable. If only we touch your cloak, Lord, we will be healed. We take heart, Lord, from your words. We pray for the gift of faith, for ourselves and for others, so that all may be healed.

(8) – –

     As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When Jesus had gone indoors, the blind men came to him. He asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.” And their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.” Matt. 9:27-31.

Lord, we are all blind men, following you and calling out your name, in need of mercy. We pray for your healing power, believing that you have this power. We pray fervently that you will touch our eyes and allow us to see. We rejoice in the faith you give that we may receive your healing and the power of seeing which you have always intended for us. Restore us to health, Lord, we pray – for others, and for ourselves. We are still baffled, Lord, as to why you sometimes give a command for secrecy and at other times, a command to witness and declare your name and your grace. But we simply come in prayer, Lord, for your touch and your Word. Our duty, Lord, is not to solve riddles, but to obey your Word.
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                          ^{Praise and Prophecy: Mary and Zechariah}

The birth of Jesus gave rise to two famous declarations of praise. One from Mary, mother of Jesus, known as the Magnificat, and one from Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, when Zechariah regained his powers of speech. So in this study the declarations of Mary and Zechariah are divided into sections of a few verses, and then after each, there is a prayer for us in italics, so that we can join in their praise and in their wonder and joy. The declarations of each are found in the Gospel of Luke: Luke 1:46-55 (Mary); Luke 1:67-79 (Zechariah).

And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord     
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 
for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,

Prayer: Lord, help us to glorify you. Our spirits rejoice in you, our Savior. Our souls rejoice in you, O Lord. You have been mindful of our humble state – we are your servants. In your care, in your service, we are blessed. From generation to generation, we serve you in awe and wonder.

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For the Mighty One has done great things for me –
    holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
    from generation to generation.

Prayer: You have done great things for us, Lord. You are holy and your name is holy. Your mercy has extended to us. We worship you, Lord; we have a godly fear of you. We will teach our children, we will teach the next generation, to fear and worship you. Your mercy extends to all who respect you.

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He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.

Prayer: Lord, you have performed mighty deeds for us with your arm. We have seen it with our own eyes – you have scattered those who are proud in their thoughts. We have seen, Lord, that you have brought down those in high places – rulers and leaders from their thrones, even thrones they held for many years. We praise you Lord, for you have lifted up the humble. You have opened the prisons and freed the prisoners. Even those who do not know you, still, they do your will.

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He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
    remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
    just as he promised our ancestors.”

Prayer: Lord, you feed the hungry with good things. You have fed us, Lord, when we hungered spiritually, and filled us with good things. You feed all who come to you. But you send the rich, those who claim not to know or need you – you send them away empty. Lord, you continue to help your servant Israel; you never forget your promises. Remember mercy, Lord – mercy for us, mercy for Israel, mercy for all who call on your name.  Lord, remember your promises to Abraham, who trusted in you, and to all Abraham’s descendants, we, who live by faith.

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John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn^[of salvation for us
    in the house of his servant David

Prayer: We praise you Lord, the God of Israel, because you have come to redeem us and make us your people. You have raised up Jesus, our horn of salvation, of the house and line of David. Because of Jesus, we are redeemed – we have been grafted in, we are your people. Your horn is a symbol of strength, upon which we rely.

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(As he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
    and from the hand of all who hate us—

Prayer: Lord, you have fulfilled your prophecies, issued long ago, by sending Jesus to be born in a stable, born in Bethlehem, born to be our Savior. You have anointed and sent us Jesus to save us from our enemies and all those who hate us. Lord, you have sent to us your only-begotten Son, Jesus, born into this, our world, a baby, before the beginning and always, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Love.
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To show mercy to our ancestors
    and to remember his holy covenant,
 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:

Prayer: Lord, you have shown mercy to us and our ancestors, those who brought us into this world and taught us. You have remembered your holy covenant, the promises you made to Abraham. We enter into your covenant. We have come into your promises by faith. We rejoice at the birth of Jesus; we wonder like the humble shepherds; we sing your praises, Lord, like the angels.
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To rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
    and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Prayer: Lord, you have rescued us from our chief enemies, sin and death. You have rescued us from failure and grief. You have delivered us from loneliness. Lord, you have enabled us to serve you without fear. Lord, you have made a way through Christ’s blood for us to be cleansed, to serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days.
____________

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,

Prayer: Lord, you have made us all prophets of the Most High, the anointed, the Christ child. You sent John the Baptist to prepare a way and now call on us to prepare a way for your return. You have made us to be like John the Baptist, preparing your way, announcing your kingdom. Lord, you have given us knowledge of our salvation, through the forgiveness of our sins.
____________

Because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

Prayer: Lord, you have shown us tender mercies. You have sent Jesus, the rising sun, coming from heaven. Your grace now shines on us. We once lived in darkness. We once lived in the shadow of death. Lord, we praise you. You guide our feet into the paths of peace. Lord, we praise you greatly, with great joy. You have brought us into the light of life – the Life of your Son, Jesus Christ.
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                          Comfort Amid Uncertainty.   

To be read in turns.

Psalm 121

A song of ascents.

¹ I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

Prayer: Lord, we lift up our eyes to you. You are the source of our help. You have made everything, including us and all that we have. Our lives are in your hands. You love us, Lord, and we trust in you, as we lift up our prayers.

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³ He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

Prayer: Lord, you watch over us for our safety. You never fall asleep on your job. You watch over us, our families, our friends and community, our church and our nation, and all nations. As you watched over Israel you did not slumber or sleep over them. You do not slumber or sleep as you watch over us.

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⁵ The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

Prayer: Lord, you are the shade which cools us, the protection we need and seek. When we need it, Lord, you are the warmth which comforts us. Whether it is day or night, summer or winter, whether we are in the desert or the mountains, you care for us and watch over us for our protection.

_______________________

⁸ the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

Prayer: Lord, we lift up our prayers for those we love, those we miss, those we want to be saved. You watch over us and you watch over all. You watch over us as we come and go, now and forevermore. Even amidst uncertainty, protection and safety are with you, Lord.

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2^nd Corinthians ch. 4:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”^[a] made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

Prayer: Almighty God, our Father, you made the light shine out of darkness. You made your light to shine in our hearts. We rejoice and praise you, Almighty God in Heaven, that you have given us the knowledge of your Glory displayed in the loving face of Christ.

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But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 

Prayer: We confess, Lord, that we have your treasure, your light, in jars of clay, our physical bodies, jars of clay. We have limitations, we have shortcomings. But you have vested in us through Christ Jesus your all-surpassing power. For this, we praise and thank you, our Father in Heaven. We thank you for the promises made in Christ.

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⁸ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 

Prayer: Indeed, Lord, we feel ourselves to be pressed, hard pressed on every side. We are confronted with uncertainty. But you have given us your light – we are not crushed. We may be perplexed about where to go, or what to do next. But we are not in despair -because we belong to you. We may be persecuted, but Lord, you never abandon us. Events may seem to strike at us, but you have given us life. Because of you Lord, we are never destroyed. We never give up hope.

Isaiah, ch. 59

Arise, shine, for your light has come,
    and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
² See, darkness covers the earth
    and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
    and his glory appears over you.

Prayer: Lord, we praise and thank you. You have made your Glory to rise upon us. Darkness may surround many peoples, but you have given us a share of your light and your glory. You have give us Christ, raised on the Cross, raised from death, ascended to Heaven, who rises upon us – and his glory appears over us.

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³ Nations will come to your light,
    and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
⁴ “Lift up your eyes and look about you:
    All assemble and come to you;
your sons come from afar,
    and your daughters are carried on the hip.
⁵ Then you will look and be radiant,
    your heart will throb and swell with joy.

Prayer: We rejoice, Lord, with great joy! We rejoice that all will be drawn to your light. We lift up our eyes, we look about with the eyes of faith and see that our children, our sons and are daughters, are coming to us. We are radiant with joy, Lord, our hearts throb and swell with joy, as we trust you to answer our prayers, calm our fears, comfort our anxieties, meet our needs and bless us with your everlasting love and grace.
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                              Verses and Prayers from 1 John

1 John 2:12, 14

I am writing to you, dear children,
    because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.

I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.

because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.

Prayer: Lord, you have made us your children and forgiven our sins. Father in Heaven, we know you, and you have made us strong. You have sent us the Word of God to live in us. We have interactions with the world that involve conflict. We pray you will give us the strength and the patience to overcome evil.

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1 John 2:20, 24-25

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.^[

 As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

Prayer: Holy Lord, you have given us an anointing and taught us the truth. Your truth is within us, your Living Word. Through your Word we have eternal life. We pray that others, such as our children, will come to receive your anointing. We pray they will know the truth and receive your promise, eternal life. Where reconciliation is needed, turn hearts toward peace.  We pray for that reconciliation also, between parents and children, between spouses, between friends and neighbors.

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1 John 3:1, 2

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Prayer: Lord, we are your children. We do not know yet what we will be, but we know we will be like you. Yet now we are still part of this world, in jars of clay. We pray today for your healing. We pray for physical healing for those we love, those we know and those we intercede for in prayer. We pray for each of us in this group who have health concerns, and for our families. For all who need prayer for physical healing, we ask and pray for your healing hand and healing touch.

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1 John 3:18-20

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Prayer: Lord, teach us to love with actions and in truth. Teach us how to set our hearts at rest. We know, Father, that your grace is greater than our fears. We know, God, that your love is even greater than our hearts, and you know everything. We pray for a revival of our church and all churches. We pray for an awakening in our communities and all the communities in our nation. We pray that this revival, and this awakening, may be more than words or speeches, but will be powerful – powerful in action, powerful in truth, powerful in witness.  We pray for this awakening in all the nations, for this revival everywhere.

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1 John 4:4

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

Prayer: Lord, you have converted and called us. In you, we are born again. Father, through Christ, you have made us overcomers. We pray now for the ministry of our church, Christ Community, and all the different ministries of our church. We pray for all of your churches, Lord, where your Word is preached and presented. We pray for our senior leadership, our pastors and staff, and all the ministries of this church and all the many volunteers. We pray for all the outreaches of our Church to those in need, to those who are hurting or vulnerable, that you would enable them to overcome the world by your Word, and to find your comfort and grace.

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1 John 4:7-9

 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

Prayer: Lord, the world will know that we are your disciples as we love one another. We pray that we might show love especially to the youth who are ministered to in this church, to each class and age group, from infants to young adults. We especially pray for your love to be shown to middle and high schoolers, subject to so many distractions, misinformation and temptations. Help us to live through our Lord, Christ Jesus, so that we may be examples to our youth to live their lives also through Christ Jesus.

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1 John 4:10-12

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Prayer: Lord, we confess our sins – we need to be atoned for. We confess our weaknesses, our limitations. We confess we need your grace, your mercy, your forgiveness. We know that no one can ever see God in all God’s fullness; that is beyond our human eyeballs. Help us, Lord, to love one another. Then your love will be made complete in us.

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1 John 4:16-19

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.

Prayer: Lord, you are love. When we live in you, we live in love. In your love, we have confidence on the day of judgment. We become like Jesus. There is no fear in your love, Lord. Through grace, there is no fear of punishment. Your perfect love drives out fear. We worship you, Lord, Almighty God and Father in Heaven. You are the one True God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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                      Five Steps for Spiritual Growth – Psalms 20-24

Trouble. Victory. Questions. Peace. Presence. 

Trouble. Psalm 20:1-4

May the Lord answer you when you are in distress;
May the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
May he send you help from the sanctuary
And grant you support from Zion.
May he remember all your sacrifices
And accept your burnt offerings.
May he give you the desire of your heart
And make all your plans succeed.

Lord, we pray for your help when we are in distress. You said in this world we would have some trouble, and from time to time we do. We pray for your help for others and their troubles, and we pray for your help from your sanctuary for our own difficulties. Accept our sacrifice of prayer and praise. Accept our worship as our burnt offering. We lift up to you our prayers, O God, to you who know the desires of our hearts. Our plans will all succeed, Lord, when we put them in your hands.

A Crown of Victory. Psalm 21:1-5

O Lord, the king rejoices in your strength.
How great is his joy in the victories you give!
You have granted him the desire of his heart
And have not withheld the request of his lips.
You welcomed him with rich blessings
And place a crown of pure gold on his head.
He asked you for life, and you gave it to him –
Length of days, for ever and ever.
Through the victories you gave,
His glory is great;
You have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.

Lord, we rejoice in the victories you give, in the strength you send to us. You grant us the desires of our hearts. You answer our prayers and do not withhold your love and grace. Lord, you welcome us with victories and rich blessings. You have placed on our heads a crown of gold, the crown of eternal life, through Jesus our Lord. Your glory is great, Lord, on earth and throughout the heavens. You have bestowed splendor and majesty on Christ, and as we belong to Christ and are cleansed by him, we receive and reflect his splendor and majesty as well.

Questions after a Loss. Psalm 22:1-2, 9, 14

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
So far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
By night, and am not silent.

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
You made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast.

I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
It has melted away with me.

O Lord, we pray for you to intervene. Do not forsake us, Lord. Our faith is weak and small. We are prone to doubt. Save us, Lord, from the troubles and demons which might devour us. We cry out to you, Lord, by day and by night. We know, Lord, that you do hear and will answer. We remember that you brought us out of the womb. We remember that you were our protector, even at our mother’s breast. We may suffer at times, and be poured out as water. We may feel our hearts melting, turning to wax. But we know you will answer, Lord, if only we wait in good faith.

Peace and Protection. Psalm 23: 1-4

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
For you are with me;
Your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

Lord, you lead and guide us. We are your sheep, your flock. Shepherd us, Lord. Then we will lack nothing. Lead us, Lord, even after sickness, after trouble or tribulation, to lie down in green pastures. Lead us beside your still waters. O Lord, restore our souls. Quiet our trembling hearts. Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil. You are with us, O Lord. Your rod, your staff, your unlimited power, will guide and protect us. Your comfort is our lifeline. Your love is our hope. Our peace will come with your guidance.

His Glorious Presence. Psalm 24:7-10.

Lift up your heads, O you gates:
Be lifted up, you ancient doors,
That the King of Glory may come in.
Who is this King of Glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
The LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates;
Lift them up, you ancient doors,
That the King of Glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of Glory?
The LORD Almighty –
He is the King of Glory.

Lord, we pray for your glorious presence. We lift up the gates of our hearts. We lift the gates of our minds and our souls, so that you may enter. Come into our lives, O King of Glory. You are strong, your Spirit is Almighty. Come dwell with us, on the inside, where we really live. Be strong and mighty, Lord, in our battles which are external, and with us for our internal battles as well. Our doors and locks are ancient, Lord. We built them up from the time we were children. We open them now for you. Come in now, Lord. We pray for your presence. Enter in, with your Glory, into our lives.
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                                   Isaiah Prays for the Nation

Praying for America – there is a lot of energy and a lot of concern which shows itself when we begin to pray for our nation. Isaiah has a lot to say about prophecy and prayer for his nation, Israel, specifically, or for the nations in general. This study for the prayer group is lengthy and may work better if done in two halves, over two prayer meetings. So if at some point we break it up in this meeting to begin more spontaneous prayer over people’s specific prayer issues, that’s okay. We’ll complete Part II at another prayer meeting. We don’t want to quench the Spirit. I’m sure whenever we return to this, we will still have prayer concerns for our own nation.

Part I

Isaiah 1:4

Woe to the sinful nation,
    a people whose guilt is great,
a brood of evildoers,
    children given to corruption!
They have forsaken the Lord;
    they have spurned the Holy One of Israel
    and turned their backs on him.

Prayer: Lord, we confess our sins for our country. As a nation, we are sinful, our guilt is great. We start with confession on behalf of America. There is evil, there is corruption, it seems everywhere – we are saturated with it. We have forsaken you and your Word. We have spurned God to chase after our own devices. Like the prophet Daniel, we begin, Lord, with confession of our personal and national sin. We start with prayer and in seeking your forgiveness.

Isaiah 2:2, 4

In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for the day in America when your temple of righteousness, peace and justice will be established. We look forward to the day of Christ’s return, who is himself Mount Zion and the Lord’s living Temple. We look forward to the day when our disputes between our fellow Americans will be settled. We pray for the day when the political life of our nation will be characterized by peace and plenty, not by anger and words like swords.

Isaiah 9:1-2, 11:10

In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

² The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.

¹⁰ In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 

Prayer: Father in heaven, we have been walking in darkness, but Christ, your Son, is our great light. We have seen the light of Jesus and his resurrection, calling us out of this national life whose culture and amusements spring from deep darkness. We pray that our Lord Jesus may stand as a banner for all America, so that we may rally to him, and find the rest and peace which will be glorious, for ourselves and our fellow citizens.

Isaiah 25:6-8

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
    a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
⁷ On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
⁸     he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

Prayer: Lord, when we come to you, you will add all things needful to us. We will be wealthy, with rich food and pure streams of living water, in abundance for all. We pray that your Spirit will come and destroy the fear of death that covers everyone, making us selfish and short-sighted. When you swallow up death forever, Lord, then our tears will be wiped away and we will feast. We will rejoice and you will lead America to green pastures and still waters. You will lead our leaders, and you will instruct our judges. By your Word, Lord, our disgrace will be taken from us.

Isaiah 26:1-3, 9

In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strong city;
    God makes salvation
    its walls and ramparts.
² Open the gates
    that the righteous nation may enter,
    the nation that keeps faith.
³ You will keep in perfect peace
    those whose minds are steadfast,
    because they trust in you.

When your judgments come upon the earth,
    the people of the world learn righteousness.

Prayer: Lord, we believe only you can make America strong. You will be our wall and our fortress. We will open our gates in accordance with justice, in accordance with law and with truth and mercy, so that the righteous may enter in. America will once again, with your grace Lord, be a refuge for the lost and wandering people who look for a new home. You will keep us in perfect peace, Father in heaven, as we trust and fix our thoughts on you. When your judgments come, Lord, they will be righteous, and teach what is right to many. Our whole nation will rejoice in your justice.

Isaiah 32:16-20

The Lord’s justice will dwell in the desert,
    his righteousness live in the fertile field.
¹⁷ The fruit of that righteousness will be peace;
    its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.
¹⁸ My people will live in peaceful dwelling places,
    in secure homes,
    in undisturbed places of rest.
¹⁹ Though hail flattens the forest
    and the city is leveled completely,
²⁰ how blessed you will be,
    sowing your seed by every stream,
    and letting your cattle and donkeys range free.

Prayer: Lord, you will give us a peaceful land, not filled with strife or violence, but peace. Even when there are natural disasters, Lord, mercy and relief will come swiftly to those who suffer them. We will pray to be obedient to you, Lord, so to be a blessing to those who suffer fire or flood or storm. We will assist those suffering the loss of the homes. Under your guidance, Lord, we will know the freedom that you intended all of us to have and hold, forever, placed into strong and safe homes.

Isaiah 35:8,9-10

And a highway will be there;
    it will be called the Way of Holiness;
    it will be for those who walk on that Way.
Only the redeemed will walk there,
¹⁰     and the ransomed of the Lord will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
    everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
    and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Prayer: Lord, teach us to walk in your way of holiness. Redeem us and redeem our country and our neighbors, out of your grace and love. Teach us Lord, to sing as we walk this land, this land which is ours and yours, from Pennsylvania to California. We pray, Lord, for your gladness and joy, to overtake us, and to send away sorrow and sighing. Your holiness will be our path, and we will know your gladness and joy.

Part II (save for the next time)

Isaiah 42:1-3

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.
² He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.
³ A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

Prayer: Father, you sent Christ to seek and save the lost – and there are many in America who are lost. We all have family members or know those who are lost. Jesus came to save us, he came as your servant and you put your Spirit on him. Put your Spirit on us, Lord, here in America, here in Pennsylvania, here at Christ Community Church in Chester County. Help us to be your helpers, to speak quietly but effectively, to be respectful but candid, to bring forth justice here, in the homes and neighborhoods where we live.

Isaiah 42:4-6, 45:22
⁴     He will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
    In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”

⁵ This is what God the Lord says—
the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,
    who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
    who gives breath to its people,
    and life to those who walk on it:
⁶ “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
    I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles,

Turn to me and be saved,
    all you ends of the earth;
    for I am God, and there is no other.

Prayer: Lord, you have called us into church in this place, at this time, not to falter or be discouraged, but to worship and pray and act in hope. You created us, Father, to be Americans, to be here as light, as peace, as salt, as compassion, to those who are around us. Take hold of our hands, Lord, and we will take hold of the hands of others. Help us to teach others that you are God and there is no other. Help us to declare that all may be saved by you, Father, by coming to the Son you have sent. And no one will pluck us from your hand.

Isaiah 49:6-7

The Lord says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

⁷ This is what the Lord says—
    the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel—
to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation,
    to the servant of rulers:
“Kings will see you and stand up,
    princes will see and bow down,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Prayer: Father in heaven, you have called us to follow Christ, and to be shining lights in our native land, towns, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools. Even in our own families you have called us to be light. What may have been despised and abhorred in this sin-blinded nation is what you honor – faith, goodness, peace, kindness, love, gentleness and self-control. The self-indulgence of this nation needs no long recital – we see it around us every day. Lead us, Lord, into self-control, into the gifts of the Spirit. When we imitate Christ, our King, then we will be a witness to many in power.

Isaiah 51:4-5, 56:6-7

Listen to me, my people;
    hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
    my justice will become a light to the nations.
⁵ My righteousness draws near speedily,
    my salvation is on the way,
    and my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me
    and wait in hope for my arm.

and who hold fast to my covenant—
⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain
    and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
    a house of prayer for all nations.”

Prayer: Lord, we pray that once again, the United States may be united, and a beacon of justice. We pray that once again, our nation may be a ringing bell of hope and a source of liberty and peace. We pray that your grace will lead us to once again, hold fast to your covenant and not go chasing after strange gods – gods our fathers never knew. We pray that America may once again be a house of prayer, where the burnt offerings of justice and truth and peace and righteousness may be offered, on your altar. Then we will be a house of prayer, Lord, for all nations. Guided by your grace, we pray that our conduct will be a model of righteousness, of living instruction in justice, a blueprint for peace.

Isaiah 60:1-3

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
    and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
² See, darkness covers the earth
    and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
    and his glory appears over you.
³ Nations will come to your light,
    and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for and look for the day when your glory arises on us. Your glory is love, is peace, is life, even unto the end of the age. We pray for the day when nations will come to our light, because we reflect your light, the light of Christ. We pray for a sincere faith, not merely words, but faith from the heart. We pray for the day when America is so renewed and restored that nations will look to us for wisdom in the knowledge of God. On that day our leaders will truly lead us, because they follow Christ.

Isaiah 65:1, 66:19, 18-23

“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;
    I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name,
    I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’

And I am about to come and gather the people of all nations and languages,

and they will come and see my glory.

¹⁹ “I will set a sign among them, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. 

²⁰ And they will bring all your people, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord – “They will bring them, as the Israelites bring their grain offerings, to the temple of the Lord, in ceremonially clean vessels. 

²² “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. ²³ From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. 

Prayer: Lord, we worship you, the one and only True God. We were lost, and out of your love and grace, you revealed yourself to us. You revealed yourself in the Old Testament by way of the Law and the Prophets, and in the New Testament by way of Jesus Christ and the apostles. We were not part of your ancient covenant and you brought us in by the blood of Christ. Today, our nation seems lost and bitter. America appears to be wandering in the wilderness, groping for answers, blinded by sin, distracted by cultural wars. We are confused about who we are and where we are going. Show us your glory, Lord, and we will be one of the distant islands who proclaim your glory. We will come to your holy mountain in prayer. We bow down before you, in joyful worship, gladly praising your name.
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                        The Raising of Lazarus

Jesus exchanged words and interactions with two sisters, Mary and Martha, when Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the grave. Their exchanges are full of meaning on many levels. Lazarus’ physical resurrection has multiple spiritual meanings, inspiring for prayer; these are intended for reading, round-robin style.

11 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) ³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

Prayer: Lord, we come to you first when those we love, who are in need of healing. We send word by lifting up our prayers. And we know that you love them, those for whom we pray for healing, as you love us. We can always say, Lord – “the one you love is sick.” And so we ask and pray for your healing hand and touch.

⁴ When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, ⁷ and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

Prayer: Lord, we pray for your faith. God is glorified when we have faith in you, the faith that you first gave us. We may be puzzled by your delay, but we do not doubt your love. We pray for each person in need of healing, trusting that, for all of us, our bodies will not end in death, but be restored to life and health.

⁸ “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. ¹⁰ It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

¹¹ After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.

Prayer: Lord, you have made this day the day of prayer – even when there is opposition. You have come into this world to give us light. Help us, Lord, to take this opportunity to pray, to walk by your light. We stumbled in darkness once, but no more. Wake up all our loved ones and family members, all those who may still be walking in darkness, with your glorious light. The opposition is real, Lord, but you overcome it.

¹² His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

¹⁴ So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

¹⁶ Then Thomas (also known as Didymus^[a]) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Prayer: Lord, you do miracles so we may believe. We hesitate to go back to those places where we felt threatened. We look for reasons to turn aside, for protective reasons. Lord, you bid us go forward. And in going forward, Lord, you bid us to quiet our doubts and fears. We may think we are going forward to die with you, but if you increase our faith, we will understand better your plans. Lord, your plans are always for life.

¹⁷ On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was less than two miles^[b] from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Prayer: Lord, we comfort one another in our losses and that is good and right. Even so, we should go out to meet you, Lord. There is no loss you cannot heal, no grief you cannot comfort. The acts of God are bigger than our ‘if’ words – help us, Lord, to believe. Believe in you, believe in God, believe in the love that saves us.

²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

²⁴ Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Prayer: Lord, you are the resurrection and the life. We believe in you, Lord, and ask for your grace to continue in belief. You have given us life, Lord, a life that never ends, because your life, Lord Jesus, never ends. We live by believing in you, the anointed Messiah, who has come into our world.

²⁸ After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” ²⁹ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

³² When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Prayer: Lord, we believe you are here with us, in this, our prayer meeting. We announce in prayer, ‘The Teacher is here.’ We may have still more ‘if’ words, but Lord, we bring even these, our doubts, our reproaches, to you. Heal us, Lord, spiritually, as you heal others physically. Lord, you do not simply put off death – you resurrect from death. You do not avoid difficulty, you overwhelm it with your power.

³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

³⁵ Jesus wept.

³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Prayer: Lord, you wept, feeling the grief that Martha and Mary felt for Lazarus, feeling the grief that we all experience as we lose loved ones. You wept for all the griefs of the human race. And we announce, we exclaim, Lord, your love. You share our pain, our grief, our tears. Lord, you who opened the eyes of the blind man, open our eyes and the eyes of many.

³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Prayer: Take away the stone, Lord. It is the most basic of our prayers. Take away the stone of death, of grief, of sorrow, of loss. You show us, Lord, the glory of God. We have all born the bad odor of sin, grief, death; now cleanse us, Lord, and miraculously we will smell not of death, but of life.

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

Prayer: Yes, Lord, let us go from the power of death. Give us your word of command, to take off our grave clothes. We don’t need them anymore. Command us to come out of death, out of darkness. Give us your grace, Lord, to strip away the wrappings on our hands and feet, bound up with death linen. Lord, you have given us this freedom, this life, to glorify your Father in heaven. Father, be glorified! Jesus, be glorified! Holy Spirit – be glorified!
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                  God Hears and Answers Prayer

Psalms 1 – 40

When there is a tragedy, it sometimes occurs that there is a discussion or a debate afterwards about whether God answers prayer, or whether prayer is effective or does anything. Jesus himself, his appearing, death and resurrection, are our deepest answers to prayer. But the Book of Psalms provides many answers to the questions which arise in times of grief or loss. Here are some verses selected from the first 40 Psalms, which help to illustrate that God hears and answers our prayers, with a prayer for our group presented in italics to follow each passage. We understand that there are tragedies – we do not make light of them. We pray with the families and churches and communities who are suffering grief. But we assert and declare that God answers prayers, heals broken bodies and heals broken hearts and gives us all hope, great hope, for the future and guides us into peace and love and faith in the present.

Psalm 1:7-8.

I will proclaim the decree of the Lord’s:

He said to me, “You are my Son;
     today I have become your Father.
Ask me,
     and I will make the nations your inheritance,
     the ends of the earth your possession.

Prayer: Lord, our prayers are lifted up to you through your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. You are the Almighty, the God and Father of the divine Son, Jesus. The nations are his; the ends of the earth are his possession. We have confidence in lifting up our prayers to you, Father, because we lift them up in and through, and with, Jesus Christ, your Son, the Anointed One. Father, you have given Jesus everything and we know that, through Jesus, you will answer our prayers too.

Psalm 4:1, 6

Answer me when I call to you,

O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

Be merciful to me and hear my prayer

Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?”

Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD.

You have filled my heart with greater joy

than when their grain and new wine abound.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for the relief only you can give. We pray out of our distress, seeking your mercy. If the world does not believe, Lord, we believe. If the world does not pray or believe in prayer, we pray and we believe in prayer. Lord, we know that you can show us great good. We know that you answer prayer. And when you answer prayer, Lord, you will fill our hearts with great joy. The joy we feel when you answer our prayers is greater than the joy that money can buy or material possessions can provide.

Psalm 5:1-3

Give ear to my words, O LORD,

Consider my sighing.

Listen to my cry for help,

My King and my God,

For to you I pray.

Morning by morning, O LORD,

you hear my voice;

Morning by morning I lay my

requests before you

and wait in expectation.

Prayer: Lord, we pray in sighs, we pray in our cries. Lord, you are our King and our God. You hear our voices – the prayers we say in words, and you hear the prayers we say only in sighs and feelings, things that words cannot express. But we lay all our prayers before you, Lord, every day, every morning. We do not cease in praying to you. We do not quit, we do not give up. Morning by morning, Gracious Lord, we lift up our prayers and wait in expectation, knowing you will answer.

Psalm 6:8-9

Away from me, all you who do evil,

For the LORD has heard my weeping,

The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;

The LORD accepts my prayer.

Prayer: There are those who hate you, Lord. There are those who do not believe in you. We pray for them too, that they may come to repentance. Lord, we who believe – we weep, and you hear. You have captured all our tears, you know them all. Gentle Lord, you hear our cry for mercy, your heart is filled with love and grace, and you accept our prayers. Lord, you will comfort our weeping, you will grant us mercy, you will dry every tear from our eyes.

Psalm 17:1-2, 6

Hear, O LORD, my righteous plea;

Listen to my cry.

Give ear to my prayer –

It does not rise from deceitful lips.

May my vindication come from you;

May your eyes see what is right.

I call on you, O God, for you will answer me;

Give ear to me and hear my prayer

Show the wonder of your great love,

You who save by your right hand

those who take refuge in you from their foes.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

Hide me in the shadow of your wings

Prayer: Lord, we do not dwell in deceit. We do not tell falsehoods. We trust you for our vindication, we do right and we trust that you see us as we do right. So we call on you, our God, just and impartial, with faith and confidence. We pray for the wonders of your great love, the miracles of your salvation. Lord, we pray and thank you for giving us refuge from anyone or anything who would do us harm. Our God and Father, when we pray, we rejoice that you keep us as the apple of your eye; we are safe and secure in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 18:6, 49

In my distress I called to the LORD;

I cried to my God for help,

From his temple he heard my voice;

My cry came before him,

into his ears.

Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O Lord;

I will sing praises to your Name.

Prayer. Lord, in our fears and distress, in our anxious moments, we call out for help to you. We come to the living temple, the Lord Jesus, and in him, we lift our voices to you. Our cries come before you Lord, our prayers come into your ears. Lord, as you answer our prayers, we sing your praises. We shout Hosanna! – And we will rejoice and sing praises to your Name, for the nations to hear, because you have answered our prayers, lifted up in your presence, in your Church.

Psalm 28:6-8

Praise be to the LORD,

For he has heard my cry for mercy.

The LORD is my strength and my shield;

My heart trusts in him, and I am helped.

My heart leaps for joy

And I will give thanks to him in song.

Prayer: Lord, you hear all our cries for mercy. Not only for ourselves, but for others. Lord, when we pray, you are our shield and strength. We pray also for your strength and protection, Lord of love and peace, for others. Our hearts trust in you, Lord, as you hear and answer and help all who call on your Name. Our hearts leap for joy and we give thanks to you, O God, in song. We bless your Holy Name. As we pray for others – for our families, our neighbors, our nation – for all those who ask us for prayer, we rejoice – we are confident that they may also be helped, that they may also know joy in their hearts, when you answer those prayers as well.

Psalm 30:2, 11-12

O LORD my God, I called to you for help

and you healed me.

You turned my wailing into dancing;

You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

That my heart may sing to you and not be silent.

Prayer: Lord, we prayed for healing, and you healed us! Many at this table have prayed for healing, and we know and testify that we have been healed by you! We prayed to you, and you turned our wailing into dancing. We pray to you, O God, and our hearts are singing and are not silent. We rejoice with the Lamb whom you have chosen, Jesus, who cleanses us, who clothes us with joy and answers our prayers for help.

Psalm 32:6-7

Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you

While you may be found;

Surely when the mighty waters rise,

They will not reach him.

YOU are my hiding place;

You will protect me from trouble

And surround me with songs of deliverance.

Prayer: Lord, when you hear our prayers, we know that you may be found. We do not pray to an empty ceiling or a wooden statue. We pray to you, O Lord, the Living God. Through Jesus Christ, you have revealed yourself, you have shown us your kindness, by making your own divinity one of our kind, Christ, both God, and man. When the flood waters rise, Lord, you hear our prayer and save us. You give us a safe place to hide, when the storms of life pass overheard with thunder and lightning. Holy Lord, you hear our prayers, and deliver us.

Psalm 40:1-3

I waited patiently for the LORD;

He turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,

Out of the mud and mire;

He set my feet on a rock

And gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth,

A hymn of praise to our God.

Prayer: Lord, you heard our prayers and lifted us out of the muck and mire of our sins. You raised us up out of the slimy pit – loss, frustration, sin, separation, defeat, grief, death. You hear our prayers and gave us a firm and safe place to stand. You heard our prayers, Almighty God, Holy and Righteous, and gave us a new and living song. We have faith that you answer our prayers, Lord, God of all the faithful. We sing our hymns of praise to you, in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, in our gathering here, through Jesus Christ, our everlasting Lord.
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                                   Moses, a Very Human Intercessor

Much of what we do in PrayerWorks is intercessory prayer – we pray for other people, those within the church and beyond the church. A complete study of Moses would be a whole six-week study by Pastor Billy or something like that, beyond our scope. Not all of his actions are things we might want to duplicate, especially when he was young. But Moses was engaged in purposeful intercession for the sake of his people – often in prayer, sometimes in action. He presented to us examples to follow. Much of his story is found in the Book of Exodus, which calls to us, reminding us this world isn’t our final home – we will leave this world and make our Exodus with Jesus, our great Intercessor, the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Ex. 2:11, 13-14

One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. . . . The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”  The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?

Prayer: Lord, sometimes, you prompt us to simply see what is going on around us, and then prompt us to ask a question. When we view the events in the world, we have questions and would like to ask, ‘why are you doing this?’ Lord, we pray for people who do things we don’t understand. We pray for people who act in ways that are contrary to good sense or well being. We pray for people who are being victimized or subjected to violence. And we know, Lord, we sometimes meet a negative response, questioning who we are. We meet a response, asking us why we involve ourselves. Moses was concerned about both men, both his fellow Hebrews. We pray Lord, for those who are victimized. We pray, Lord, for those who do things which are contrary to your will.

Ex. 2:16-20

Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today? They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.” And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”

Prayer: Lord, action is sometime required. We may see bullying in this world. Lord, we pray to be part of the solution that ends bullying. We pray, Lord, for the wisdom to know when to intervene directly, when to take action when we see what is clearly wrong. Help us, Lord, to be available to come to someone’s rescue, to help water their flock. Lord, give us courage. Moses stepped forward. Just by stepping forward and showing that we see and care, we can bring about good. Lord, help us to see those situations. Help us to act in accordance with your will. And we will rejoice, Lord, if the result is that we are invited in, to be part of a family meal.

Ex: 2:24

And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.  And she gave him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Prayer, Lord, the consequences of what we do, when moved by your Spirit, are often beyond our imagination. We may find ourselves in a strange place, not expected at all, strangers in a strange land. Others question who we are and by what right we involve ourselves. We sometimes question where we are. Being a Christian in this culture, it sometimes seems we are indeed strangers in a strange land. Lord, you have placed us here. We lift up our prayers for this culture, our strange culture, appearing so far from your Word and your Will, so hostile to you. We lift up our prayers for those around us, in entertainment and in the media who make this culture, that they may come to know you, Lord.

Ex. 3:7, 9-10

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. . . . And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.  So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Prayer: Lord, feeling your Spirit move us to take some action, we may ask ‘who am I, to do this thing?’ Help us, Lord, to do your will without excessive self-doubt. When we pray, Lord, we are doing your will. You send us, Lord – help us to rely on that. Lord, show us that the point isn’t who we are. The point is that you have called us, you are sending us because of your great compassion. Cries of suffering have reached your ears. We lift up our prayers now, Lord, for those who are being oppressed spiritually or oppressed physically. So that we may be part of a movement you have directed, an Exodus out of spiritual bondage, a call to leave the desolate Egypt of the soul. We will answer Moses’ question – who am I? – we are people who pray for others. Recognizing your great compassion, Lord, we pray to you.

Ex. 5:21-23

And the Israelites said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”

Prayer: Lord, when we run into difficulties, we experience doubt – we begin to question you – why did you send us this way? If the immediate results go in the wrong direction, we need to continue and persevere in prayer. Lord, you have set the events around us in motion. When we confront friction or trouble, when the results are not immediately as desired, we persevere in the tasks you have given us. Lord, we persevere in prayer. Quiet our doubts, Lord, with your peace that passes all understanding.

Ex. 17:1-4

The Israelite community camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.  So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

Prayer: Lord, we may from time to time nearly despair. What are we to do with these problems? What are we to do with this person? The situation appears to be coming unglued. Lord, you provide living water with your Spirit. Lord, you provide hope. So many people are spiritually thirsty. So many people are in a state of despair. We lift up prayers for our neighbors, for our families, for Chester County, for our state. We lift up prayers to you, Lord, for our nation. We meet hostility, Lord, we see it and hear it every day. In the midst of division and hostility, help us to be those who bring the water of life. We lift up our prayers to you, Lord, even for those who are ready to stone us with their words.

Ex: 32:7, 9-14

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Prayer: Lord, you have given us an example of prayer for others, an example of how to intercede. We think of our own country, Lord, and fear. We think of our own nation, and blush. Our sins are greater than ancient Israel’s. We have a more clear word in the New Testament and a more clear example in Jesus – yet our nation invents new ways to do evil, devises ever greater sins. We pray to you, Lord, because you remember – you remember your promises. You relent from your justified anger. Our Lord Jesus Christ intercedes in heaven and interposes his own blood. Help us, Lord, to be like Moses – to be intercessors in prayer, to bring up again your great promises. You have sent Christ to be the very greatest of intercessors, and we call on his name in prayer.

Ex. 34:5-6, 8-11

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord.  And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. . . .  “Lord,” he said, “if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.” Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you.  Obey what I command you today.

Prayer: Lord, you have forgiven our wickedness and sin. You have made a covenant with us, Lord, a covenant through Jesus Christ, the holy Son of God. We are a stiff-necked people. We are given over to wickedness and sin. But we look to you, Lord, in prayer. You made a covenant with us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. You do awesome works and great wonders among us, Lord. Sometimes those are visible to others. We are mindful that the greatest works are those done in our own souls, and in the souls of those we love. We lift up prayers, Lord, for your covenant, for your wonders and works, in the souls of those for whom we pray.

Numbers 11:11-17  

He asked the Lord, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin.” The Lord said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.

Prayer: Lord, you have arranged that we do not carry these burdens alone. When we feel overwhelmed, Lord, you send others to help us carry our burdens. We lift up prayers, Lord, that you will send others to carry our burden of prayer. We lift up prayers, Lord, that we may be among those who carry burdens for others. We pray for our senior pastor and his burden. We pray for our pastoral staff, who are appointed to share that burden. We pray that we may be among those who share these burdens. Then we will all minister, to bring the Word, the Bread of Life. Help us, Lord, to be among those who are like Israel’s elders – ready to share the burdens of ministry, in the name of Christ, our Lord.

Numbers 14:10-14, 18-20

Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them?  I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.” Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them. And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, Lord, are with these people and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. . . . The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. ’ . . .  In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked.”

Prayer: You have forgiven us, Lord, because the Great Intercessor, Christ, has made intercession for us. Lord, you are slow to anger, abounding in love. We lift our prayers to you. You make a way for us, Lord, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So in accordance with your great love, Lord, we lift up our prayers. We ask and pray for forgiveness for those who act contrary to your will. We seek your pardon, Lord. We seek it in prayer for others. We pray that all may come to know the love and salvation of our Lord, Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins, raised for our justification and our salvation, ascended to heaven to make intercession for us all.
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                             Three Visionary Prophets – Hosea, Joel, Amos

The call of God is to have a vision for the future. As Pastor Billy delivered in a sermon, we do not throw away our confidence; rather, we persevere, so that as we do the will of God, we will receive what he has promised. Three prophets from the Old Testament, the first three in a whole section called the Minor Prophets, provide a vision which helps us to understand what God is promising. The complete books of Hosea, Joel and Amos contain a great deal which is not minor at all, but I wanted to focus more closely on their visions for the future – something that isn’t called out as often it could be, since it speaks to us. We thank God for what He has given us; we praise God for what is coming, expressed so eloquently by these three writers of scripture. A little historical note – when Joel speaks of a “valley of acacias” – the Ark of the Covenant was made of acacia wood (see Ex. 25:10), known to be tough and resilient, an important food source and symbiotic for animals and insects, and also used for healing and medicinal purposes.

Hosea 11:8-9, 11

“My heart is changed within me;
    all my compassion is aroused.
 I will not carry out my fierce anger,
 For I am God, and not a man—
    the Holy One among you.
    
His children will come trembling from the west.

They will come from Egypt,
    trembling like sparrows,
    from Assyria, fluttering like doves.
I will settle them in their homes,”
    declares the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, visions are important. We don’t just labor in a sea of distress. Lord, your heart is changed and your compassion is aroused – change our hearts, arouse our compassion. We come trembling before you, Lord, trembling like sparrows. We count on you, Lord. If you do not provide us a vision, we will only flutter like doves, before a future we cannot see. Lord, we pray you will settle us in our homes, Lord. Secure us, Lord, safely in your love. Your love is our home, Lord, our permanent home. Give us that vision – a vision of our true home. Lord, show us that future. It all depends on you, as all things hang on you, Lord, on Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Hosea 13:4, 14

But I am the Lord your God
    who brought you out of Egypt.
You shall acknowledge no God but me,
    no Savior except me

I will deliver this people from the power of the grave;
    I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
    Where, O grave, is your destruction?

Prayer: Lord, you have brought us out of the personal places of our lives that were like Egypt. We were floundering there, Lord – we were in slavery, to fears, to passions, to sins. Lord, you were our Savior. You brought us out. We seek your vision, Lord, the vision which starts from life. Lord, you have the power to deliver us from the grave. You have sent Jesus, our Redeemer, to redeem us from death. You have challenged death, Lord. You have mocked the grave. Now we ask, Lord, for that vision, your hope and future, that will never be destroyed. All our future, Lord, relies on the life you give. And when we receive your vision, Lord, of everlasting life, we too will laugh at death and ask – well, where are your plagues? You will lead us, Lord, until we deride the grave and ask, well, where is your destruction now? For your vision, Lord, is our home, our proof, our argument, our victory. Your salvation, Lord, is our prayer.

Hosea 14:2-8

    For in you the fatherless find compassion.

 “I will heal their waywardness
    and love them freely,
    for my anger has turned away from them.
 I will be like the dew to Israel;
    he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
    he will send down his roots;
    his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,
    his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
 People will dwell again in his shade;
    they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine—
    Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.

Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?
    I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper;
    your fruitfulness comes from me.”

Prayer: Lord, heal our wayward ways. Lord, we rejoice, your anger has turned away from us, you have sent the dew of heaven to us. We pray for your grace, Lord, so that that we will blossom like lilies, we will send down our roots. You have made promises to us and to our young shoots, our children. Lord, we look to your Word, to make us as splendid as the olive tree, as fragrant as a cedar of Lebanon. Lord, we dwell in your shade, you will make us flourish like the grain, growing in abundant fields. Lord, make us blossom like vines. Lord, we ask of you, to make us flourish and grow. Make us, Lord, like the new wine of Lebanon – give us, Lord, a full life, an abundant life, a fruitful ministry. Lord, we call to you and you answer us, you care for us. And you call us, Lord, to pray for others, to share the spiritual grain and new wine, to share the fragrance of your life, the splendor of your salvation.

Joel 2:28,29, 32

“And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
    there will be deliverance,”

as the Lord has said.

Prayer: Lord, pour out your Spirit upon us! Lord, we gather in prayer, your sons and daughters, your beloved children. Give us prophesies, Lord, that will bring many to know you, that will answer many prayers. Give us visions, Lord, whether we are old or young. We are your servants, Lord, man and woman, boy and girl. We gather to pray for your purpose, to call on your name, Lord, for salvation. We look to the vision you have for us, Lord, of deliverance on Mount Zion. We come to pray on a spiritual Mount Zion, in this spiritual Jerusalem. We come, Lord, with prayers for ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, for our state and our nation – we pray for your deliverance, Lord, for us and for them and for many. We pray that your Spirit will pour out on our whole nation! We pray that everywhere, the young will see your visions, Lord! And the old will dream your dreams.

Joel 3:17-18, 20

Then you will know that I, the Lord your God,
    dwell in Zion, my holy hill.
Jerusalem will be holy;
    never again will foreigners invade her.

 “In that day the mountains will drip new wine,
    and the hills will flow with milk;
    all the ravines of Judah will run with water.
A fountain will flow out of the Lord’s house
    and will water the valley of acacias.^[d]
 Judah will be inhabited forever
    and Jerusalem through all generations.”

Prayer: Lord, we pray for our church, to be holy and to grow in holiness. We pray, Lord, for new people to come into our church, who will not be foreigners to us, because they belong to you. And if they belong to you, Lord, they belong with us. Keep us safe from what is foreign to faith in you. Keep us drinking the wine of your Spirit, and help us to grow, Lord, being fed with your pure spiritual milk. We pray, Lord, that all the ravines of Judah, our neighborhoods, will run with the water of your Spirit. You have sent Jesus, the Anointed One, to be a living fountain. And you will water the valley, Lord, and make us into your acacias. Make us, Lord, tough and resilient. Make us, Lord, a source of spiritual food and nourishment for many. Make our prayer group Lord, like the acacia, a source of healing for many. And this will be a vision for us, Lord, a vision you have given. We ask to grow, Lord, to grow into your vision.

Amos 9:13-15

“In that day

“I will restore David’s fallen shelter—
    I will repair its broken walls
    and restore its ruins—
    and will rebuild it as it used to be,
 so that they may possess the remnant of Edom
    and all the nations that bear my name,^[e]”
declares the Lord, who will do these things.

 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,

“when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
    and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
    and flow from all the hills,
    and I will bring my people Israel back from exile.

They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
    They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
    they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
 I will plant Israel in their own land,
    never again to be uprooted
    from the land I have given them,”

says the Lord your God.

Prayer: Lord, our nation has fallen spiritually. We see people living fallen lives. Our nation’s walls, Lord, are broken, spiritually and physically. Restore our ruins, Lord. Rebuild us on your sure spiritual foundation. Then our nation will declare the name of the Lord, so that all nations may bear your name. We look forward, Lord, to your vision – when the reaper is overtaken by the plowman and our prayers are answered almost before we ask. We look forward, Lord, to when we tread the grapes of prayer in worship and in faith – and new wine will drip from the mountains and grace will flow from every hill. Bring us back, Lord, as a nation – we have been exiled into sin, into unbelief, into idolatry. Restore us, Lord. Grant repentance. Bring us back to our senses. Then we will plant the vineyards of love and faith, and drink the wine of goodness and peace, holiness and grace. Lord, we pray for your gardens, where we will eat the fruit of your abundant life. Then, Lord, we will be in our own land, where you always intended, never to be uprooted. Lord, you have spoken. You have given us this spiritual place, from which we will never be moved. Thank you, Lord.
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          Visionary Prophets, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah – The Vision Extended

We continue to pursue the call of God, who provides us a vision for the future. In the midst of events which are troubling or confusing or conflicted, we rely on the word of God to point us where we want to go. Obadiah speaks to the restoration of Israel. Jonah speaks to repentance and mercy, for great cities, as well as personal repentance and restoration. God’s vision includes personal confession and renewal. Micah is deeply concerned with justice for many people, and hope, and one whose origins are ‘from times of old.’

Obadiah: 15-17

The day of the Lord is near
    for all nations.
As you have done, it will be done to you;
    your deeds will return upon your own head.
Just as you drank on my holy hill,
    so all the nations will drink continually;
they will drink and drink
    and be as if they had never been.
 But on Mount Zion will be deliverance;
    it will be holy,
    and Jacob will possess his inheritance.

Prayer: Lord, we begin our prayers acknowledging your most basic principles of justice. As we have done, so will it be done to us. Lead us into righteousness, Lord. We come together to drink on your holy hill. We pray for a vision, for our church, our nation, for all nations, to drink of your Holy Spirit. You have declared deliverance on Mount Zion. We come to you, Lord, on this mount Zion of prayer. You have promised us an inheritance – a vision of a better life, a new life, a life delivered. Your day is near, Lord, you have declared it. Help us, Lord, to live it.

Obadiah: 19-21

People from the Negev will occupy
    the mountains of Esau,
and people from the foothills will possess
    the land of the Philistines.
They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria,
    and Benjamin will possess Gilead.
 This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan
    will possess the land as far as Zarephath;
the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
    will possess the towns of the Negev.
Deliverers will go up on Mount Zion
    to govern the mountains of Esau.
    And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.

Prayer: Lord, your promises are like mountains. We look to and rely on your promises. What we have, you have given us. Lord, at times, we look at the life of our nation, and we feel like exiles. We, who worship you, the only true God, are as a people banished from our own country. We sit as exiles, yet still in our own land. We pray, Lord, that the vision of your grace, the hearing of your Word, the obedience that comes from faith, will spread over all the land. We pray that deliverers will go up onto Mount Zion, to govern our land. We pray, Lord, for our nation – this, our home – to be yours. We pray that this nation will repent, rejoin, will worship with, will belong to the faithful in the Lord. This is our vision, Lord, and we lay it before you in prayer. We will say goodbye to violence. We will banish idolatry into the trash. Then we will be like kings and queens. And the Kingdom will be the Lord’s.

Jonah 1:3

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, we are like Jonah. We hear your word, and run away, to the most distant place we can think. At times we all seem headed for Tarshish. We seem to be searching for the ship of disobedience and the port of unbelief. We hear what you direct, Lord, and we pay the fare to run from you. It costs greatly to flee from you, Lord. Stubborn disobedience reaches into its purse – and achieves nothing. What you give, you give freely, at no cost – you have paid the charge. But we are determined, Lord, to board another ship, going in another direction and are all too willing to pay that fare. Help us, Lord. Grant us repentance. Grant us, Lord, obedience. Help us, Lord, to receive what you so freely give.

Jonah 2:2-6

In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
 You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
 I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
 The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

Prayer: Lord, after disaster strikes us, in our disobedience, finally, we are ready to call out to you. Almost literally calling out to you, Lord, from the land of the dead, we lift up our cry. It is out of your great mercy, Lord, that you cast us into the depths, into the very heart of the angry sea and pounding waters. Your waves and breakers sweep over us, and we acknowledge our sins. We look toward your Son, Jesus, the living Holy Temple you have placed before us, sent to us. We were banished from you, Lord, in our unbelief and folly, swallowed by the whale of doubt and fear. Our heads were wrapped in seaweed, we sank to the roots of the mountains, but you heard us, Lord. You brought our lives up from the pit. And you have given us a message, Lord, and a vision. Terrifying and beautiful, a message of repentance and salvation to deliver. Help us, Lord, to be your messengers to a wicked and unbelieving world.

Jonah 3:9-10

“Who knows?” the king of Ninevah asked. “God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Prayer: Lord, even the king of Ninevah, wicked as he was, understood the power of your mercy. Even the king of Ninevah, understood that you could turn aside your own anger, and bring forth salvation. The most wicked, the most unbelieving, the most evil – may turn to you in repentance, Lord, and you will see. Lord, you see and respond to repentance. No vision of repentance and renewal is in vain, Lord. If you see repentance, you will grant renewal. If you do such things for the king of Ninevah, what may you do for our nation, if we but repent? We see violence and raw conflict on every side – yet, Lord, we hold out a vision, for your peace, for your charity, for your unity, brought forth with repentance, from turning to you. Lord, even the king of Ninevah could see it. Show us as well.

Jonah 4:1-2

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

Prayer: Jonah was angry, Lord, because he prophesied destruction on Ninevah, and instead, God showed mercy. Lord, we admit, we acknowledge that we have grown so frustrated with our own nation that we are too often prophets of doom and disaster, and may well be disappointed if instead you show mercy. We know that you are a gracious and compassionate God. You have shown that to us. Help us, Lord, to present that grace and compassion to others. Help us, Lord, to be gracious and compassionate ourselves – not angry, that the destructions we expect have not yet come to pass. Your patience, Lord, is our lesson. Lord, if you are slow to anger, teach us that. Help us not to be messengers of calamity. You abound in love, Lord. Give us that vision, that we may live and walk in it – abounding love.

Jonah 4:3-4, 6-7

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live,” Jonah prayed.

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Then the Lord God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 

Prayer: Lord, in our frustration and impatience, we may sink into what amounts to a temper tantrum, like Jonah. You ask us, Lord, the question which needs to be asked. ‘Is it right for us to be angry?’ Lord, in this nation there is much to be justly concerned about. Yet the question you asked Jonah was not about his righteous indignation – it was a question about his personal emotions. Is it right to carry anger around inside us? When you ask that question, Lord, the answer is clear – no, it is not right to carry around unproductive personal anger. You provide for us, Lord, miraculously as needed. Help us to learn your lesson, Lord, and we will understand you better. And not be so angry that we forget our faith in your power.

Jonah: 4:10-11

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not be concerned for that great city of Nineveh, where there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and many animals too?”

Prayer: Lord, we see the compassionate – but corrective – expression on your face, when you remind us how great your love is. If our vision is too narrow, Lord, we hear your words and will expand it. You were concerned about Ninevah – its many people and even its animals. If we are concerned about the smaller things – as we should be – then let us be concerned about the larger. Your compassion, Lord, is the vision we need. We are concerned over things which are small – like vines which grow over us through no effort of our own. Help us, Lord, to be concerned as you have concern, about people and living beings, much more visible, and in much greater numbers.

Micah 2:12-13

The word of the Lord that came to Micah –

I will surely gather all of you, Jacob;
    I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel.
I will bring them together like sheep in a pen,
    like a flock in its pasture;
    the place will throng with people.
¹³ The One who breaks open the way will go up before them;
    they will break through the gate and go out.
Their King will pass through before them,
    the Lord at their head.

Prayer: Lord, you have set before us a vision for all people, for this nation, for all mankind. Gather us together, Lord, wherever we are, the remnant of a new Israel. Bring us like a flock at pasture into your pen. Father, you have sent Jesus, the One who breaks open the way. We praise you, Almighty God, that our Lord Jesus, sent by the Father, raised from the dead, will go before us. We will break through the gate of mortality, death and defeat; and we will enter your open pastures of life, health, holiness, freedom, victory. Our King, Jesus, will go before us, leading. Christ is now and will always be at our head. That is the vision we share, the vision of the prophets.

Micah 3:1-2, 5-7

Then I said,

Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
    you rulers of Israel.
Should you not embrace justice,
     you who hate good and love evil;
who tear the skin from my people
    and the flesh from their bones;

 This is what the Lord says:

As for the prophets
    who lead my people astray,
they proclaim ‘peace’
    if they have something to eat,
but prepare to wage war against anyone
    who refuses to feed them.
Therefore night will come over you, without visions,
    and darkness, without divination.
The sun will set for the prophets,
    and the day will go dark for them.
 The seers will be ashamed
    and the diviners disgraced.
They will all cover their faces
    because there is no answer from God.

Prayer: Lord, help us to embrace and love justice. Help us, Lord, to proclaim real peace, not a false one. Help us, Lord, to see beyond our own self-interest. Then we will have light to offer in the face of darkness. We have the Word of God to share, a vision for a people who need a vision. Guide us, Lord, and we will not be false prophets leading into a dark day. We will be true prophets, true guides, leading people to the Word of God, to Jesus our Lord, who is the complete, final and fulfilling answer from God. There is an answer from God, Lord. You have sent him, the Savior. Help us say it.

Micah 3:8-12

But as for me, I am filled with power,
    with the Spirit of the Lord,
    and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression,
    to Israel his sin.

Hear this, you leaders of Jacob,
    you rulers of Israel,
who despise justice
    and distort all that is right;
who build Zion with bloodshed,
    and Jerusalem with wickedness.
 Her leaders judge for a bribe,
    her priests teach for a price,
    and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they look for the Lord’s support and say,
    “Is not the Lord among us?
    No disaster will come upon us.”
Therefore because of you,
    Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,

Prayer: Lord, help us to be mindful of your call when it is needed, to declare to Jacob his sin. Help us, Lord, to say in the right way and at the right time, what justice is, what right is. We do not despise justice. We do not distort what is right. Bloodshed, wickedness, bribes and religious teaching ‘for a price’ have not left us. The fortune-tellers are still out there. Help us, Lord, to point the way to a better future. Help us, Lord, to do this with the power of Spirit of the Lord – with justice and strength – and not, ‘for a price.’

Micah 4:1-2

In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all peoples will stream to it.

 Many nations will come and say,

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for the days of your holy Temple, the Living Christ, to be established. We pray for the day when Christ will be exalted above every hill and all people will stream to Jesus. We look and pray for the day that many nations come and say, let us go up and find this Messiah, King Jesus, and may stream to Him. When Jesus is glorified, then the law will truly go out from Zion, and the Word of the Lord truly go forth from Jerusalem.

Micah 4:3-5

He will judge between many peoples
    and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.
Everyone will sit under their own vine
    and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
    for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
All the nations may walk
    in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
    our God for ever and ever.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for the day that the nations beat their swords into plowshares. We pray for the day that weapons of war are so useless, we turn them into pruning hooks. Our prayers are for true peace, when there is no need to train for any war, and no cause for any nation to take up its sword. Lord, we look and pray for the day when each one of us may sit under our own fig tree, and no one will make us afraid. All fear is gone. Lord, we look for and pray for that day – when we walk forever in the name of the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, the anointed, the Bread of Life, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Micah 4:6-7

“In that day,” declares the Lord,

“I will gather the lame;
    I will assemble the exiles
    and those I have brought to grief.
⁷ I will make the lame my remnant,
    those driven away a strong nation.
The Lord will rule over them in Mount Zion
    from that day and forever.

Prayer: Lord, we look for you to gather the lame and the exiles. Lord, we pray for you to rule over all of us, from Mount Zion. Lord, we praise you, that you make the lame and the disabled to be your remnant. Lord, we praise you, that you make the lame walk and the blind see. We rejoice that in gathering the weakest, Lord, you have gathered us too. We rejoice and praise you, Lord, that you rule over us forever – that we are your sheep, and that you bring us to eternal Zion, to live and worship and praise you forever.

Micah 5:2, 4-5

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
    one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
    from ancient times.

 He will stand and shepherd his flock
    in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
    will reach to the ends of the earth.

And he will be our peace.

Prayer: The prophecy of Micah has come to pass. Jesus, once returning to your home village of Bethlehem in Mary’s womb, come rule over us! Lord, ruler of Israel, rule over all! Lord, you are from ancient times, the alpha and omega. You existed before the beginning and you will exist after the end. You stand and shepherd us, your flock, in the majesty of the Name of the Lord God Almighty, your Father and ours. Lord, we pray for your glorious vision to spread and then we will live with true security. Your eternal greatness will reach the ends of the earth. Lord, we pray and thank you for all this – you are, and will be, our vision, our peace and our message. Amen.
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Visionary Prophets, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah– The Vision Solidified

We pursue the call of God and a vision for our future. Judgment, faith and restoration are building blocks for the vision. When I was a new Christian, the phrase ‘Full Gospel’ meant charismatic gifts and the charismatic renewal of the churches. I would like to extend the phrase into another direction – judgment, which may be difficult but starts a cycle which leads us through faith, when we cannot see an outcome, and finally restoration – the gathering of God’s people, refined, the chosen remnant, saved, purified, delighted in by God.

Nahum: 1:2-1-6

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;
    the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.
The Lord takes vengeance on his foes
    and vents his wrath against his enemies.
³ The Lord is slow to anger but great in power;
    the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.
His way is in the whirlwind and the storm,
    and clouds are the dust of his feet.
⁴ He rebukes the sea and dries it up;
    he makes all the rivers run dry.

The mountains quake before him
    and the hills melt away.
The earth trembles at his presence,
    the world and all who live in it.
⁶ Who can withstand his indignation?
    Who can endure his fierce anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire;
    the rocks are shattered before him.

Prayer: Lord, we respect your judgments. We worship you for your justice and we fear your power. We lift up prayers for those who are now your enemies, that they may come to know your mercy. But we know also that you do not leave the guilty unpunished. Everything serves you, Lord, and gives witness to your power. None can withstand your indignation, no one can endure your anger. We make intercession for others, Lord, so that they may meet you in mercy and kindness and love, not in wrath. But we have not absorbed the full Gospel, Lord, until we understand your power to shatter the very rocks, if it is necessary in the application of your justice. Lord, we know the world will not be ignorant of your power forever. Every knee, Lord, will bend to your Judgment.

Nahum 3:1-3, 18-19

Woe to the city of blood,
    full of lies,
full of plunder,
    never without victims!
² The crack of whips,
    the clatter of wheels,
galloping horses
    and jolting chariots!
³ Charging cavalry,
    flashing swords
    and glittering spears!

King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber;
    your nobles lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
    with no one to gather them.
¹⁹ Nothing can heal you;
    your wound is fatal.
All who hear the news about you
    clap their hands at your fall,
for who has not felt
    your endless cruelty?

Prayer: Lord, as we pray for conversions, as we pray for renewal and revival, we are reminded by your Word why we do pray. The world can be a violent and cruel place. Cities are built on blood and conquest. Empires are built on idolatry and brutal force. We do not hesitate to pray for the end of violence. We pray first and foremost for conversions, for the hearts of the wicked to turn to peace. We pray first and foremost for your grace to be a witness, to change hearts. But Lord, we do not hesitate to rejoice at the downfall of evil violence and evil doers. We too, who are intercessors for others, who gather for prayer, like lambs ourselves, will indeed clap our hands at the downfall of the wicked, the violent, the cruel. Not always easy words to hear, Lord, but they are part of your Gospel of peace. The alternative to your peace is a crashing fall and sure destruction. Help us, Lord, to be witnesses to both the salvation you offer, and the seriousness of judgment, where that salvation is rejected.

Habakkuk 3:2-6

Lord, I have heard of your fame;
    I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
    in our time make them known;
    in wrath remember mercy.

³ God came from Teman,
    the Holy One from Mount Paran.
His glory covered the heavens
    and his praise filled the earth.
⁴ His splendor was like the sunrise;
    rays flashed from his hand,
    where his power was hidden.
⁵ Plague went before him;
    pestilence followed his steps.
⁶ He stood, and shook the earth;
    he looked, and made the nations tremble.
The ancient mountains crumbled
    and the age-old hills collapsed—
    but he marches on forever.

Prayer: Yes, Lord, we pray like the prophets of old – in your wrath, remember your mercy. Your glory covers the heavens. We praise you and fill our hearts with your praise. Your splendor is the splendor of the risen Christ, crucified for our sins, raised from death for our salvation and life. Plague and pestilence may surround us, but you march on, Lord, and have sent Jesus so that we may be joined with him, and march with you. The ancient mountains may crumble, the age-old hills collapse – everything we see around us may appear to swirl and change so that we don’t know where we stand. But you have blessed us with salvation, and given us a capacity for faith, so that we may worship you and enjoy the life you have given, the gift without end, the salvation bestowed on us by Jesus our Lord through the Holy Spirit. You have given us through Christ a mercy so great it is almost beyond words.

Habakkuk 3:16-18

I heard and my heart pounded,
    my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones,
    and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
    to come on the nation invading us.
¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Prayer: Lord, if we have feared – if we have felt decay creep over us – if we have trembled – yet you have given us faith. We can wait patiently for all things, for the day of calamity as well as the day of Salvation. You have gifted us with a supernatural faith, a faith we were shown in Christ, who accepted the cross and death out of his own faith. So although our fig trees may not bud, although we look and there are no grapes on the vine; though the olive crops fail and our fields appear barren, yet you are with us. The future is unknown, perhaps there will be no sheep in the pens, and no cattle in the stalls. Yet we will rejoice in you, Lord, we will rejoice with great joy! You are our savior, and you have sent us your Son to confirm and assure us of your salvation. We will praise you, Lord, with great joy. And when we praise you, Lord, we do so, sure in the knowledge that in your way and in your timing, the figs will bud, the olives will grow, the fields will be rich with grain, the sheep will be plentiful, and our cattle will deafen us with their mooing. We will be joyful, Lord, in good times and bad, in prosperity and want, because you, Lord, are our Savior.

Zephaniah 3:9-13

Then I will purify the lips of the peoples,
    that all of them may call on the name of the Lord
    and serve him shoulder to shoulder.
¹⁰ From beyond the rivers of Cush^[d]
    my worshipers, my scattered people,
    will bring me offerings.
¹¹ On that day you, Jerusalem, will not be put to shame
    for all the wrongs you have done to me,
because I will remove from you
    your arrogant boasters.
Never again will you be haughty
    on my holy hill.
¹² But I will leave within you
    the meek and humble.
The remnant of Israel
    will trust in the name of the Lord.
¹³ They will do no wrong;
    they will tell no lies.
A deceitful tongue
    will not be found in their mouths.
They will eat and lie down
    and no one will make them afraid.

Prayer: Lord, we bring you our offering of prayer. We pray you will purify our lips and gather us together, who have been scattered. We have sinned, Lord, we confess and acknowledge our sins. But help us, Lord, to put away pride. Teach us, Lord, your humility. We will bring our prayers to you, prayers of intercession, like the remnant of Israel you often speak of in your Word. Help us, Lord, to be the example of those who trust in the name of the Lord. Guide us, Lord, toward doing what is right and speaking truthfully. Keep us away from deceit, Lord. Keep us in your paths of peace and genuine fellowship. You will provide for us, Lord. We will eat your good food and lie down in peace and green pastures, beside still waters. And no one will make us afraid.

Zephaniah 3:14-16

Sing, Daughter Zion;
    shout aloud, Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
    Daughter Jerusalem!
¹⁵ The Lord has taken away your punishment,
    he has turned back your enemy.
The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you;
    never again will you fear any harm.
¹⁶ On that day
    they will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, Zion;
    do not let your hands hang limp.
¹⁷ The Lord your God is with you,
    the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.

Prayer: Lord, teach us to sing! Teach us to shout aloud with joy! We rejoice, Lord, with all our hearts! You have taken away our punishments. We praise and thank you for Christ – he has turned back the chief enemy, death. Lord, you have taken away all that could make us afraid. Our arms are offered to you, Lord, for us to be your hands. We are your means to give comfort in this world. You have come to be God-with-us, Emmanuel, the anointed One. Christ, our Mighty Warrior who saves. Lord, we take great delight in you, as you take great delight in us. In your love, Lord, we rejoice with singing.

Zephaniah 3:18-20

I will remove from you
    all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals,
    which is a burden and reproach for you.
¹⁹ At that time I will deal
    with all who oppressed you.
I will rescue the lame;
    I will gather the exiles.
I will give them praise and honor
    in every land where they have suffered shame.
²⁰ At that time I will gather you;
    at that time I will bring you home.
I will give you honor and praise
    among all the peoples of the earth
when I restore your fortunes
    before your very eyes,
says the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, we have all suffered some injuries and scars as we have gone through our lives. Rescue us, Lord – we, who are yet lame and still learning to walk freely. Return us, Lord, to our native home, we who are exiles. We have suffered shame, but you, Lord, will bring us honor. Gather us, Lord, gather us. Bring us home. Restore us, Lord – our spiritual fortunes, our church and family fortunes, our national fortunes, before our very eyes. We look to you, Lord, and your promises, as we wait patiently in good faith for the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit to be renewed and restored and revived.
_________________________

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Issues to Consider with respect to extending medical parole in Pennsylvania:

How old is the individual? How much of the sentence has the incarcerated individual served? What proportion of that is his or her sentence?

Is the individual lucid, rational, self-aware, able to care for themselves, or do they have significant cognitive, physical or emotional deficits?

Have the interests of the victim or the victim’s family been vindicated, protected, or at least given serious and reasoned consideration?

Have the interests of the community with respect to community safety and the punishment of crime and consequences of crime, as exemplars and warnings, been vindicated, protected, or at least given serious and reasoned consideration?

Is the individual likely to pose a future risk for any reason, but in particular with respect to street violence, drug dealing, sexual assault, armed robbery, carjacking, weapons violations, domestic violence or engaging in sexual crimes or pornography involving children? How sure are we that such conduct is not going to be repeated?

Does it appear that we are treating like cases alike? Is the potential early release of this individual comparable to early releases implemented or being considered for other incarcerated individuals? This cannot be a game of money, favoritism and/or political influence.

How serious is the health condition of the individual? What is their life expectancy? How much future medical care is it likely that they will require? Can the provision of such care be provided by or through the state Dept. of Corrections, or is the medical care required not easily or practically attained within the DoC system?

Can this individual financially care for himself after release? Do they have someplace to live? What family or outside resources are available to this individual?

What is their disciplinary record while incarcerated? What does their overall or lifetime criminal record look like, including their juvenile record?

Without looking for some phony-baloney rehearsed recitation of remorse, sounding like a middle school speech contest, does the individual grasp what the problem is with his particular crime? Is there any sense of actual remorse, as opposed to pious speeches? If there is one or more victims involved in the crime, does the individual get that the victim counted too? That their lives were just as important to them? When a convenience store clerk or Uber driver get murdered for a pittance, when some dopey teenager gets murdered trying to buy or steal marijuana, when a girlfriend is killed in an angry, drunken quarrel – don’t their lives matter too? The victims of crime are generally not the rich and famous, and the acknowledgment of that from those seeking release from prison would make a difference, to me at least.

If I were asked to make such decisions, those are questions I would be asking.

The post Additional Thoughts about Medical Parole appeared first on Right From The Hip.

“Hi – supermax coffee, room for cream.” She nods at this familiar order. “And is it okay if I assemble a few chairs? I want to read some poetry.”

“Are you expecting anyone?” she replies, with her back to me to fill the order.

“No, not really. I want to read some poetry to empty chairs.”

“How many chairs?” she asks, turning her head.

“Four or five,” I suggest.

“How many poems?” she asks, perhaps smiling slightly, although she has available a pretty dead-pan sort of face, which she employs now.

“One or two. Maybe a couple.” I reply, guarded.

“And if we have some paying customers come?” she asks. “Who might want some chairs?”

“I promise to surrender them – upon demand – implied or explicit,” I acknowledge.

“You’re not going to hurt them, are you?” Jen asks, now not bothering to contain her amusement. “We value them, you know. Our customers, and our chairs.” She put back on her dead-pan expression.

“Who has ever been harmed by poetry?” I reply, with the wounded expression of every misunderstood artiste who has ever lived.

“Here’s your coffee. And okay as to the chairs, until more customers come. Use the back area,” she permitted. She paused, then offered, “If I have a minute, maybe I’ll stop back there to listen.”

“Poetry is like God’s grace. There for all who wish to partake,” I announce, noting that her dead-pan expression had softened, perhaps an inch.

______________

A Poised and Muted Home-State Morning

When I’m not hopelessly preoccupied, the miscellany of this state
interests me – Wawa gas stations, nurseries, flagmen stopping traffic,
empty brown fields showing evidence of abandoned construction projects,
a collapsed sign for a home church, the Schuylkill River bridge between
Spring City and Royersford. The auto parts store.

And trees. Everywhere, trees – pines, spruce, walnuts, ashes, oaks, beeches,
maples, birch, hickories, willows – the deciduous, February naked.
Erupting from brown alluvial Pennsylvania mud. No one says anything –
the old breed won’t tip their hand – but the trees and the mud appear to be
card-counting friends with this murky river – and that, for a long time.

The mobile home park is vibrant with foot traffic, poised at the traffic signal
and the bus stop, buttoned for the weather. There are ghost houses too,
stately mansions in the throes of conspicuous, flaunting dilapidation.
Here, where William Penn once made self-conscious treaties with Indian
tribes, the living and the dead engage in daily turf war.

The iron-stove past evaporates as I cross the railroad tracks, where 100-car
trains of boxcars still rumble, to reach the fourth traffic light, across from
the diner and the thrift store. Clients require attention. I will need coffee,
cream and sugar, a salty hard-boiled egg, but duties are not unwelcome.
My office is home, a mighty fortress to answer riddles in pandemic-bent law.

I draw breath on God’s muted winter day. He too responds with a daily
explanation, written across the face of this sylvania. Here is his answer-
look for his words, where deer multiply madly, leaving a sporadic roadside
carcass or two; reminders of that war which is ever waged between
pilgrim-change and cold-taloned paralysis. The living package is the gift.

Opaque in blanketing shades of grey are ill-defined clouds,
backscreens for purposeful geese, flocks of robins skittering
up-and-down on fields, glide-menacing hawks. Deeper, schist,
sandstone, shale and unseen bedrock are marked, admitted
as Genesis-exhibits to his slow-moving quaker judgments,
upon which I run, light-traveling and exhilarated, but briefly.

__________________________

Washington’s Arch at Valley Forge

Inner loop, cobblestone entry, concrete-etched lines:
naked and starving, incomparable-patience.
Arches and symbols, commissioned in another war year,
that tribulation now known by Wilson, 14 Points, Balfour.
Red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, squirrels, brides-to-be
jostle with tourists, photographers, wedding parties, cyclists.
Its approaching path named for a teenage soldier, who fought at
Brooklyn, White Plains, Fort Mifflin, Monmouth, Yorktown.

Joseph Plumb Martin, 89 years old, was buried
in 1850 next to his wife, Lucy, who bore him
five children. They rest at Sandy Point Cemetery
in Maine. His war-diary has earned him renown.

Whosever will, come.
Whosever is elect, greetings.
Scars invisible, muffled past,
a victory arch, immovable.

O, arch – Titus’ model, Washington’s victory,
King George’s surrender, preterist’s error.
When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,
you will know its desolation is near.
Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Jesus’ warning – about a day closing
unexpectedly.

Tribulations there are and unquiet spirits.
Pools of renegade emotion lay covered,
drain slowly. But deer and sparrows gather
under the arch, troubled not –
and we are worth many sparrows.
The peace of the arch,
the victory of fidelity,
runs deep.

From the arch, much is visible.
From the heart’s arch, much more.
Lift up your head, o ye gates,
Your redemption is drawing nigh.
So take heart. I have overcome the world.

______________________________________

Mr. Putin, the Prophet Daniel, and the Naval Air Development Center
at Warminster

A few years after becoming a Christian, in 1985
I was hired as a technical writer for Sperry’s software-
producing branch office in Trevose. They wanted me
to write proposals, but they needed me on a project;
so they assigned me to the S-3 project, a carrier-
based anti-submarine warfare aircraft. I needed a
security clearance. Not the usual topic for poetry.

We serviced the Naval Air Development Center in
Warminster. Acronyms like FLIR and MAD were my
daily fare, distressing for an ex-hippy who once
marched against war. Getting a clearance past
the Defense Investigative Service (DIS) took six months,
since written questions about my past on a clearance
application elicited disquieting answers, no matter how
general and upbeat I spun my Christian responses.

After enough time, and a lengthy personal interview
with a DIS interviewer who fired questions at me for two
hours, I was cleared for Secret. After some time dealing
with military contracting, I was cleared for Ridiculous –
but that’s an inside joke. I was an honorary Old Crow.

They put me on North Warning System (NWS) and on
CV-ASWM, Carrier-based Anti-Submarine Warfare
Module. I did my job, led a lunchtime Bible study,
made friends and wrote proposals that were at least
somewhat improved in writing style. We took lunchtime
walks in a nearby Jewish cemetery, which had at least one
set of Wolperts. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and
I was already on my way to law school, so one would think,
what’s done is done.

But Vladimir Putin, East German KGB officer, apparently
did not take kindly to the gestalt of the Soviet Union’s
collapse. I suppose if I had met him on the Fishtown streets
of Philadelphia, I could have asked him, Philly-style, “What’s
it to ya, pal?” But he wouldn’t have answered. Today, in
2022, they’re fighting on the streets in the Ukraine. Heavy
Russian main battle tanks, T-88s, T-90s, are taking the highway
toward the border, right under the nose of the CNN cameraman.
That happened last night. So I guess I’ve got my answer.

Poets write about hummingbirds, or orchids, or lost love-affairs,
or death. Louise Gluck wrote about a lost passport, and it was
an impressive poem. The Naval Air Development Center has been
shuttered and its operations moved, but what goes around
comes around. I don’t know how to write a poem about a Russian
battle tank. I could write about the Ukrainian people, but I think
they have poets who will do that better than I. What can
I offer? Perhaps Daniel will help us understand Mr. Putin:

But tidings from the east and the north shall alarm him,
and he shall go forth with great fury to exterminate and
utterly destroy many. And he shall pitch his palatial tents
between the sea and the glorious holy mountain: yet he
shall come to his end, with none to help him.

Amen. 

____________________________

Dialogue with an Atlas Cedar

After all, you and I are both things, replied a great Shrine Oak to
master carpenter Shi in a dream, at least as Chuang-Tzu told the
tale. O, who are you to size me up, restless mortal? Hello, then,
towering Atlas Cedar at Longwood Gardens, grass-sandwiched on a
strip-precipice, parking lot bystander, greeter for unloading buses.

Some branches are lopped, I announce to the cedar. Do you mind?
I am constrained, the tree replied, but without harm. Like a tiger
in its walk. Here, I command. You’re not in the mountains of Morocco
now, I remind the cedar. You are surrounded by an arboretum-kingdom
in my state – yet shunned. People see me first, said the cedar. As did you.

I am here, where I am. Stranded, perhaps defiant – and you, also.
Planted, hemmed – not into gardens, tended, not always comfortably.
You came to write a poem, but not to me. I thought to find a great
vocal sycamore on Brandywine Battlefield. Redirected by winter fences,
here am I. Foolish man – war and peace are wherever you find them.

Are you proud of being here displayed, jammed between asphalt islands,
breathing fumes? A woody tiger butterfly-mounted on a grassy cage?
I was here when Quakers moved night-escaping men to these long woods.
Where were you when this was a few ragged farms? Do I owe you a song?
No – I haven’t your markers. Your obligations are to One who created us both.

If you have more, I will listen. Atlas Cedar, your aloof-spread dignity stands.
But you draw sustenance from our soil here; the Brandywine nourishes you,
flowing down from Amish Honeybrook. Either we are both guests here –
or neither. Know that I outlast you. Perhaps, yet I have a promise you do
not. Do I not come into a new heaven, and a new earth – a new garden?

You may speak further, old man. I will humor you. Fair enough, Cedar.
Be jubilant – and everything within you! Sing for joy before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth, to judge my state! He comes to tend
the gardens, and the inhabitants therein. We will rejoice in God, who
comes for judgment on all the earth, and all that dwells therein.

_____________________________________

A Brief Disruption in the Machineries of Joy

Sometimes, I can think tight, disciplined thoughts.
There are times, however, like the anti-hero in a Fellini film,
I drive in aimless, vacant circles,
with spraying words and symbols rattling in my head.

And then, like the elderly, dissembling to their adult children,
I may remember abruptly what I Ieft home for,
what essential errand I was going to run –
what prescription to fetch.

Momentarily, I hope to regain my orientation.
The local highways of West Chester will reappear
in their familiar mental geometry, each axis pure,
vectors of time and purpose tacked to them again.

Friendly, familiar Route 202 leads this way,
The exit for proud Westtown goes there.
I am quite determined: I will not do as I have done,
drive miles down to the horrid intersection of Route 1,

before I am sure, absolutely sure, that
I have gone too far,
and must return.

___________________________________

Seven Postcards from Philadelphia

1.  Roxborough

Eisenhower was President then. My father would take us to visit Uncle Norman’s
corner bar in Roxborough.  Taproom’s mysterious incenses: local brew & bottled beer;
Schlitz, Ballantine, Pabst, or as the ad jingle had it: ‘Mabel – Black Label;’ stale-
spilled beer on the black linoleum floor; grilled hamburgers with onions; whisky in
shot glasses; pinball machines and bowling arcade-game sawdust. We had bottomless
soda from the barroom tap. Working men on bar stools; my father and Norman talked.

Norman never went to college; the other four did. Grandmother Sarah raised five
children with that desperate determination of single mothers; every household bill
was the dragon-enemy, a mountain to climb. When my wife first met my father, they
shared a landscape. Edna’s daughter knew dragon-bills, those cliffs. The candy store,
where the children worked because that’s what you did, was Sarah’s non-stop story.
It was no disgrace – in the 1930’s everybody in Roxborough was poor; Jew or Gentile.

In the 1950’s, prosperity rolled in. My father was busy practicing dentistry in Lansdale.
Norman, once B-17 co-pilot (Lucky Patch), 379^th Group, married Eleanor, did well too.
Mildred ran a local liquor store with Marty in Pleasantville. Harry was so smart, married
Blanche, lived in Wilmington, president of his company. Evelyn married lawyer Dan,
who never stopped working. American-Jewish families ascended, arrived. The corner
taproom was sold – the crisp purpose of the climb diluted, the incense-hops gone.

2.   School House Lane, Germantown

Aged 12, at Germantown Academy, coming out of gym class, crossing the parking
lot, my Welsh friend told me that the President had been assassinated. I wanted to
correct him – not with facts, I had none – but rather, because it was inconceivable
the President was dead. Welsh-friend wasn’t using the word ‘assassinated’ right – it was
my duty to correct, to be the sergeant-at-arms of words. Climbing stairs of a tired building
to class; our math teacher, dead-sober, grim, crowded us into his office to hear the radio.

America wounded, grief-stricken, conducted its solemn ceremonies while a three-year
old saluted. Seventh grade went on; 1963 turned into 1964. The streetcar from Reading’s
train station at Wayne Junction bounced to leafy, brick-sidewalk School House Lane where
once patriot bullets flew. Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston; a military coup in South Vietnam.
Unknown to us, my parents were preparing to divorce. The 1960s were proceeding, but there
was a pause, a diver flexing on a cliff’s edge overlooking dark blue waters many yards down.

The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Germantown, anti-slavery from 1688, Washington’s
refuge from yellow fever, was on hold – private schools there held neighborhoods in place.
I could explore, walk light-hearted on Germantown Avenue to buy gum. If stern young men
wearing bow ties sold Muhammad Speaks, they didn’t bother young whites. Blockbusting,
white flight were en route. Gathered in Episcopal chapel each morning to dignify the day.
Ivy League, old money Philadelphia cast hopefully across our future by ambitious parents.

3.   15^th & Spruce – the Irish Bar

Irish Bar, neighborhood no-frills, near Center City, convenient to the dilapidated high-rise
– such vivid, emotional memories of you – but you hardly know me. Finishing work,
my mother camped on your bar stool at the darkling back, by the kitchen window opening.
In those years, when I wanted to see her, to introduce a girl, I found Jimmy at Irish Bar.
Lumbering through – the place so dark, mother’s eyes filmy, I would startle her approaching.
There was a Villanova-met girl, Occhi Scuri, more Catholic than a Pope, I wanted her to meet.

When I brought O-S, it was early afternoon on a Saturday – it was not her first beer, but my
mother was decently sober. I was a new Christian, enthralled by this new faith. O-S was the
most religious girl I had ever met. I was converted reading Luther, she worked at a Catholic
book/memorabilia store – but difficulties invisibly dim, like the interior decor of Irish Bar.
The conversation was pleasant, polite. Later, when I asked an impression, my mother replied
she wore “sensible shoes.” I took that for my mother’s approval; in hindsight, rather vague.

But O-S’ slender, nervous equilibrium collapsed – she was committed into psychiatric care.
I was the stressor. When our relationship imploded, O-S was not happy, but her dutiful,
Catholic equanimity in this world’s vale of tears would recover. The ceiling of my mother’s
apartment at the high-rise was collapsing; her bathroom was so befouled – heavy drinkers
careless of toilet hygiene – it would take Erma and I hours to clean. My mother found a co-
op, at 21^st & Walnut, and put herself on the waiting list. I stopped back at Irish Bar, once.

4.   West Philly, then Hunting Park

In West Philadelphia, we met in the early stages of a Prison Fellowship support group at
different locations, one small church or another, changing members. West Philly, one block
a well-tended neighborhood – urban planner’s green dream – one block over, science fiction
movie – warring neon-gangs laid waste to trash-devastated landscape, post-nuclear war.
Christians from Romania, once Communist-imprisoned, said that incarceration wasn’t bad –
all the best people were in jail. A woman told me of her angelic rescue from street violence.

Watched cop enter a home on a domestic – his expression, blended: officer’s calm-routine
business, and eternity-watchful in perhaps last mortal seconds before an exploding-ambush.
West Philly, safe as a baby; around a corner, a crack house. When the group dwindled & I
arrived first at whichever church, left open the doors. Passing boy and father – boy asked
what is he doing? His father answered – the man is praying. Our name, Philemon Group –
Prison Fellowship found us a home-base meeting church at 9^th & Lycoming, Hunting Park.

Hunting Park housed a fearful drug market – same rules – stay on a block you know, corner
you know. The church was stately, once the First German Baptist Church, like the Brethren,
then passed through many hands, many ministries: Fleischman Memorial, Embracing Truth,
Harvest Time, New Thankful Baptist Church. Thursday meetings, then Roosevelt Boulevard
to Cottman, Frankford, Rhawn – Philly’s Northeast – arrive at Holmesburg Prison for 9 pm
gymnasium service in stone-dungeon-fortress of pain & hope – the Church behind the Wall.

5.   An Upper Floor on Two Logan Square

Post-law school, arrived at Philadelphia center-city branch of Pittsburgh-based Big Law Firm.
Commercial real estate group. Long hours, first-year associate’s life. Christmas approached,
5-year old son asked if I was going to be home that day. Slept on my mother’s couch at 21^st
& Walnut, rather than take 11 pm train home to Exton. Learned the underground concourse
around Suburban Station. Morning bear-claws Au Bon Pain; Caesar salads for dinner. Four
young children would stay up until I came home from work; Erma at wit’s end with bedtime.

Not melding in well; too old for a junior associate, socially awkward. Due diligence review of
secured lenders’ multi-parcel real estate financing. Wandered off to 2^nd floor gym at 18^th
& Chestnut, Reading Terminal Market for lunch – bright flashes in a glaring, difficult world.
Center City can present much; but I was a hooked fish, twirling on a line, gasping – in my
birth-city, not in my element. Empty pew-sat for refuge at Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul.
Profound saint-silence different in tone and key than a wary silence at narrow desk at BLF.

Commercial real estate slowed down; my low-level associate’s hours written off in billing.
Bean-counters in Pittsburgh reasoned I did nothing productive at all, despite long hours.
Darryl Blackwell contacted me; began hours of pro bono work for 49-page, sincere but
unsuccessful post-conviction appeal. Recorded hours of paralegal work (nothing else to do),
inciting Exalted Senior Partner to Pittsburgh-call & chastise me directly. My doom, sealed.
Partner Being Groomed flew in for my execution: nothing personal – just BLF business.

6.   A Funeral at 21^st and Chestnut

My mother’s funeral, Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion. Day pouring rain, but Irish
say that’s a good sign – her soul was welcomed into heaven. While I was at law school, she
became so ill I expected the end; but my mother was resilient. After years of escorting her
to various churches, grace appeared at Beth Y’Shua – Friday Shabbat, Jews-for-Jesus service
on City Line Ave. While congregants were dancing, she abruptly turned, fell onto her knees
and folded her hands in head-bowed shocked fear of the One Lord, God Almighty of Israel.

Jimmy would find a church where she could ask a thousand questions without irritating the
pastor. She invited me over for a meal – she had been a masterful cook – my mother, sober
and motivated enough to prepare a complete dinner was like a resurrection from the dead. If
great angels had appeared, I could not have been more astonished. The eulogy was tender
and affectionate; she had weekly folded church bulletins – the pastor knew her well. Weather
kept some away, but Jewish cousins appeared in full numbers for Aunt Jimmy. Toda Raba.

The walls of her co-op apartment were covered with paintings and artwork, overlaying
a plaster of caked cigarette smoke.  Some art was created by friends, met when we lived on
Betsy Lane in Ambler. Linda-M & Sue-H had been friend-artists-to-be attending Wissahickon
High School. They gathered on our back screened porch to smoke cigarettes, tease me and
discuss the chief questions of life – Jimmy’s favorite topic. Philadelphia, my mother’s retreat
when life collapsed in Ambler. At the co-op, at Holy Communion, Jimmy stood her ground.

7.   Urban Neighborhood Study, Set Near Stars

There is another Philadelphia neighborhood of which I write, another local church to visit.
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write: These are the words of Him who is holy
and true, who holds David’s key. What He opens none shut; what He shuts, none open.
I know your story. I’ve opened a door for you. I know you’re weak. But you’ve kept my
words – you haven’t denied me. You’ve had sharp disputes. Your adversaries will surrender
to you & admit I love you. Keep going. Worldwide tests are coming. You will surely pass.

I am returning and will return, in more ways than you understand. Stand firm. Your faith
is real – hold it. No one will take your crown. You’re going to overcome your adversaries,
the coming trials, your doubts and your fears. You’re going to be Philadelphia – one of the
supporting pillars, one of the high-rises, one of the neighborhoods, one of the gathering-
places. You won’t leave Philadelphia because you are the Church-in-Philadelphia. This is
the Philadelphia of God – everlasting.  Revealed here, on this corner. Forever – Unmoved.

Look around, City. The Name of God will be soul-etched on you. The name Philadelphia will
be Spirit-written on you – never to be erased. This neighborhood is permanent.  Coming
down from heaven, God will enscribe you: your name is on this Church’s foundation stone.
Listen and hear. The Spirit of God speaks. Friends, believe these words – holy and true.
Our atoning-ascending Savior, God’s Son, is gathering us, loving us, to bring us with him.
Death is the overwhelming enemy. Christ Jesus, raised to life, the overwhelming answer.

Brothers, sisters, accept the key – welcome to our Philadelphia-resurrection neighborhood.

______________________

Testimonies in State Court

I was called.  Moved, I heard and looked – heaven’s door stood open.
They were words for me, appointed to a court: Come up here, and I will
show you what must take place after this. They are Spirit-words for us.
I will open a case – I will call homely eye-witnesses to give the testimony.
Pennsylvania, attend. Your attention is required. The door opens for you,
you will be examined in response. Rivers, step forward – you first will
open the ears of this jury. Delaware and Susquehanna, broad waters,
be seated, take the oath. The Ohio, headwaters; the Schuylkill, coal-carrier,
whitewater Lehigh, and Allegheny; city-seeker Monongahela, meeting two
sisters and the Clarion. Pennsylvania rivers, forest-dividers, flowing into
a crystal sea, lace draped across our land, stairsteps to a holy throne – testify.

My witness list is long, not always the great or celebrated or powerful.
Highway weeds, come to court, step forward to testify! Speak your names:
Johnsongrass, purple loosestrife, giant hogweed, multiflora rosa, honeysuckle,
poison ivy, oriental bittersweet, Canada thistle, boxelder Maple, jimsonweed –
You noxious weeds, come forward!  Musk thistle, poison Hemlock, kudzu, goatsrue,
wild parsnip, bull thistles, crown vetch, common purslane, crabgrass and foxtail.
Quack grass, ragweed, we see you everywhere but never see you at all. Bamboo,
tough, unyielding, never giving an inch. Highways are spread with your glory.
Step forward! The glory of the Lord our God, the glory of His Throne, celebrated
by golden-crowned elders, by great, miraculous, six-winged, seeing, speaking
angelic beings – the glory of God is conferred on you also, on your existence.

O, Pennsylvania, so preoccupied, I will bring these testimonies to your door.
The glory of being, of existence, the glory of an ontological blaze of fantastic life,
given by God, is presented by many witnesses.  The roadside weeds will testify
under oath that the Lord our God is holy.  Even the Johnsongrass will say of
Him, that He Was, and Is, and is to Come.  If the highway weeds know this,
O Pennsylvania, why don’t you? It is a clarion call to you, home-state brethren,
to know your God, to praise your Creator. Perhaps, if we do not know Him,
must I not say of us, that we are wretches – pitiful, poor, blind and stark naked?
Did we think we were rich with coal? Did we believe we had salve for the eyes?
See, citizen-friends, the door standing open, see Him, who is to come. The
risen Christ will enter our door, sit and eat fish in our presence – so we know.

If our rivers know it, and our weeds know it, then surely we must be
in possession of this knowledge too. We may be guided by angels.
We will not be embarrassed or humiliated, to praise the God who made us –
Holy is the Lord God Almighty. We have flashing, bejeweled, golden
crowns – the rivers have majestic, flowing crowns, the highway weeds,
the lantern flies, have crowns – crowns of being, of existence, of being
called and created out of nothing-void. Even a scampering insect, a
thousand-legger may sing, whose life in our sink where it startles my
wife is measured in draining seconds, may join in creation to being-sing:
You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory, honor and power.
You created all things – by your will we are created and have our being.

Sing with me, Pennsylvanians, obsessing over baubles, chasing trinkets.
You measure out empty to pour foundations of nothing, erect illusion walls
and roofs of broken shatter. What do you have that will stand – on the
day our Lord returns? Where will you hide, where will your spirit go,
when the earth moves and the stars fall? How will you answer Will Penn,
who will ask you, Did I not begin with a religious vision? Did I not
confer a great gift? What have you done with my land grant? I had it
from a king. Indeed, Pennsylvanians, we do have it from a King.
Sing to the Lord our God, who hath made us, and given us this, our
home state, with its rivers, its forests, its weeds and insects, its monuments,
and all that they contain to give us a state, a world in which to live.

________________________

Clearbrook Road Poet-Pilgrim

There is enormous poetry, enough for any pilgrim,
in the New Testament, dearly beloved, holy and true –
every etched page, every parable-mystery, each sign and symbol,
its gracious mercy!miracles, every quarrel and angry, mocking debate.
Human experience explodes here, unveiled prophecies are more
than demonstration-experiments in systems or theology,
as proof-correct, as geometrically precise as that theology may be.

Our Savior’s whole Book is a love poem, a fireworks display,
a sonnet of pain and joy for the living, we runaway beatnik-pilgrims.
A flight of impossible fancy for pirates and wandering knights-errant,
a butterfly escaping the flames, its wings beating wildly, like its heart.
A city of sobbing grief, lost, suffering amidst the exploding artillery,
turned into a kingdom of verse, pouring down in hurricanes of peace,
and wild celebrations recognizing no limit, no end.
______________________________

Wrenched Visions for a Purchased Scroll

A depressed vision, nightmare-cascading, feeding on itself.
Our state’s acts, recorded solemnly in books, sternly sealed –
vandalized, shredded by an insolent miscreant, a thief in time-
travel, breaking in for malice and mockery, provoking night-
emotions in devised counter-factuals, wrenching out dream tears.

William Penn found a lavish lifestyle in London suited him well.
He asked no land grant, just ready cash to settle a king’s debt.
He ran through lucre with the eager zeal of a drunken gambler.
Lands across an ocean, religious visions, holy experiments, held
no fascination for him. His only pledges, to strumpets. So I wept.

In Philadelphia, around fireplaces the British danced gleeful minuets –
they toasted their king with victory wine, giddy with martial triumphs.
At Valley Forge, our army starved, collapsed, dissolved, deserted.
Lafayette basked in Paris salons. Von Steuben sailed back to Germany.
Our cause was only tawdry rebellion, unworthy of success. So I wept.

Washington, cursing his fate, cast himself into the frozen Schuylkill.
There were no debating assemblies, no proclamations, no governing
constitutions from Philadelphia. No bold declarations of independent
anything. Congress was sullen, silent, divided, soon dissolved. Our
hopes were childish, impossible – our ideals self-serving. So I wept.

At Gettysburg, the battle was lost here, defeated, the seminary closed.
No Presidential speeches were given, no somber pronouncements
of larger national purpose were heard. Lincoln left office for Illinois.
Cattle wandered about the town, aimless and lost. Things broke apart.
Two nations, then later, three. Bloody sacrifices, useless. So I wept.

I woke from my visions, emotional, defensive, grasping for replies.
Worthy came to mind – such an odd word, banished, useless, inadequate.
It touched on slender answers to time-vandals. Words, moral judgments –
Really? Such a word is like holding a museum piece, an archaic pistol –
Penn. Washington. Lincoln. Histories only matter if worthy matters.

I wept and wept because no one was found to be worthy, wrote John.
Even a holy experiment may find that it has been taken into captivity.
Even a commonwealth may find defiled consciences, hopeless resignation,
obliterated purposes, quarrels over tarnished trophies, bitter captivity.
The holy experiment has been captured, dragged-blind into servitude.

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals. With your blood
you purchased men for God. Wait, please tell – to whom was the purchase
price paid? Does the purchase satisfy God’s justice? Fulfill the last jot,
tittle of the Law? Does this purchase quiet uncalm conscience? Silence
Satan’s accusations – leveled endlessly against the meek and hopeful?

Determine-demons, debt-collectors of sin, shadow-casting a grim future,
reside inside. Mocking-accountants, they hiss and giggle with what we owe,
indict who, what we are, screwed darkly onto our barstools – where it ends
sloshing drainwater. Steep, the redemption price – paid by a worthy One.
Worthy-alone, Lion-Lamb, to open, to redeem addict-predestined scrolls.

My mother was fated to end her life on a barstool – so was my brother,
and so was I. Our souls required a full satisfaction price; our natures hope-
less without redemption and payment for who and what we were. To breathe,
nothing less – the purifying blood of a holy Lamb. All else, trinkets. Atoning
Spirit-conviction, not a penny less to satisfy the sad Cassandra-curse within.

Our scrolls redeemed by the One who received the Holy Scroll, entire, two-
sided, with all knowledge, all power. Pennsylvania, even an inner light needs
purification, atonement: One, worthy – to free us from forces, curses beyond
our natures to resist the Babylonian captivity. Penn’s revived Holy Experiment,
renewed on firmer, eternal footings. Purchased by his blood, home state, so we
may be kings and priests of the Lamb, Christ Jesus, praised on our land, here.
_________________________

Horses and a Rider on 113

On a cloudy day, I saw five horses in a field; four were together,
by the fence near the road. The fifth horse was near the back.
The corralled horses were bareback; there were no riders in sight.
Multi-colored, unconcerned, they champed, stood, grazed.

A limping man, wearing white, appeared to open the western gate.
He carried a riding saddle and hunting bow. He approached the white
horse in the group of four and said, “Very good.” Dropping the bow, he
commenced to fastening the saddle. “Your turn now,” he said. “Only fair.”

The morning sun appeared, cutting through the clouds, knife-bright,
blazing. It lit up the horses, the man and his saddle, turkey vultures in
the field, the stable with lumber strewn about for repairs-in-progress.
The abrupt sunlight made a universal spotlight, illuminating, warming.

Another man appeared, from behind the stable. He ambled lightly down
to the limping man. “Here’s your helmet,” he announced, handing over an
equestrian’s helmet to the limping man who had appeared disadvantaged,
and odd with his bow – but now, helmet on head, looked regal, military.

“My children will ride,” said the limping man, “when they come back
from the doctor.” The other man nodded, looked at the stables, shook
his head.  The sun disappeared. “It’ll clear up,” shouted the limping man.
The other man made no answer, disappeared back behind a dark shed.

The other three horses, ears upright, moved away like shadows, observing.
The saddled horse and the distant white horse appeared to acknowledge
each other, but neither moved. The man mounted, bow back in hand.
“Soon,” said the rider, to no one in particular, adjusting his helmet.
His horse reared eagerly. “Soon.”
_____________________

Not the Distance You’d Expect

One neighbor went by terrorists.
One neighbor went by his brother.
Two neighbors went by their son.
The son went by the police.

O, Red Rider, your sword is long indeed.
One would think our little village
would be beneath your gaze,
unworthy of your attention.

But not so. Not so.
The path of your travels,
the fiery rage you exhale,
takes peace away, even here.
_____________________________

Her Tears Make Bail

And the war drags on.
Longer than anyone thought,
longer than anyone could believe.
Every town harbors guerrillas, irregulars.
Nimble wives and children are far away.
Towns are pummeled with artillery.

Ghastly corpses, drenched pale with concrete and mortar dust,
uncovered, self-present from the rubble.
Some have their limbs askew, neck muscles twisted.
Some have their hands neatly folded, like silent children.
First responders observe a moment of silence.
They dig, pass back shards of broken concrete,
sweep aside shattered glass, toss aside stray shoes,
a picture frame, a child’s doll, pass forward a body bag.
On-and-on. 

The ruler’s patience was exhausted, his political capital eroding.
Like the Babylonians who went before him, he became bitter, hasty.
Tactical nuclear devices would end this quicker, be merciful, he reasoned.
They never said what the kiloton-yield was, or why this particular place.
The ground measurements after the blast were noted. The blast-
fireball was about fifty yards in radius, dead center of town. The device was
apparently detonated just above ground level. Everything and everybody
inside the fireball was vaporized. The crater was eloquent.
You didn’t need measurements for that.

There was heavy blast damage for about 150-200 yards. All the concrete
and stone buildings were severely damaged or turned into tottering
rubble with open walls, making visible the interiors of devastated offices.
Fires broke out. Most everybody within 150 yards died – maybe 500 or so.
Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, bookcases, desktop computers, seared, scrambled.
Wall artwork, laptops, cell phones, lamps, framed photos, tossed, scattered.
A certain style of interior design could be noted, modern post-blast,
decorated in a macabre-style by their sprawled bodies.
Inexplicably, someone’s coffee cup retained its position atop
a scorched desk that had twisted around 180 degrees.

For about 300-400 yards, there was moderate (?!) blast damage.
The well-kept townhouses and workaday rowhomes collapsed.
Lots of people had already left; half the residents remaining were injured,
about half killed. Probably about 1,000 to 2,000. It was hard to say.
Good statistics are challenging to develop in such circumstances.

People died as a result of the multiple fires which the blast started.
Within the same radius from the blast, 300-400 yards, third degree burns
were commonplace. Skin bubbled, scars were deep, would last long indeed.
The military effort was pretty successful though, in getting the guerrillas
and irregulars. The bomb didn’t exactly land on headquarters, but close
enough. Problem solved. It didn’t take weeks of artillery shelling either –
a big improvement in efficiency.

There was intense radiation within 700-800 yards. Within a few months
another six or seven hundred sickened and died from that. Some cancers
are expected to result among future generations. Not all wives and children
had exited. Medical personnel are monitoring.

Within 1,000-1,500 yards, glass windows facing town center were blown in.
Some people were injured by the exploding glass shards; eye injuries mostly.
Living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, looked manically vandalized.
Experts noted that such damage is categorized, for purposes of study, as
light damage.

Many people saw the flash of the explosion and came to a window,
which precipitously unleashed a pressure-blast erupting in their faces.
One man reported that as he came to the window he saw outlined a
red horse and rider in the flash-blast, but he was an old man anyway,
not quite right in the head.

A significant group of citizens of the invader, including some generals,
took offense at their own use of nuclear weapons. They became
grumpy with their leader and in return he became irritated with them.
Soon the generals discharged some of their low-level, low-yield nuclear
devices at troops loyal to the great leader. The loyal troops discharged
their low-level, low-yield tactical nuclear devices back at the generals
and their troops. Tit-for-tat.

Clearly, tempers were frayed and people said things they probably
didn’t mean. Anyway, after about half-a-dozen such exchanges,
the great leader took time off for a well-deserved, albeit solitary, vacation.
Apart from floating clouds of radioactive debris, and many thousand
bodies to bury, peace reigned in both countries involved.

Radioactive debris, transient-drifting on nomad-winds, was tough on wheat
farmers in both countries. Radioactive dust clouds suspended overhead
tend to reduce the yield on grain crops. Worse, agriculture workers
found the whole sequence of events discouraging, kind of a bummer.
The invisible hand of the market, bringing together farmers, agricultural
workers, mechanized producers, truck drivers, bulk warehousers, freight
transporters, merchants, wholesale buyers, bakers, consumer outlets and
retail consumers, just collapsed in both countries. Bread wasn’t available
at any price.

In both countries, people wandered away from their jobs, stayed home,
went into parks. They became disheveled mobs of drug users, alcoholics,
living in tents. Not everybody was high, but most people didn’t feel like
going to work or cooperating to do any job. Some were ill, some became
recluse-survivalists, some emigrated, some took their own lives, some just
sat in parks, on sidewalks, by the side of roads and highways, doing nothing.
Whole societies just meandered in empty circles, started crying for no reason,
gave up. Some people went to churches to pray and maintained some
composure there, but they couldn’t load grain from a church narthex.

Agri-businesses in the west, who had ample storage silos of wheat,
cashed in big-time. The price of bread, pasta, crackers, anything made
with wheat, doubled, then tripled. Anybody who had wheat or rye
or barley or any grain to sell, or who could speculate, was raking in dollars.
Commodity traders bought some very large houses; you could see pictures
on the internet.

This created a certain sense of resentment among agricultural workers and
truck drivers in western countries, including a wonderful country featuring
amber waves of grain. Feeling that they weren’t being cut in on the bonanza,
these workers and drivers took to wildcat strikes, work stoppages, blocking
highways and bridges with their tractor-trailers, blocking warehouse entrances
and exits, freight train terminals and, deplorably, even sabotaging train tracks.
It was most unruly.

If the supply chain was in a stressed condition before, it went altogether
into catatonic paralysis. The price of wheat products, rye, barley, oatmeal
quintupled. Hedge funds, commodity traders, sports gamblers, crypto
speculators, jumped into the grain-futures market. Prices fireworks-exploded.
A loaf of bread cost three figures and counting. Two figures for a box of pasta.
For those people not wired in, this created some inconvenience. 

If you had money, it was okay – there was still good chardonnay available.
You could saute hard-shell crabs in olive oil imported from abroad.
People learned to bake bread – it became a wide-spread cottage industry.
Big box stores began selling wheat grain in bulk, measured out on
large digital scales from 200-pound containers on pallets into sacks.

Such prices did not sit well with the poet’s wife. Venturing into a
big box store to purchase wheat, there was a contretemps at the
purchase point. Either she alleged the scale was wrong, or her
purchase was not correctly weighed – or something happened.
The problem was an emotional reaction to stratospheric prices.
A shrill and accusatory argument ensued. Who started it or why –
unknown.

The result was that the poet’s wife left with no purchase, in a state of
distressed anger, old fears, desperate emotions unwinding.
These emotions negatively affected her attentiveness in the parking lot.
Since she had left the store with some attention focused on her, the
fender-bender in the parking lot was observed also, along with her tags.

The poet’s wife arrived at home, through the kitchen back door, almost
simultaneously with the telephone call from the local police department.
When the poet answered the phone, the poet’s wife simply collapsed on the
kitchen floor, wailing, leaning against the kitchen door through which she had
just entered. Some time elapsed to unscramble the reason for the call from
the officer, the causes for the wailing and the underlying event. The officer
appeared at the door soon thereafter, a pleasant, businesslike young man.

Notwithstanding that the poet’s wife had done some real damage and
driven away, her tears were a sufficient bail – the officer said he would think
about whether to write up a citation. If he did so, it would arrive in the mail.
The poet went out to look at their vehicle. Insurance was notified.
The explanation of why the poet’s wife didn’t think her collision was really
a collision (despite unavoidable crunching noises) was touching, but not
terribly persuasive. As it so happened, it didn’t matter. The mails were quiet.
No citation ever appeared.

There are scales in her heart, measuring, measuring, how much
a loaf of bread costs. Weighing, if it costs so much, how much does
that leave? Is there enough for the oil or wine? In a still-haunted background,
unmeasured emotional distances – impressed upon her young soul by the
humiliation of counting, of her mother stuffing dollars in necessary envelopes,
a black horse glares. Thereon a ravenous, calculating, merchant-rider sits,
who is yet her jailer. The bail required to win release from that will wait
for her life in the world to come.
_______________________

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

1. Opening Trot in a Western City

Sometime in the late 1960’s, aged 16 or 18, I encountered a transsexual
in a men’s room in Panhandle park in San Francisco. Perhaps I was crossing
the park to catch a bus, coming from smoking dope in a spacious flat on
Fell Street, where a group of hippies had digs. I was the messenger –
arranger for the purchase of a kilo of marijuana, for $120, that ultimately
never arrived.

The Fell Street hippies didn’t mind me showing up every couple of days and
wandering in to ask the news. They would be passing around joints, playing
music, so I sat down at each visit, stayed as long as I wanted, smoked whatever
was being passed, left when I pleased. No one asked how long I was staying or
why. It was very hip, very psychedelic.

Or perhaps it was that summer I was just wandering around the City, after
some negative experiences on acid, trying to put my head together, struggling
with every manner of interior devil, and happened on that particular men’s
room on that particular day.

I walked up to the urinal attached to the wall. Next to me someone was
standing. Men’s room etiquette suggests you don’t look over to stare,
but this person had breasts, round, attractive breasts. Which were displayed.
My attention being captured, the individual was friendly, obviously happy
to have some attention. He was probably about 30, had longish blonde hair –
at the time, then didn’t signal anything unusual. But his breasts were nicely
rounded. He pulled down his tank-top, which I saw was the top of a dress,
to show me.

He started a conversation, talked briefly about his breasts. I complimented
them. He may have told me how or where or when. He complimented my penis.
But he made no sexual overture – indeed, did not seem sexually motivated at all,
in the sense of wanting to approach me.

He just wanted someone to notice. Since I did, he smiled, talked pleasantly,
and was content. That was why he was in the men’s room. Our interaction lasted
no longer than two or three minutes – someone noticed, saw him, saw his
pretty breasts with women’s nipples.

In its own way, it was similar to another interaction I had when hitch-hiking,
when an ex-con invited me into his little back-porch lean-to in northern
California to take shelter from a storm, who also just wanted some company.
Even the most marginalized, perhaps especially the most marginalized, need
another human face.

2. Spiritual Canter on another Plane

But now older, instructed, I see with spiritual eyes. There is another participant
in our Panhandle tete-a-tete. While I converse in the men’s room, one might
look down the length of the Panhandle. There appears what looks at first to be a
mounted San Francisco police officer, riding his steed alone, up along the narrow
paths of that narrow park, coming from the direction of Golden Gate Park.

But as the horse and rider approach, which happens with surprising speed,
no ordinary policeman is presenting – this rider and mount were called.
This rider is pale, and his horse is pale. Their aura is unworldly, disturbing,
He dismounts; he need not tie up this horse, it appears to linger patiently
at its post, startling as trees behind it are visible.

The rider is pale indeed, but otherwise, rather ordinary, commonplace.
Not so much like a police officer. Perhaps like a loan officer, discussing
the terms of credit, and repayment. He sits down on a bench. He takes
out a little notebook, a short pencil. Without any sense of urgency, rather
casually, he looks over his little notebook. It has lists of names. He writes
down two more. One name is that of my transsexual acquaintance;
the other name is mine.

Next to the name of this transsexual man, haunting an urban park’s men’s
room for attention, in firm-handed pencil, Death studiously writes down-
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 1981-2. He nods confidently.

Next to my name Death pauses to think, tilts his head, puzzles, then writes-
Suicide, Golden Gate Bridge, mid 1980’s. Death reviews his words, like a poet.
Satisfied that he has added thoughtfully, presciently, to his appointment book –
with hollow eyes, the pale rider pockets his book, rises to stretch his legs.

There are other appointments; he will attend to other meetings. Death gives
no hints – perhaps an appointment in Samarra. The Pale Rider, concluding
his opening argument, mounts his well-trained, ghastly horse to disappear.

3. Closing Gallop and a Judgment Delivered in my Home State

Brother Suicide, it is necessary to hem you in, bind you,
as you are introduced. Impassable boundaries, effective restraints,
an iron- sober spiritual prison cell, are called for.

Other poets have addressed you, who are sympathetic to you, inviting,
enabling – but I have a bad attitude toward you, Brother Suicide.
The incarceration I impose is no trivial confinement, no flimsy enclosure.

Let us start with the floor, the area, the geography you inhabit:

Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.
This is the second death.

Brother Suicide, this is most pertinent, a revelation-judgment to you,
hurtful spirit. You seek and have sought to surround and overwhelm
many, including me, but this lake surrounds and submerges you.

Yet I am a conscientious warden, one who tests diligently, judging spirits.
I will add to your sentence, a wall of Spirit-words, from our Lord.

If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that
is thrown away and withers.  Such branches are picked up,
thrown into the fire and burned.

Brother Suicide, the severity of my measures, the sentence I impose,
is proportional to the incorrigible risk you threaten, you insinuate.
Let us add another wall, from the Apostle Paul, for more security:

This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in
blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who
do not know God.

Brother Suicide, it would be fair to say, you do not remain in Jesus.
It would be just to say, you do not know God. Like a judge hearing
an extreme case, I will use the most extreme words.

The Apostle Peter grew to be a calm man, whose writings reflect maturity.
So I will conclude the construction of your prison, Brother Suicide,
your final Spirit-wall and ceiling, my word-judgment, with his help:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them
to hell, then the Lord knows how to hold the unrighteous for
the day of judgment.

Finally, as Peter explains for you, Brother Suicide:

By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved
for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of
ungodly men.

Brother Suicide, whether you are demon or man or psychosis,
or temptation, doppelganger or spirit, or fallen angel, or drug trip,
neurosis or evil twin, I will entertain no argument on your evasions.

I race, I gallop, to invoke sober, powerful scriptures to keep you in check.
And if more are needed, I’ll find those too. 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, I cannot alter or constrain the power that you have,
over a fourth of the earth. Not all have faith. Not all repent, not all fear
the Lord God Almighty – or love our Savior. But as to the battles I am given
to fight, I have studied spiritual war, I have been armed well by my God.

Holy and Righteous, the God I worship has rendered a judgment –
of life. I am glad to have this life. I rejoice in the gift of God.
So I have made a judgment about you, Brother Suicide.

Move on, Death, go to your tasks elsewhere.
I look forward to the day we can take your appointment book
and burn it.
______________________________

Yes, The Saints of the Fifth Seal Have Many Questions – but First

When the soul awakens to God,
It is like the eyes of an infant,
a child’s first opening to the world.
When the soul perceives God announcing His blessing,
It is like the resounding first hospital-cry of the newborn,
‘Here I am!’ Hey!  Hello!  Here am I!

The soul is touched – enlivened by the Spirit of God who once hovered over the
formless void to create – and perceives his eternal life, perceives her own perception,
then there is rejoicing, deep and powerful rejoicing.  There is a soul-roar of triumphant being,
like a young man striding across distances before drowsing dawn, crossing ghost-steel
railroad tracks, feeling his muscular power on silent streets, finding his entrance to take up
 his task to empty spur-sided boxcars, knowing his strength – throwing over boxes like toys.

Every act, an act of power, of life, of the majesty of existence, of self-awareness, of eternity
captured, because the soul has been made alive.  Royal acts of Jesus, King, High Priest –
forever in God, whose majestic Word breathes life, silently soaks us with eyelid-opening life.
Cascading life tumbling from streams tumbling over rocks of life, overflowing fountains
over-spilling life to make more over-spilling fountains still, all from God-incarnate mystery,
veiled in triple-holiness, whose gifts and calling to his children are without repentance.

My soul touched by God, mystery to mystery, touch to touch and in that touch,
life everlasting, precious gift from the Precious Giver – hope and prayer of prophets past.
Atonement made for us without ending or limit, purification effected by the Savior’s blood,
the Son of God, making himself known, revealed riding a donkey no less, allowing indignities.
The Messiah, anointed in holiness, making this world his temple out of love, mystery indeed!
And me, one of his, even a priest, a king, once only a depressed, wandering, intoxicated child.

My soul helpless as a nursing infant child, as dependent as a swaddled newborn, reaching,
stretching back, suckling, new muscle for curling arms and legs, hands grasp to sense.
Awake my soul!  All our souls, to which the Lord Jesus by his Word, the incarnate Word,
upon which men live, upon which we rely for our deepest foundations – has said to me
and to us most patiently – Lazarus, come out!  Take off the windings, remove death’s brand!
Be alive to God!  Indeed, to Him, all are alive.  I as well – also to proclaim, and not alone.

There is no night in my life with God. The despairing, resigned graveclothes are off forever.
My soul will never be defeat-wrapped in them again.  What once held me in bondage
is now mere fetish-wear, easily discarded.  I have a life with God, appointed, elected;  today,
tomorrow, always.  We have this life, we are given this gift.  From Christ’s breast it flows. 
The Word pours forth, the saints rejoice in their assembled armies, their battalions.
We surround the Throne of God, our praise carries it with joy – banners flying ever.

My body deteriorates, may sleep, my mind may ramble, may dream, may fall and rise.
But my soul rejoices in life – always now forever in Christ Jesus, who has touched me
with his finger, purified me, paid the full blood-price, vindicated all Law with his death,
justifying a judgment of acquittal before a holy God with his resurrection by the Spirit of
Holiness, Spirit of Power, Spirit of Grace. This resurrection is announced, angel-trumpeted,
spread abroad, is made known to those near, to distant, to those unknown to me.

My soul shouts with joy, with unbounded exultation – alive! Alive-O!  I have words!
Those who look – look and live! said Moses – to the Lord are radiant, radiant like the sun.  
May the friends of my soul shout with joy and gladness!  The First-Born has many brethren.
And I will shout for joy for you!  I will sing of your salvation!  The city given us is large,
spacious indeed. Our shouts ring across many continents, years, ages, families, borders,
checkpoints, fences, languages, peoples, many differences of tradition, viewpoint, opinion. 
_________________________  

Mysteries and Questions Abounding

A mystery springing of mysteries.  Daub minty toothpaste.
Interrogatories, served single-spaced.  Shower, coconut-aroma soap.
Gnawing hunger, insistent for answers.  Shave with Occam’s triple-razor.
Fixed stares, wait for clouds to thin.  Q-tips to check white-creamed ears.
Injustice spilled as wine, spreading across my digital tablecloth.  
Strife in a thief-masked world.  Insolent – clever.  Somewhere, somewhere?
Conflict, violence abounds.  The cover story bland, plausible.  The smiling clown –
mocking, plausible.  Truth, perverted brazenly?  Does my shirt match?
I brew coffee, check the headlines – truth – but whose? 
Rambled thoughts constrained, fitted into their cocoon.
Is this, my cubed day, the only answer?  

Martyred saints, suffering, inquire justly. 
Souls cry out while being robed in white –
we are all robed in white, imputed by faith.
To pose such questions, questions so serious,
one must be alive.
The church has questions – how long, O Lord?  So ask we, all inquisitors. 
Will not the Judge of the whole world be just?  Why does the Almighty not
set times to judge – in righteousness?  Holy One of Israel, will you
judge the nations with equity?  So inquires Job, the psalmists.
Will God trample the naked, restless seas?  Churn deep waters birthing our favorable
judgments?  Will the day of vindication never come?  My questions, too?

Rejoice in the life we have, secured near His hand – to speak also of judgment.
Life will proceed – will confer to us, by grace, answers to our questions –
none ignored.   Probe, unseal – how long until this takes place? 
Why are they empowered?  Will lawlessness cease? What about them,
so destructive?  So much ruin, so much waste? How could we be treated so? 
Smirking nonsense for explanation – but not forever.
Infants in the nursery opening our eyes, darting about, loving faces,
moving lips to be nourished, giving space to the upward thrust
of life.  The Lord’s breath, and with it his Mind, his Spirit.
We wake gradually.  Milk, then solid food –  the Lord is, we are.
Children reach an age when there are answers.

My list of questions, minted over time, so long, impatient, indignant  –
will be answered.   I will be showered with answers.
Discipled in the perfect Law of the Lord, shaved simplest,
reviving my soul, light to eyes, answers to waiting ears.  Clouds part. 
Disciples pose questions for Him who gathers, restores, cleanses all.
My soul unmuffled, never blindfolded, here and now, not wrapped in
hateful silence of death.  My soul receives, speaks out in love, in life,
in peace, gathered by a Throne.  Our Father has created, adopted us. 
I stand with many who learn to speak in love, who have questions
of their own.  They are an answer to some of my questions –
I am an answer to some of theirs.

________________________

Pandemonium at the Planetarium

For appearances might well be so constituted that
the understanding should not find them to be conforming to the conditions of its unity,
and all might then be in such confusion that, for instance, nothing would present itself
in the succession of appearances which would supply a rule of synthesis
and thus correspond to the concept of cause and effect,
so that this concept would then be quite empty, null and meaningless.” –
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B123, A90-91. 

It was a long time ago and has nothing to do with us – but the story is
that in a certain city, the planetarium situated next to the natural history
museum became famous, or notorious, for hosting a Saturday midnight
planetarium show, attended by hippy-afficionados who came dressed in
outrageous costumes. They arrived suitably high on various hallucinogens,
trooped in to enjoy the celestial light show, their costumed peers and the
spectacle – amplified by contraband pharmaceuticals to bend reality.

The planetarium did a robust business, sold out every Saturday midnight show,
and so turned a blind eye to the various goings-on by their hip clientele, who
were highly intoxicated but generally peaceful. There were 400 cushioned reclining,
jet black theater seats in the amphitheater. Tables and chairs were placed in
circular fashion around the interior, against the walls, for promotional display of
pamphlets and CDs of the thunderous apocalypse-now music raging fashionable,
played during the midnight shows. Two adjoining front doors were used for admission
from outside, reached by an entrance walk shared with the history museum. There
were four additional single doors for emergency exit scattered at the four corners
of the auditorium.

The celestial displays on the overhead black-painted dome were projected with
breathtaking fully 3D, virtual-reality digital technology. The master of this system
was known to all as Alan – it was enough to say his first name. Like Ken Kesey of the old
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Alan was the tripmaster – he required no further identifying
nomenclature – was himself, the draw.  It was a head trip, an experience every Saturday
night.  The audience got more than a display of galaxies, moving stars, constellations,
planets, simulated interplanetary travel projected on an overhead dome with a boring
announcer sounding like a 7^th grade science teacher – they got Alan’s creative genius, his
cryptic, strangely calm declarations delivered by overhead speakers at rockstar volume.

For purposes of the next experience, six hippies decided to dress like munchkins for the 
evening.  They had already take Oz-like names in their commune: Robby, Frosty, Hammy,
Vermy, Weezy and G-Lucky.  Weezy was somewhat on the autism spectrum, sensitive to
excessive stimuli, but determined to be, and very much, part of the group.  She had
acquired a comfort dog, a well-trained German shepherd named Zoe. The six munchkin-
hippies consumed most of their edible hallucinogens prior to the show – with Zoe for
comfort, made their way through the garden-bordered park to the planetarium.

Another group of miscreants was also planning a planetarium escapade. Members of a
motorcycle club, the Demon Riders, also liked getting high and tripping on Alan’s show.
Being the mischievous fellows that they were, they decided that very evening to spice
up the entertainment. So they dressed like police officers and acquired heavy-duty black-
market fireworks – Jack Flash M-80’s, some with single fuses and some strung together with
a common fuse, and smoke bombs in black, red, blue, yellow, green. “We’ll make it rock!”
they exclaimed with considerable and fiendish glee.  About a dozen Riders, with assorted
domestic partners, recent girlfriends, friends of friends, assembled.

Their plan for surprise fun occasioned some discussion. “What about the security guys at the
show?” One of the Riders asked. As it turned out, the security guards at the midnight show
were known to and friends with the Riders. “These guys ride with us!” A Rider assured
his inquirers. “They’re hip. They’ll be cool.” The Riders, spiffy in their police regalia, although
their uniforms were not exactly uniform, also consumed various sensory enhancements,
packed their intended toys, confident in an evening of unhindered enjoyments, and so
rode noisily, flamboyantly and armed with purpose to their destination.

The stream of hippies, bikers, thrill-seekers, the curious, the bored, wandered along the lush
park paths on the cool summer evening, costumed in green, orange, neon-pink, teal, cyan,
and flaming magenta, glowing munchkins, cops, witches, sailors, clowns, wizards, elves,
gnomes, orcs, Broadway Cats, tie-dyed flower children, saffron-robed monks, etc.  They were
motley dressed, spandexed, torn-dressed, undressed, cross-dressed, hairy, silver-studded,
face-painted, lavishly tattooed and pierced, body parts displayed like flying-flags, black
lipstick, cherry lipstick, three-inch nails, in black leather and hanging chains for wallets and
keys, burning incense, smoking intoxicants in corncob pipes, cigarettes, bongs, water-pipes.

A garish meandering parade in patent-leather boots, sandals, flipflops, barefoot, they
wandered and staggered through the park to the auditorium doors, settled into their seats,
reclined while the music piped across the circular, slightly backward- sloping floor, facing
upward toward the dome. They tilted back their black-velvet cushioned seats. The title of the
evening’s planetarium program, advertised as one of Alan’s special creations and displayed
on oversized posters – Wham! Bam! The Freaking End of the World!!!!  The evening’s
poster logos were various fluorescent skulls in the appearance of multiple colliding planets.

At midnight the lights dimmed on our seated munchkins, not yet totally high, but
getting there. With various fragrances wafting through the air, they leaned back to look
upward. Alan’s somber voice rang out in a pre-recorded message, welcoming the audience,
announcing a few preliminary rules to which no one paid attention and the title of this
evening’s planetarium show. The solar system appeared on the display ceiling, as it would
appear without interference from nearby urban, artificial lights.  Zoe disregarded Alan’s
instructions (as did everyone else) and the display, but otherwise was settled by the feet of
Weezy at the end of the row.

“Coming on now,” Robby murmured to himself, yet audibly, giving permission, sounding the
starting gun, as the munchkin clan sat patiently,

momentarily satisfied, waiting

for their psychedelics to take full! effec t.  Robby monologuing – 

”  T  i   m            e   –    a    n               d   

                  s                 p                                   a                                           c

                                                                                s p   a  c e    s    –    .  .     .

          t h e                         s  p  a   c  e   s    –       .     .          .           >                   >

                                         .         .               .                .                    ,

   a little messed up.     

    .                       > >                   >          >                     >                 T h  e    y ‘   
r   e     

 s e     p>

                        a       

                                                                               r

                a  t i      n  g.           

                                                     T  h   

                   e   

u    n i 
                                                                                        t     

                                  y   

                                                   <                                                         i       s   ,  ,     ,     ,   

 ,          ,

                      g  o  i   

                                              n        g    .   .     .    ”                   .                                      .        .            ,

,              ,                                            .                             ,     >                                     

 .    > < >    <

.   >         >               <

                .      >          <

                                                   .                        >

                                                                                                              . .

                                                                                                                                                      .

“Time has come today,” Frosty sang softly in group affinity,
“young hearts must go their way,” echoed G-Lucky,
“Can’t put it off another day,”  added Vermy,
“Time has come today,” Hammy concluded their fragmentary, let’s go kick-off
signal, a playful house-song.  “Eat Up!”  And so they did.

“Nothing in the universe last forever,” Alan’s voice shortly announced. “Nothing. One day our
sun will die! It will begin to die by ejecting unimaginably gargantuan portions of its mass,
mostly hydrogen gas.” The overhead display depicted pieces of a displayed sun, as large as
the dome could show, with pieces achingly slowly, gracefully ,breaking apart as if some slow-
motion celestial ballet. The crowd ooh-ed and aaahh-ed. “Like, wow, man,” commented
Hammy, irritating G-Lucky.  The voice of Alan boomed: “As huge chunks of the sun
disassociate, the gravity waves and disruption on earth will be unimaginable.”

The overhead display depicted the amoeba-slow movement of masses of congealed hydrogen,
superimposed on disaster-movie graphics of various cities on earth. “The effect on the moon’s
orbit will be enormous,” announced the loudspeaker. “Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
will engulf the atmosphere and fill it with particulate matter. In fact,” intoned Alan, “it is
entirely possible that changes in the atmosphere caused by fierce volcanic activity will first
darken the entire planet for months or years. When that recedes, the effect may redden the
entire sky. With such a sky, we could be called the Red Planet. But first – the Volcanoes!
Particulates!  Volcanic ash and dust! Dark!  Dark!”

The overhead display showed the sun turning pitch black, the atmosphere black.   The entire
planetarium dome turned black, as if every ray of sunlight was blotted out by particulate
matter. Then gradually a slow red glow emerged, as sunlight backlit, then cut gradually into
the settling particulates, which finally displayed the moon, turned blood red.

“The gravitational effects will be unstoppably severe – causing brutal movements in the tectonic plates here on earth. The planet will experience a whole series of extreme, violent earthquakes.” Alan’s voice-over trailed off to allow the audience to view such earthquakes, buildings collapsing, in a split-screen format with the depiction of the night sky. One of the Demon Riders took the opportunity to set off one of his Jack Flash M-80 fireworks along with a red smoke bomb.

BOOM-BANGBOOMBANG! The explosion from the M-80, inside the closed auditorium was ear-splitting, colossal, heart-stopping, reverberating, echoing. There was a distinct shock-wave, rocking the auditorium. “It’s shooting!” Someone screamed – in an instant, people were scrambling onto the floor, hippies, munchkins, sailors, monks, tattooed leather-clad gypsies. The screaming was overwhelming for thirty seconds, lasting a minute, with an enormous racket of 400 people all trying to hide under or at least behind recliner theater seats. “It’s a fire!!” people screamed, getting up to head to the exits.  Someone snapped on a flashlight, which lit up the smoke from the smoke bomb to enhance the general eeriness of the scene.

The mischievous Rider stood up, dressed as a policeman, gesturing with his hand for his like-dressed Riders to stand. “It’s okay,” he shouted loudly. “It’s okay! It’s all part of the show!” The security officers who were standing near the front doors stood as well. “Ask them,” the Rider shouted. “All part of the show.” People looked up and the planetarium show was, indeed, continuing. No one appeared injured.

“There will be terrible earthquakes, smoke, disaster, catastrophe, as pieces of the sun break away and drift toward Earth,” Alan announced. “Of these events we can be sure,” the voice announced. “But because of the complexity, it’s impossible to make predictions past certain timescales. Beyond five to 10 million years, certainty flies right out the window.”  The audience continued to stir restlessly.

One of the security guards announced loudly, “It’s alright! Please be seated! This is part of the show!” He winked broadly to the Rider, but in the dark, their spontaneous conspiracy was their secret. The munchkins looked over to Robby, to see what he was going to do – he was the oldest. Weezy had curled up in a ball, while Zoe tried to nuzzle her.

Robby, 6’ 4,” prematurely gray at the temples, pretty high, spatially and otherwise, thought to himself – what would I do, if I were sober? He decided that one event was not enough to panic – when you’re high, always be smooth, project calm, be in control, never act abruptly. The higher you are, the more you follow the rule. Stoned to gills, yet still no-drama-Obama, ever the intellectual director, even dressed like a munchkin, rather incongruous because of his height. He joined his hands to meet in front of his face, contemplatively, each finger separated and touching its mirror finger on the other hand to make visible a kind of tepee of Robby’s thought. But he didn’t leave his reclining chair, instead slid back a touch further.

Frosty, lithe, vivacious, had a lock of silver-white hair, very munchkin-like, and silvery yoga pants, green pull-over, her sleeves rolled to slender elbows. She and Robby had lived together years previous – after some more years, were friends. She read his face, a habit of hers, whether up or down, high or sober. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere, at least not yet. Apart from hallucinogens, she did some drinking too and had two hands wrapped around a supersize plastic cup of Kahlua and cream, accessed by a giant straw through a secure lid. There was no chance Frosty was going to break off from the group alone. Whatever they did, she did. She was thinking, murkily, this was going to be the subject of her next short film, something she did for personal satisfaction, outside her work in adult films. She looked over first to Robby, then to Hammy, then to the group, to get any further cues.

Hammy was occupied with the acoustics of reverberating sound after the M-80 exploded, and the visuals of the smoke. He was the youngest, often oblivious and preoccupied, lost to his surroundings except that particular point of personal interest obsessing him at the moment. He was seeking out something in himself, or somewhere. An avid reader – in the midst of Hammy’s hallucinogen-inspired, internally cycling-obsessive thoughts, lines from a long-dead French novelist, Stendahl, floated across his brain, with which he began to play mentally, as he often did with words, as if they were toys: I involve my characters in the consequences of their own stupidity, and then I give them brains, so they can suffer.

Vermy, a psychologist in a dark-blonde handle-bar mustache, marijuana researcher, taut
marathon-runner, played fairy chess and kriegspiel, composed ornate chess problems
published in obscure journals – he dreamed of exotic escapes to remote villages in Ireland,
Indonesia, the Seychelles. He would provide sober, sensible answers to Hammy on the topic
of schizophrenia while both were tripping.  Vermy was temporarily separated from his partner due to an indiscretion, but all expected them to re-unite.  How do you experience reality?  Is the self the relationship to the self? were questions he could spend hours answering, discussing, exploring.  Vermy was observing how others reacted to the M-80 explosion, which included observing how he was reacting, even observing how he was self-observing.  Vermy was  perpetually the chief lab animal of his own experiments, his mind picturing Escher-graphics of optical illusions viewed by illusionists who were optical illusions themselves.

Weezy, brunette and freckled, barely 5’ 2,” deep into yoga, ashrams, Eastern religion,
astrology, the I Ching, had been a published short-story writer, had a doctorate in literature
from a prestigious university, had been a professor, had suffered abuse in a marriage, and
thrown it all over to work in a coffee house. Weezy was usually reserved, though Hammy
had watched Weezy approach a stranger playing guitar at a café and ask him if he were a
Libra – which he was. Relentlessly vegetarian, the thought of eating any animal whose last
emotions were of death-panic made her gag.  She had no expectation of any relationship
lasting. Her chief emotional attachment was Zoe. After the M-80 went off Weezy had curled
her arm around Zoe, dutifully unruffled by loud noises, whose calm demeanor comforted
Weezy.

G-Lucky, red-haired in multiple shades, freckled, entomologist, science-writer, fierce
defender of insect-life in any form, libidinous, prowling for partners as voraciously as any
praying mantis, was known to like two kinds of men – those with mustaches and
those without. Her parents had been politically far-left; she had been raised a red-diaper
baby and only gradually separated herself from their worldview. Scientific, calm – except on
the topic of insecticides, intellectual, disciplined, sparing with her words, keenly observant,
statuesque, wore blue-jeans to every event, formal or informal (had located green blue-jeans
for her munchkin outfit), except nude beaches, of which she was fond. G-Lucky was fond also
of intoxicants – generously but carefully measured out.

As announced, the planetarium show continued, displaying the sun ejecting massed
quantities of hydrogen gas, swelling into a red giant, then shrinking into a white dwarf.
The floating balls of hydrogen upset the orbits of the planets, which began drifting erratically,
in elongated elliptical orbits, with their planetary atmospheres fiercely trailing behind
creating immense planetary winds.  Alan explained, “It’s like coffee rocking in a coffee cup
hand-held in a car taking a curve at high speed. The coffee spills.” The auditorium smelled
of marijuana, smoke, incense, ordinary human sweat – and that peculiar sour aroma which
people emit when using drugs, impossible to describe but familiar to those ‘on the hip,’ as
the old opium-smokers used to say.

The overhead dome showed glowing, belching, smashing, drifting, rotating, wildly spinning
hunks of gas and planets, to ooohs and aaaahs and far-outs and wow-mans and similar
expressions of hippie wonder. The viewpoint shifted back to planet Earth, depicting the sun
turning glow-red, then white-hot, then black.  The moon turned red.  The stars appeared to
fall or scramble all over the sky and disappear behind the horizon, as if they had spilled out
of a basket. It was a magnificent show, all narrated by Alan’s authoritative voice-over,
explaining with barely-camouflaged delight each planetary disaster lighting up the dome,
the inexorable consequences of each gargantuan cataclysm, masked by the tone of his sure,
pseudo-scientific authority.

The dome depicted the atmosphere disappearing, the sky rolling up like an unraveling rug. 
Earthquakes shuddered, shook the earth, with vivid, fluorescent colors rolling through the
Earth’s thinning atmosphere. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were depicted breaking
free of their orbits, passing through blizzards of interplanetary floating debris, into the void
of interstellar space. It was wildly psychedelic – the munchkins were round-eyed and
gaping with amplified awe.

At the next mention of earthquakes, BANG!-BOOMBANGBOOM!, one of the Riders set off
another M-80. Like the previous explosion, the noise-blast echoed back and forth across
the auditorium, overwhelming, deafening, heart-stopping, reverberating, terrifying.
The Riders released more colored smoke bombs. People screamed, dove onto the floor,
clutched each other, held their ears, panicked, looked to the exits. It wasn’t likely any
reassuring announcement was going to work to calm things down.

But the Demon Riders weren’t mischievous fellows for nothing – promptly, on signal,
in the dark and smoke looking very official as police officers, they marched to the two
front doors and four around the sides of the auditorium and stood guard to prevent
any exit. As far as the Riders were concerned, the fun was just beginning.

“No one leave!” the lead Rider shouted. “It’s all part of the show! The doors are
blocked for your safety! We don’t want any panic!” He could hardly get his last phrase
out of his mouth without an evil grin, visible in the dark and audible, caustic laughter.
“Oh, no,” he repeated loudly. “There shouldn’t be any panic!” He drew the last word out
at sarcastic length. Then another smoke bomb came from somewhere in the Rider group,
followed by another M-80. BOOM! The auditorium shook. Screaming was everywhere –
and shouting, “The doors!  The doors!”

The two security guards stood up. “It’s all alright!” One shouted. “It’s all part of
the experience!”  In the smoke and the dark, with the overhead displays of planetary
disaster still being projected, people began scrambling away from the seats –
turned away from the exit doors, they began hiding under the display tables and
pulling the chairs onto their heads for protection – against what – they were not sure.
Fear and confusion rippled through the crowd like visible waves.  “The Experience!”
The guard repeated loudly.  “To really know!“

At just about that time, Alan’s voice over continued in booming fashion. “This is it! This is
how the world ends!” Alan displayed across the dome in huge fashion an image of Christ,
Pantocrator, looking stern, taken from the monastery in Monreale in Palermo, Sicily.
“The end of the world!” The display of Christ, stern in his visage, took up the entire area
of the overhead dome. “A day of wrath!” Alan announced gleefully.  “Wrath!”

Someone must have called the police. In two or three minutes, there was loud knocking
and two local policemen came into the darkened auditorium, breaking through the
resistance of the Demon Riders stationed at the front doors. For the entering police,
it was a blind scene, between the auditorium dark and smoke, so they flicked on their
flashlights. Almost immediately they encountered the security guards standing among
the Riders.

“There’s no problem here,” one of the guards asserted to the police. “All part of the show.”
The smoke, and the sounds of a few people screaming or crying still, made that an
unlikely proposition. But the Demon Riders were psyched up for bigger, funnier games.
“You guys, you’re under arrest!” One of the Riders ordered fiercely. “You’ve been setting off
fireworks! Drop your weapons! Up against the wall!”

“Who are you?” asked one of the police. At that point, one of Alan’s loud, booming narrative
voice-overs sounded out, explaining some cosmic phenomena. “What was that?”
asked the startled policeman. “A voice from heaven?”

“There are no voices from heaven around here, Jack,” replied the caustic Rider.

An escalating argument followed between the Riders, claiming to be real police arresting
the police, the police asking for identification and threatening to arrest the Riders,
and the security guards assuring the police that the Riders really were an intended
part of show. The security guards suggested that the fireworks were a big surprise thrill
for the hippie audience, who expected bedlam at the planetarium and paid for the show’s
weird unpredictability. “It’s freedom, man!” Explained the security guard, who was inventive
indeed. “You know –  Free doom! Free will!” Had he been able to suppress a grin, it might
have been persuasive.

The two police whipped their flashlights around from face to face. Taken aback by the
security guards’ spontaneous deceit, the police weren’t sure who or what to believe.
For several minutes the two police, the Riders and the security guards yelled at each other
with no one hearing anyone, while the show continued.

Alan narrated more celestial disaster without interruption. The auditorium air was filled with
the aroma of marijuana, flash powder and smoke. Now the dome displayed stars in countless
number. Intermixed with the still-screaming of the crowds and the shouting of the police,
Riders and security guards, Alan’s voice boomed out over the speakers.

“Two billion years from now, the Milky Way and Andromeda, our closest neighboring galaxy,
will begin to fuse into one giant football-shaped galaxy. The gigantic merger will relocate
our solar system and thereby change forever the appearance of the constellations.”
Now on the dome overhead were stars moving at blinding speed, fusing together. 
The stars collided together at irresistible speeds. The overhead dome showed Earth’s
oceans boiling off. Even the arguing group of police, Riders and security guards stopped
to look upward gaping.

“All the galaxies will fall together and stick,” Alan’s voice explained. “There will be vast comet
shows,” which were suitably depicted. “Dark matter will begin to emerge as an ever-greater
force in the cosmos. An unstoppable force.  Irresistible, sweeping everything into its
gravitational powers.”  The overhead dome went pitch black. “Everything – absorbed
into dark matter!”  Alan’s voice was the epitome of sweet reason, scientific rationality. 

The Riders exploded another Jack Flash M-80. BANG!!! Bangbangbang went the echos.
More smoke, this time green. Robby had enough – the munchkins had enough.
Robby stood up. Now another group of police arrived, three this time, shouldering
through the front doors. The Riders objected.  Soon all were involved in a serious
face-to-face shouting and shoving match with the Riders and the security guards.
“Scene’s over.” Frosty announced, seeing Robby stand. “It’s a wrap – get dressed.
Film’s in the can.  Let’s go!”

Meanwhile, a large group of the crowd, dressed as pixies, sailors, cats, etc. had crowded
around the shoving argument and were shoving themselves, wanting to leave.
The other four emergency doors out were still blocked by the assigned Riders, whose
discipline to their task was as unexpected as it was ironically dutiful. People were screaming,
crying, hiding under the tables and chairs, becoming delirious and unhinged. No one could
tell who the real police were. The police conduct was so belligerent it was easy to believe
they were on drugs too – quite possibly, an accurate assessment. Or they were just mean.

The security guards tried to arrest the police, who resisted. For fun, the Riders asserted
that both the guards and the police were hippie imposters in costume, and tried to
arrest both groups. The security guards grew angry at this betrayal, and attempted to
tell the police that the Riders were really the imposters. It didn’t matter, the policemen
weren’t believing anything the security guards said anyway. In the dark and smoke, the first
two police did not recognize the three later-arriving police. The two policemen first
through the doors surmised the second group of three were more costumed hippies.
So they attempted to arrest them, adding to the chaos, if such were possible.
People were screaming – “Fire!” People were answering, “Yeah, right! Right on!”
An off-duty detective made his way in who was drinking nearby when he picked up
the dispatcher calls.  His drunken demands and self-pronouncements fit right in.

While all this was going on, drugs were being passed around in and through the crowd.
This fact was positively noted in the group surrounding the arguing police, so the group
stopped to partake. This was also noted favorably by the police. Police, Riders, security
guards stopped screaming long enough to snort or smoke whatever was passed to them –
generally, the theory being, if things suck anyway, might as well get high.  Then
they continued the argument, their volume increasing proportionately to the state of each
speaker’s deluded beliefs. The munchkins, stalled in their intended exit, joined
in with further intoxicants – even intellectual Robby buying into the general theory.

A group of three EMTs arrived in their white uniforms, wandering in across the arguing
groups. The dark and confusion was challenging for them also, but they wandered
conscientiously across the rows of chairs, looking people who were overdosed. People
were trembling with fear, gasping for breath, so the EMTS stood ready to administer
medications and treatments to those who were in need. It proved to be a difficult sell,
however, as several people they encountered didn’t want to come down from their high.
People who were deliriously stoned still resisted any remedy – and did so rather vocally.
Several others, who were huddling under tables and chairs, were convinced that the EMTs
were simply more costumed hippies and declined assistance on that basis.  They had no
intention of abandoning their slender defenses. The EMTs continued circulating, but in
the knifing, crossing rays of flashlights, appeared not certain of whom to treat, or why.

The chief Rider decided the time had come for the climax and readied new strings
of toys.  Overhead on the dome, a new scene was presented – Alan felt no obligation
to present events in any chronological order – the stars were depicted falling, the planets
dissolving, the oceans boiling. Alan was narrating the end of the galaxies and the end
of time.  Alan lectured sincerely over an intercom intended for calm, scientific explanations
of a dignified planetarium show – possibly as a result of his own indiscriminate use of
hallucinogens, declared – “It’s the end of the world! Time’s up, dudes!  It’s the end
of time. The end of the world!”  Multiple images cascaded in fractions of seconds.

At that point a group of six firefighters arrived. They at least were used to smoke,
confusion, noise, and managed to retain their discipline and purpose. They began
circulating across the perimeter of the auditorium looking for signs of actual fire. Most
people they encountered were unwilling to move about or take any orders, assuming that
the firefighters were more costumed hippies. Two of the firefighters made their way around
the crowd in front, where the munchkins were loitering, more or less camped. They 
encountered Robby, who was completely dismissive of them. “It’s cool,” he explained.
“There’s no fire. We’re splitting now. Anyway, we can see your costumes aren’t real.”

The firemen were annoyed by Robby’s comment and made a rude reply.  “It’s only
real, what you experience as real,” retorted Vermy, which helped not at all.  Pushing
developed between Vermy and Hammy and the firefighters.  The firemen grudgingly
moved on. “Come back,” G-Lucky called out to the retreating firemen, “if you want a date!”
Frosty giggled, put her hands over her head, still holding her Kahlua and cream, and
gave them a last burlesque-bump with her hips. “Last chance!” the salacious
munchkin-entomologist shouted to the backs of their helmets as they slid along the
edge of the crowd.  Zoe remained unruffled, standing guard for Weezy, calm but
watchful toward the firefighters, police, security guards and Riders. 

The chief Rider set off his first climax string of half a dozen M-80’s
BANGBOOMBANGBOOMBANGBOOM!!!!!! Bangboombangboom echoed in
exploding, deafening fashion. The audience-hippies rocked or fell to the floor in
fear.  Anyone armed with a weapon unholstered it reflexively. The booming bangboom
echo sound was almost as loud as the original explosions.  The knees of the munchkins
buckled, making it appear as if the shock wave traveled up and down vertically
across their green-clad bodies.

“GUNS! GUNS!” “There are guns!” – more screaming. “RUN!” People were running in
every direction, tripping over each other, but unable to exit. Robby took off on his own,
heading away from the front doors, deciding that the furthest door was the one he would
choose for exit if he were sober. As soon as he bolted, Frosty took off after him.

“Take me!” “Take me!” she shouted at Robby. “I love you! Robby! Don’t leave me!” Robby
turned his head back briefly, but didn’t lose a step – nor did Frosty, who was nimble and
quick.  Following him, she maneuvered around and through the crowd and the intervening
bodies and auditorium seats easily as fast as Robby.  Still clinging to her drink, she called out
plaintively, “Robby!” Her voice trailed off into a kind of slurred, teary wail – Robbbyyyyy. 
Amazingly though, her balance was surprisingly stable. Robby could hop-stride over the seats
easily, but nearing the far exit he stepped on someone in the dark as his foot came down,
causing him to lose his balance. When Frosty caught up to him, she tried to help him up,
finally putting down her drink to do so.  He shrugged her off, but then, frustrated with his
own lack of coordination, gave up and sat. “Clumsy. This fall, man, it’s the effect.  But what is
the cause?” Robby asked rhetorically, folding his legs to bring them closer to his body.

“All part of the show!” One of the Riders yelled out. “It’s all cool!  Very cool!”

Now all the police and the security guards started echoing the same comfort:
“They’re only fireworks!  Stay calm!”  Screaming at people to stay calm is just about
as productive as you might imagine.

“It’s the show! The fireworks you want!” More colored smoke bombs were set off,
but at least part of the crowd hesitated. Vermy noted that Robby’s conduct decided the
munchkins’ perceptions – if he were running with naked fear, they caught his fear.

Vermy saw Frosty take off, skipping around rows of auditorium seats. “Wait!” He shouted.
“Frosty, wait!” He observed himself chasing Frosty over the auditorium seats in the dark.
“We can touch! I’ve wanted you for a long time! Haven’t you seen it?  If it ends, let’s be
together!” Frosty turned her head in only moderate surprise. The sly, distant attention of
Vermy hadn’t been altogether lost on her. “See me!” Vermy repeated, “see my love! So real! 
Real for you!  We’re the forbidden fruit!  Explore with me!  My Lady Chatterley!”

Without another thought, Frosty resumed chasing Robby, declaring her undying love to
the cinema director of her lost youth, who had no immediate interest in anything except
an available exit.  Vermy, briefly touching with his fingertips to make sure his mustache was
well-groomed, self-analyzed as he followed her, thoughts indiscriminately tumbling into a
rouge-pastel haze of fishnet fantasy, pining for leathery, off-planet escapism and female
reproductive organs decorated with flowers.  He trailed nubile Frosty across the maze of
people and seats – provocative, inviting by her very being – yet apparently elusive as reality
itself, while random flashlights crisscrossed the auditorium. 

G-Lucky saw Vermy taking off. “Let’s do it, one more time,” she offered to Vermy and his
sexy handlebar mustache, “right before the end!” G-Lucky made loud offers as she ran,
shouting that she always wanted to have relations at the end of the world (I have
paraphrased her more vernacular language). It wasn’t clear whether G-Lucky really thought
there was shooting going on – or really thought death or the end was nigh – or that it just
didn’t matter to her as long as one more roll in the hay was available. “I can do nice things!”
G-Lucky shouted. “Wait!” She chased after Vermy.  G-Lucky explained loudly in rather
graphic detail what might be possible between them, even in an auditorium. The prospect of
being viewed by others in these intimate arrangements did not seem to dissuade G-Lucky
at all. But Vermy was off chasing Frosty, so G-Lucky followed Vermy, his firm marathon
posterior and his mustache.

Hammy had long ached for G-Lucky, who found him juvenile.  Seeing the chase, Hammy
arose mentally from his preoccupations. “G-Lucky,” he shouted. “G-Lucky!” He thought
of something compelling to say as he followed. He decided to recite Satan’s lines from
Milton’s Paradise Lost. It made no great sense under the circumstances  – but given the
general state of things in the auditorium, that appeared no impediment.  Hammy’s poetry
recital was chosen for the lovelorn. “Farewell happy fields, where joy forever dwells!” he
shouted. “G-Lucky! Hail, horrors, hail! Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell – receive
thy new possessor! One who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time! G-Lucky,
wait! For the mind is its own place, and of itself, can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of
hell!” Although her heart was situated in a frame deeply attractive to Hammy, it did not
appear this recitation of poetry won G-Lucky’s heart, if she listened at all.  G-Lucky kept
chasing Vermy – chasing Frosty – chasing Robby.  Hammy commenced stepping over
auditorium chairs in the smoke and dark and flashing lights to chase G-Lucky. “It’s all
in our heads!  We can make it what we want!” he shouted, but G-Lucky was intent on
pursuing her own agenda.

Weezy saw this parade of her compatriot-escapees leaving and commenced to follow.
Zoe went with her, leading her along the aisles, gingerly around the people cowering
behind the cushioned reclining seats.  Another string of M-80s exploded.
BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG. BANGbangbanbbangbang. bngbngbngbngbng.

Weezy caught up to Hammy, who had caught up to the other munchkins. They were
huddled behind a crowd also trying to use the far exit door.  People had stopped
believing that the Riders stationed there were police, but still hadn’t broken through.
Weezy put her arms around Hammy from behind, hugging him, a gesture he recognized.
Then Weezy began to sob uncontrollably.  “Why are you crying?” Hammy asked, without
hearing or expecting any immediate answer.

“Why are we running?” Vermy asked of anyone, circling in place to looked around at
the panic. “Because we’re users.  And we’re guilty,” Robby answered in a burst of
seated, defiant coherence. By this time, another group of four police had entered, to
join the seemingly endless argument by the front doors.

Another series of M-80’s exploded. BangBangBang. Heads dropped, bodies ducked
to the floor. Alan was narrating the end of the world and the collapse of all alternate
universes into an endless series of alternate-universe black holes, depicted on the
overhead dome.  He elaborated on string and chaos theory and the enormous
landscape of possible universes, all of which he explained would be collapsing. The
depiction was of total flashing followed by total dark following by total flashing at
high speed on the overhead dome, intended by Alan to instigate epileptic reactions. 
“The absolute end of the universe- inconvenient, unavoidable.  Collapsed back into
nothing. Final.”  Alan intoned ponderously.

“We’re small,” G-Lucky replied to anyone listening. Robby was staring off blankly.
“Insects, in this universe.  Short-timers.  May flies.” Vermy was self-observing.  Frosty
picked up her drink cup. Hammy turned around to hug Weezy, who was being
attended by Zoe.

“Afraid,” Weezy answered. “Afraid.” Even Zoe seemed to feel this moment of
compassion, in the midst of the group hallucinogenic fog.  The shepherd nuzzled
against Weezy. The group appeared to retreat into itself, almost visibly shrink.
Weezy, in a deep stretch for composure, for rationality, unexpectedly found some
words to softly recite which must have attached to her before her headlong
plunge into Eastern religion. Waking on a morn – to find that what one waked for,
inhales a different dawn.  Hammy thought he recognized the lines from Emily
Dickinson. For whatever reason, the noise from all sources appeared to quiet
briefly, allowing Weezy to be heard.

For the munchkins, any moments of contemplation or sobriety were doomed
to be short-lived, their hallucinogens being rather insistent. “Like, wow, man, the
whole human race – it’s like – vulnerable, dude,” said Robby, who finally was too
stoned to be calm or rational anymore.  Weezy resumed crying. The whole group
began crying with Weezy, as if uncontrollably sobbing in fear was an unavoidable,
contagious disease.

Maudlin, hallucinogen-enhanced, hard to take completely seriously, like a drunk’s
self-pity, the munchkins sat in a circle, consumed with fear, overwhelmed, none
more so than Weezy. Even in his own intoxicated state, Hammy felt badly for her,
then for the whole group and tried to say something, but it was incoherent. He couldn’t
be heard anyway, the momentary pause in the surrounding din was over. Zoe tried
to comfort Weezy. It was too much even for Zoe’s comfort, and the mood-altering
chemicals were kicking in harder.

The group sobbed. Their chests heaved, like a hockey team of drunks abandoned on
Jack Daniels highway. They started babbling, repeating one another’s words, falling all
over each other with heavy-handed comforting hugs. I love you man. Like, wow, man,
fear is a heavy trip. Man, what’s inside you – sooner or later, it comes out. Like on the
astral plane, what will be, already is. Heavy – carry the love. We’re pretty vulnerable,
man, in the universe and all, when you think about it. Nothing but a bag of bones and
organs, held together with some skin. Kind of scary. Are we going to get busted?
It was quite a crying jag, participated in by all, clad in their munchkin green, even cool-
hand Robby – except for Zoe, who stood guard vigilantly throughout the episode.

After some undetermined period of time, all the auditorium lights came on. Some sort of
order was restored. People stood up, unburdened themselves of the chairs and tables
which they had pulled onto their own heads. Large numbers of real police who were not
impersonating anyone managed to separate and identify themselves to each other and
directed out or led out the crowds.

The munchkins made their way out unsteadily, Robby leading in his no-drama,
director’s director sort of way, which he had more-or-less regained.  Form the concept,
he thought to himself, mechanically, like a man flying by instruments, his concept being
an orderly exit, involving aisles, crowds, doors, guiding exit signs, directing police, looking
back to count noses of his green-clad people.  Attach familiar perceptions.  Take controlled,
intuitive steps. Walk with balance. Present a calm expression.  Don’t overreact to what you
observe – space and time are not swirling as you perceive, but stable as you remember. 
Your legs are not longer than usual.  Your feet, your coffee hands are not larger, not further
away.  Assemble your many thoughts.  Stay cool, stay collected, ego – I am.  Zoe followed
closely with Weezy.

Some of the Demon Riders were given citations for disturbing the peace, which they
promptly tore into shreds. The Riders were threatened with misdemeanors and felonies for
impersonating police officers, but no one expected much to come from that. The charging
officers were smoking, drinking and snorting the same kool-aid as the crowd. That would
not be a good look on cross-examination in a courtroom trial conducted by aggressive
defense attorneys, not to mention the wide-spread identification problems which the crime
scene posed.

Understandably, management suspended the Saturday night planetarium show
until further notice.  Alan’s artistry, squashed.  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Later that night an emergency police crew was working outside, sealing each of the
planetarium doors for a further investigation. They were occupied with stringing
around yellow warning tape and placing locks and cable on the doors themselves.
One of the officers looked up, noticed a shooting star, a real one, and commented on
how spectacular it was, jetting through the night sky to the horizon line.

______________________________________

First Intermission

“You listened to me read some poems?” I asked Jen, the coffee house manager.

“Some. I was serving people at tables nearby. I liked the one about your mother. And about the rider and the white horse. I didn’t listen too long to the one about the planetarium.”

“Yes, I liked the one about my mother, too.  There wasn’t much redeeming about the one in the planetarium. Except maybe for Zoe.”

“- One of God’s creatures too -” she interjected.

“But to listen to me read that much, that took more than a few minutes.”

“Well, I’m very efficient,” she smiled, scampering off – my entire audience.
_______________________________________________

My Granddaughter Gets a New Name

My daughter, Laurie, converted to
the Orthodox faith. She married Matt.
They had a baby, named Lily Rose.

At the baptismal ceremony, the Priest explained
that the Orthodox give children being baptized new names.
Lily’s baptismal name was Mary.

This gave me pause.
Mary’s argument isn’t
‘Pray to me.’

Mary’s argument is
‘I’m small, completely vulnerable.
Hold me in your arms.’
____________________________

Hammy’s Dream

Perhaps late at night, or perhaps early in the morning,
Hammy was dreaming – talking to a pine tree in his garden.
Storm-scarred, tall and sturdy, the pine tree said,
“An angel will rise from first light to seal you.
I will go when you are sealed –
the wind will take me away.”

“Why is that?” Hammy inquired.
“What have you done?”
“I will go with the others,” the pine tree answered.
“The ark, the temple, the cross were made from us.
We will be uprooted and swept away, root and branch.
After these things, new trees will come.”

“I do not like this wind,”  Hammy replied.
“This wind that takes you away.”
“The wind is held back for you,”
the dream tree assured Hammy.
“Listen patiently in the clinging mist.
A word speaks clearly, loudly, for you.”

“I have a question for you,” said the pine tree.
“When being and un-being go to war, 
how do they fight?  Who wins?”
“I don’t understand your questions
and I do not like this war,”  Hammy answered.
“Who am I, to have such questions posed to me?”

“Other angels enter,” the pine tree answered,
“while you ripen, to act in concert with
our grace-light angel, sealing his chosen fruits.
Some to judge in termination, one to save –
until the garden and everything in it is renewed,
including you, and not you only.”
____________________________

Jacob’s Ladder in the World

On my way to the symphony in Philadelphia
a Jewish man from a small sect, bearded,
with a round, brimmed black felt hat, spotted me.
He wanted to give me a little card,
advising of a Rebbe for his sect.

When I told him I wasn’t Jewish,
he asked, “Is your mother Jewish?”
I shook my head no. “Your father?”
I nodded affirmatively, “Yes.”
He was satisfied, and handed me his card.

The Rebbe’s card presented
eight directives for a good life,
a civil society, a kind of covenant
based on Noah and good government,
while waiting for the Mashiach to arrive.
_______________________________________

Jacob’s Ladder in the Heart

The last time I saw my father, he was laying
in a hospital bed in the cardiac critical care unit
of Hahnemann Hospital, itself heading for dissolution.
It was his 50^th day there, after all-night emergency
surgery to repair a dissection of the upper aorta.
He was still 5’ 7,” but bloated; half of each of his feet
were missing from surgical amputations, which a surgeon
had misleadlingly described as an amputation of his toes.

As I turned to leave, a male nurse was trying to force
a long slender device down his throat to clear phlegm.
He was nearly comatose, but he lifted his
hand to ward off the pain of the insertion.
His death left me with some questions.

Born in Roxborough, Isadore Jacob Wolpert –
had no use for any name other than Jack.
After his father left the family, Jack resented Judaism.
He was bored with any brief synagogue encounter,
angry at being fatherless, angry at the walls of life.

Jack failed 1st grade, did not tell anyone he could not see the
chalkboard from the ‘W’ row.  With glasses, now named four-eyes.
Silent child of narrow paths, closed doors, older siblings, running
errands, counting candy-store pennies for his burdened mother Sarah.

Yearning for escape, discovered he could do schoolwork.
Being a dentist was a ‘good profession; went to Temple.
WWII meant dentists were inducted on graduation.
Jack was assigned to ride troop ships across the Atlantic,
the shipboard dentist – who had little dentistry to perform
but time to look out over the broad ocean and bright
star-lit night sky, thoughts broken free of Roxborough.

After the war, more confident, an officer on duty in Minneapolis,
met my mother on a blind date. Jimmy, good-looking, not Jewish,
ready to break out of her life too. My father spoke well, he understood
an escapee, whose father had absconded, who lived in her dreamy corners.

My mother responded to this trim Jewish well-spoken military-
medical man, whose intelligence called to her.  Married in Wisconsin,
they traveled in Europe, saw much – but no cathedrals, nor any
synagogues or concentration camps.  Paris and Rome were on the agenda.

Set up in tough, blue-collar Fishtown, but difficulty starting his practice.
They had a son, given his name, Gay, from the maternal side.  No need
for any Jewish connections. In 1951, re-enlisted in the army as a captain.

Had a second son, Lynn, at a rural army base in West Germany.
Frustrated again, blew up his army career, set up in Montgomery County,
Main and Broad in Lansdale, where prosperity was beginning to roll in
like the tide under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson.

His sons were sent to private Quaker school,  Quaker sobriety
having made its way successfully into Pennsylvania education; and
education was everything to Jack – he had no interest in Judaism,
but what is more Jewish than that?

Beyond nominal salutes to conformity, vague religious stirrings were quickly
dispelled.  On vacation at a beach house, he found a book –
“The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed’ – a mass market paperback.
It seemed to interest him, he took it with us when we left.
Boyishly, I asked him about taking a book not his
and he explained that when people left books
at a beach house, they didn’t mind if someone took them.
But I never saw the book around the house again.
He rooted against Notre Dame, not because it was
Catholic, because it was religious.

Then came the deterioration of his marriage, separation, divorce.
Jimmy & the boys move to Ambler, but this did not work out well.
Lynn returned to Lansdale, distressed. My mother was sinking.
I returned to Lansdale and my father’s house as well.
In a year, I was hitchhiking to the Haight-Ashbury, with no opposition
from him – as if we happened to be roommates, nothing more.  After my arrest,
Jack paid the plane ticket for my return from adventure, otherwise said nothing.
He often made dinner for his sons and silently washed the dishes, alone
with his own thoughts. At 18, I headed west again to start over.

Jack re-married a patient, non-Jewish, a local teacher 15 years younger.
My brother had drug problems, big-time, introduced to this nether world by 
circumstances, by the 60’s, but above all by me.  Lynn’s high-school girlfriend
Carol told Jack.  Our father bore with Lynn and his addictions; in time seemed
to work the problem. Lynn was off to college, clean, to be an art history major.

My Christian conversion came at Villanova. A long-dead German
came out of the Catholic Church to write, to tell me I might be,
could only be, justified by faith – in God the Son, the cross-bearer.
My father’s reaction to my conversion to Christianity was that
“Someone got to you.” I resented his observation at the time,
but in retrospect, I have reconsidered and concluded he was right.

My new-found faith was too noisy for my father, a faith naive,
argumentative, met with his brothers’ and sisters’ disapproval.
Gradually Jack accommodated to my faith as a kind of civil
accoutrement to life. My father became mildly condescending
about my faith, but willing, able to speak positively about God.
The religious debate stalemated, but Jack generously loved – me, Erma,
our children, Lynn, his wife and daughter. Proselytizing efforts quieted.

Then Lynn died from a drug overdose, furtively acquired, applied.
Family met at the emergency room, saw his corpse on a gurney.
His youngest son’s death shocked, assaulted my father’s heart.
He was changed in the way that great grief changes people.

Later, I asked him rhetorically, referencing my brother,
what would have been the harm, whether it would have been
good, if Lynn had converted to Christianity. The debate that
had been stilled, was reprised briefly, grief-sharpened from both
sides. But there could be no answer.

The difference between a gullible son who recklessly deserted the
family values of Jewish secularism and education-above-all,
for some simple-minded Bible-Christian religious faith –
and a son who was not moving from a gravesite in Montgomery
County, who at 34 left a wife and two-year old, another Sara,
(a younger son who had clung closely to his father ever since his
recovery from high-school heroin addiction before that cursed relapse) –
was too stark, too grievous, for any discussion or debate.

The sands were running through the hour-glass now.

Jack was practicing dentistry two days after his 70^th birthday,
when his upper aorta began to unravel.  His heart was still pumping,
but his blood wasn’t going anywhere except diffusing.
Jack’s patients were his friends – nicely noted later in a warm
obituary published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Jack’s medical distress
met with his patient’s immediate action.

Jack was sent by helicopter from the Lansdale hospital where
Lynn had been pronounced dead to Hahnemann Hospital, tops in
the area for cardiac procedures.  The surgeon, a well-spoken man
from Africa, operated on him in an all-night procedure. The procedure
repaired the shredded aorta, but the rest of his body went into shock from
the blood loss, for which there is no surgical cure, no infallible pill.

So Jack’s wife and I were his regular visitors. After the first week,
when it became evident things were not getting better, discussions
began about his future prospects, which did not yield agreement.
Determined as I was for a miracle, and given that no two doctors
appeared to have the same opinion or prognosis two days running,
things settled into a visitation pattern – alternating evenings between
his wife and me.

He appeared to be reacting at times; he appeared to have some
functionality at times. Mostly he simply lay there, about halfway
up the Glasgow Coma Scale. I was praying passionately. Frequently
various medical professionals tactfully suggested that I might be
overestimating the significance of his responses. Several nurses tried to
gently steer me toward more realistic expectations. His wife had a cool,
clear-eyed picture of what his prospects were, so our perspectives differed.

But Jack persevered, albeit bloated, day after day, week after week,
held, as it were, by angels to keep the winds of his illness and
injuries from overpowering him. In his feet, necrosis set in.  But
with help, he sat up one day in a wheel chair.  The next day, one of
the endless stream of doctors who trooped by refused to believe that
such a thing was possible. His wife, not greatly impressed by such
endurance, was engaged in more practical considerations, which included
a lawyer visit to dot some testamentary i’s and cross some codicil-legal t’s.

As time passed, on visits I sang to him, witnessed to him, presented
the gospel to his impassive ears. Previous years’ discussions gave way to
that blank expression of someone who may or may not be hearing, or
listening, or considering – but then again, perhaps he was. Facial expressions,
hand movements, a turning of the head – all these exhibit some degree of
human life.  These little evidences, so commonplace to medical professionals and
routinely discounted, all so new to me, such fertile ground for exuberant, untethered
hope. It was my turn for that filmy, soap-bubble of insistent belief – stone-deaf to
wiser medical guidance – my turn for stubborn, bedside-desperado hope.

One night he apparently responded to my delivery and explanation of the
gospel. It appeared he was nodding his head to my invitation. A son will cling
to a slender reed, when there is no other.  If Jack was sealed, the sealing was
stern. But what is hope for, but to hope my father will be numbered with one
of the tribes of Jacob, his namesake, and not the tribe of Dan, left out in that
startling list of tribes found in the scroll of Revelation.  Such hope generates
fervent questions – whose answers must wait.

The connection between a father and his son is deep indeed –
it flows broadly, powerfully, like one of the great rivers of this planet.
Such love carries that which is tender and stern – events, gifts, disciplines,
words, lectures, comforts, touches and times – these footholds, these
handholds accumulate, spread themselves, appear like rungs in a ladder,
leading to a place we cannot articulate.
________________________________

Jacob’s Ladder in my Mind

Jacob’s Ladder is good for angels.
Sometimes the ladder is challenging,
for those a little lower than the angels,
Whose path is lit by intellect, but
Not by revelation, or even tradition.

Let us measure some rungs:
A Jewish boy from Roxborough in the Depression;
a young officer-dentist on a troop ship out on the Atlantic;
a groom for a Midwestern Gentile beauty;
a prosperous Pennsylvania dentist raising his family;
a silent, introverted man contemplating his life
alone raising teenage boys;
a middle-aged dentist remarrying to start again;
a grieving father confronting a grief, an evil
which would grow to a tidal wave years later;
a man whose aorta had stopped carrying blood
to the rest of his body, laying in a hospital bed;
while another son sang gospel songs and delivered
little gospel messages because he didn’t know what
else to do and what can you do in such a room
at such a time?

The lost years of Jesus will be revealed,
on a ladder reaching from Roxborough
to Hahnemann, because the Mashiach has
come from Zion, after all, to
turn godlessness away from you,
O Jack.

Loved on account of patriarchs
you did not seek, given pep talks of
Christian evangelism from a son you
did not understand, whom you loved and
who loved you for reasons that began
so early I have no recollection of them,
because God has determined in his own counsel,
that his gifts and call are irrevocable.

One of 12,000, that mystery-number of
symbol and promise, sealed from twelve tribes of Israel,
144,000 in all, a mystery multiplied by mystery,
wrapped in a symbol, gift-wrapped and
son-delivered for you. This I hope.

Let us suppose, for purposes of introspection, that
the real Jew is inwardly a Jew,
and the real circumcision is in the heart,
something not of the letter,
but of the spirit.
If this were a matter of personal volition,
the religious-choice volition
of a man in a near-coma state,
encouraged or presented by his son
at his hospital bedside,
then it misses the nature of sealing,
an act of angels,
directed by God.

Father, circumcision of the heart, seems to me
to require that we stop asking ourselves
what we think, what we want, what decisions
we have made – and start asking questions
about God’s will, God’s decisions, God’s election. 
Isaiah’s sundial appears to be running in reverse here –
in this hospital room, Jack, I am presenting the 
hard questions, all the life-determining questions,
here at the end.

God decreed before they were born,
before either had done good or evil,
that Esau, the elder, would serve
Jacob, the younger,
In order that God’s purpose in election
might stand.
In an alternate universe, father, that
might initiate a thoughtful, serious conversation
between us – and you might disagree
with the Apostle Paul.  Others have.

But who are you, Jack Wolpert,
to make a reply to God?
My father, formed by God, would you ask
“Why did you make me like this?”
And would not that question imply, in this making of you,
your gifts, your intelligence, your speech, your heritage,
your education, your marriage, your family, as well as your life
from Roxborough to Hahnemann?

We need to go back to that first question,
‘Who are you, Jack Wolpert?’ The question
implies much about Jack Wolpert, but much
also about God, God’s plans, God’s will,
God’s judgment, God’s wisdom, God’s
salvation, and a lonely Mashiach who had
no friends once, nailed to a tough place, 
as hard as your hospital bed,
but who has been accumulating friends
ever since.

Who are these people, who are we,
hated Jews, blind, self-absorbed,
who dragged Christ out to Pilate,
for that tragic death-interview, a
travesty of justice and good government.
Perhaps, like Daniel, I should just record
a lengthy prayer of repentance and remorse.

But we Jews have suffered,
like Jack in the hospital,
suffered long in the world and
suffered long in the spirit,
lacking blood to our spiritual organs,
in a state of spiritual numbness.

We have made ourselves the target
of haters and fools. Monuments are planted
in this world to commemorate (is this repentance,
or bragging?) the truly staggering numbers of Jews
who can be murdered in a short period of time,
if a capable government really puts their mind to it.
Yet, like cockroaches, we scamper out of our
hiding places to mock our antagonists –
‘nanny nanny boo boo – you didn’t get us all.’
It is our antagonists who are being dragged away.

And at the very end, 144,000 thousand of us, that
number of symbols multiplied by a symbol, from
twelve tribes of Israel, are sealed for salvation.
So nanny nanny boo boo to all our enemies, Jack –
salvation is of the Jews, and we will see who
drinks wine in the Kingdom, and who does not.

The real circumcision is still in the heart;
something of the Holy Spirit.
A Jew like that may not be praised by man,
but he will be praised by God.

Do poems or bed-side invitations advance or arrest
God’s mysterious election?  Angels are commissioned
to seal souls among the twelve Revelation-tribes of Jacob,
that strange list which is almost a complete roster
of Jacob’s sons, but quite conspicuously,
not entirely.

My mind climbs a ladder
to understand the mysterious interplay
between man’s will and God’s will,
but has far to reach the top.
Who resists His will, you would ask?
No resistance was left, father.
Not from that hospital bed.
We will be Jews, father, after all – we will
rejoice in the mysterious will of God.
___________________________________

He’ll be Leaving the Restaurant, with Her

A young man and his companion, a great beauty, were
ushered to their table by the maître d. She wondered why
he had had brought her there. As they sat he began to praise
her beauty, her long jet-black hair, her eyes with long lashes, her smile.
She was pleased with his attentions but puzzled. What is going on?
Where is this going? He could be complementary, had been so before,
but he was also a businesslike young man.

The conversation shifted – he was talking about people,
people he had recently met, someone he had recently met.
He mentioned a girl who did not have neat, long beautiful hair.
Her hair was disheveled. Her teeth were not beautifully straight.
She had a crooked smile. He did not give her name.
The expression on the great beauty’s face changed abruptly.

Her young man continued to describe this girl who did not know
how to dress, who did not know how to comport herself in elegant
restaurants. The great beauty, who had enjoyed her exclusive
relationship with the young man for an extended period,
looked around the restaurant with piercing, probing eyes.

There indeed was the disheveled, pirate-smiling, crooked-teeth,
cheaply dressed young woman. She was sitting by herself; she was
sitting nearby. As the young man resumed praising the looks
of the great beauty, beauty’s face was transformed by tears forming.
Wet tears – fully-formed copious tears began running down from the
eyes, from the long eyelashes of the great beauty.

The disheveled girl grinned from ear to ear. The young man continued
finding fault with the unnamed disheveled girl sitting nearby. The more
impolite and unflattering the remarks made by the young man about the
disheveled girl, the more she grinned. It was as if he could not say enough
bad things about the disheveled girl or enough good things about the
great beauty – it didn’t matter.

The great beauty was weeping, the disheveled girl was grinning –
because they both knew at that point why they were there, with whom the
young man was going to be leaving, who would pick at her food in silence.
“You can keep the ring,” he said to the great beauty. With that, he left the
first table and seated himself at the second. The disheveled young woman’s
face practically broke in two, she was grinning so broadly.

Jesus went up to the region of Tyre and Sidon dragging along the disciples.
What was he doing up there? It was crowded, overflowing with Gentiles, Canaanites.
What could be the point of that? Plus, given Jesus’ reputation for healing, wasn’t it
all too predictable, they would be whining, crying, over some illness or another?
What was Jesus thinking?

A Canaanite woman appeared – not much of a surprise. She cried out for her
daughter, demon-possessed. Naturally, Jesus ignored her. Her repeated cries
and wailing were too much. The disciples were irritated, not sure why they
were there either among the heathen, the unbelievers, the uncircumcised.
Jesus provided exactly the expected answer to this wailing Canaanite woman:

I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

There you have it, what could be more plain, more decisive, than that?
The stubborn, irrepressible Canaanite woman did not know how to take a
hint. Lord, help me! She pleaded loudly. Obviously, not a good listener.

Jesus looked at her squarely and said plainly.
It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.
He said it so bluntly no one could miss its meaning.

Look – he was even insulting her. That should put her in her place.
But oddly, Jesus did not move away from her. He did not turn his face away.
He appeared to be waiting for some response from this Canaanite woman,
some response he was anticipating. The expression on Jesus’ face was not
the expression of someone who has delivered an insult. Rather, it was the
expression of a teacher who has posed a challenging question.

The Canaanite woman had a moment of enormous religious inspiration.
In one instant, she got what Jesus was doing – she got it. She and Jesus
were the only two people in the world who understood what was going on.
The Canaanite woman understood what the conversation was all about,
why Jesus was up there anyway with all these heathen Canaanites.
She and Jesus were in a conversation with no one else interfering.

“Yes, Lord,” she answered. “But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their
Masters’ table.” The Canaanite woman hit that one out of the park.  The
Canaanite woman wasn’t insulted; she was thrilled. It was the greatest day of
her life – for herself and her daughter.  No onlooker could understand as the
Canaanite woman grasped and understood. When the word of God falls from
the table, it turns the dogs into children, outsiders to insiders. It was only the
word of God which made the children, children in the first place.

Jesus left the table of the Jews at that instant and went to sit at the table
with the Canaanite woman, with her disheveled hair, crooked pirate smile
and uneven teeth. They had the Law, the prophets; they could keep the ring.
The exclusive was over.

Woman, Jesus told her, You have great faith. Your request is granted.

The Canaanite woman’s daughter was healed from that very hour. The Canaanite
woman trundled off into Salvation history.  Her moment of genius, of inspiration, 
recorded forever in a glorious exchange with Jesus. 

The dogs under the table had just become children – the children of God, children
of the Covenant, by faith. The Law, the promises, the point of the temple worship,
the purification and the atonement, were coming to the crazy Canaanites now too –
to the loud Canaanite lady with her noisy faith and to the rest of the world.  The
uncircumcised were being invited in.

The disciples didn’t get it. The exchange eluded them. They would ask later
Lord, are you now going to return the Kingdom to Israel?   The Apostle Paul
would unravel how and why the exclusive was over.  The hour appointed
for the beauty’s tears had come, because she would be able to continue
her relationship with the young man, but not in the way it had been before.  
_______________________________________

Young People, in Motion

Two very young people, teenagers,
sit together on a park bench at night.
They have taken a walk together
under the trees, the stars.

They sit quietly, close, but not touching.
The silence stretches out. They are both shy.
Finally she turns to him and asks,
“Well – are you going to kiss me? Or not?”

We sit on a park bench with God.
He created us. We are young,
we are shy. We are close to God
but not yet touching.

The silence stretches out.
Finally we turn, turn to the Lord our God.
We must ask, no other question has occurred
to us for many minutes, for a long time.

“Lord, holy Lord – are you going to kiss us?  Soon?”
Perhaps we know that to receive this kiss will change us –
will move us in one direction and away from another.
We will tender some hello’s, some goodbye’s.

But isn’t that true also of our teenage girl?
Doesn’t she also know that if the teenage boy decides
that he wants to kiss her, moves closer still, does awkwardly
kiss her, boyishly at first, then with rising passion,

that such a kiss, maturing as it continues,
is going to change them? That such a kiss will
move them in one direction in their lives
and away from another?
____________________________________________

Drunk at the Bucket of Blood, Dunked at the Del Coronado

1. The Catcher in the Rye

In Reno one year, a summer conference was convened for beginning poets,
seeking guidance and outlet for their first efforts. Hopscotch lectures and
flowing discussions were lively, animated with youthful passions. In one such
group, Bill W, poet and professor of San Francisco State, offered that all fiction
presented conflict, a conflict between good and evil.

This observation occasioned heated discussion. The young writers present
took such an assertion seriously and at least some disputed it vigorously.
The debate gradually centered on the 1950’s novel Catcher in the Rye.
A challenge was issued that it was about the coming of age of Holden Caulfield,
not about a conflict between good and evil, not a narrative like King Lear.

Bill W asserted that it was such a conflict, a conflict between Holden and
a corrupt society, between his innocence and the surrounding decadence.
No resolution being had in the lecture hall, a group of young poets retired
to a local establishment, the Bucket of Blood, for refreshments and further
trenchant observations on the nature of poetry, art, society and life itself.

While waiting for their first pitcher of beer, the group of four poets, debated
whether Sylvia Plath was better than Allen Ginsburg. Maggie and Choc introduced
themselves, sister and brother, both writers, from Los Angeles. “Born right
on Mulholland Drive,” they announced proudly. They were trim, blonde twins
fond of inside jokes which they were willing to share but passed quickly.

“I’m Lenny,” their third member introduced himself, obviously not long out of
high school, “from Cornfield, Ohio.” Lenny was also blonde, earnest in speech,
youthful, blue-eyed and baby-faced, hoping to be accepted socially as much as
creatively. Lenny had flown to the conference, his first plane flight and first foray
into the serious business of poetry. “I have joints we can smoke,” he said proudly.

“I’m Quasimodo,” said the fourth member of their group. “From Buzzard’s Breath,
Wyoming.” Quasimodo was older, dark-haired, with amused, flashing eyes behind
his glasses, as slender as Iago. “Why don’t you start us out with the first joint,” he
suggested. The first pitcher of beer arrived. “Drink up,” Quasimodo encouraged.
“We’ll howl. Then we’ll know what poetry is.” “To poetry,” four poets toasted.

Naturally the first pitcher of beer led to a second, the first joint led to another.
Lenny was determined to prove he was tough, ready for the rough-and-tumble of
real art. At some point beer was spilled across the table, occasioning hilarity
and a call for the waitress to take some cell-phone pictures of the group, who
had become bosom buddies in their intoxicated haze and literary-allusion jokes.

As the group got more stoned, Maggie and Choc’s relationship became more clear.
Choc followed Maggie; she was the pair’s leader. When she was drinking, so was he.
When she stopped, he did too. Maggie issued one or two see-me-later signals to
to Quasimodo – but she was never out of control and reflected an interior sense of
something, sobriety, perhaps simply the expectation the sun would rise tomorrow.

Maggie directed a mock question at Lenny, so anesthetized with intoxicants he could
not be offended. “Are you looking for a job? I have an opening – an ex oppy to be an
exec assis!” That gave rise to a rapid-fire exchange of 1000 Clowns humor between
Maggie and Choc, not meant meanly, inviting Lenny and Quasimodo to join in. Lenny
belched. “Sprouting froth defiance to the skies,” Maggie replied, quoting Moby Dick.

With Quasimodo’s tacit approval, nothing was stopping Lenny. Even sitting, he wobbled.
Quasimodo saw Maggie’s signals without signaling back. He was a mischievous fellow and
liked getting high, liked it a lot. The waitress could not walk past the table without getting
a call from Quasimodo for another pitcher of ale. “Look,” Quasimodo said to Lenny,
“when you smoke a joint, you have to hold it in deeply – keep it in your lungs, like this.”

As the evening wore on they began drinking Bombay kamikazes. They sang at the top
of their lungs – Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London and Roland the Headless Thompson
Gunner. When the song got to the line, he found him in a barroom in Mombasa, drinking
gin, everyone screamed in unison and took a big slug. They sang Excitable Boy and
Nighttime in the Switching Yard. They went wild with Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Although Lenny tried to follow Quasimodo’s tutorials on ever-increasing intoxication,
after some time he ceased being responsive. Finally Maggie decided she and Choc had
had enough fun for the evening – she paid their bill and they bid their friends adieu. Choc
had been a mystery man during the evening – he let Maggie take the lead, responded to 
jokes with literary allusions, sang along, but shielded his interior persona from view.

“Nobody here is Holden Caulfield,” Maggie announced as the twins left.
None of her compatriots found reason to disagree.

2. The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Left to their own devices at the Bucket of Blood, Quasimodo had an idea. “Let’s roll,” he
said to Lenny. “I just got this Karmann Ghia.” Lenny, in no condition to debate, dutifully
followed. Soon they were tooling west in a bright yellow sports car on Route 80. “I used
to live in the City,” Quasimodo told Lenny, barely awake. “Near a Vietnamese restaurant –
Lady Nhu’s Con-Ma Vietnamese Restaurant. Great food. Out by the Great Highway.”

Lenny was snoring. Quasimodo took a couple of bennies for energy, to make San Francisco
in three hours flat. As he drove highway hypnosis set in. Mere minutes, as it were – they were
passing over the Bay Bridge.  Lenny was still snoring, motionless. Let’s really have some fun,
Quasimodo said to himself, who was no small student of the occult, Nostradamus, Madame
Blavatsky, Yeats, Ted Hughes, the Golden Bough.  San Francisco welcomed her old friend.

Quasimodo passed Lady Nhu’s, parked at Great Highway. It was about 3 am.  They were
surrounded by the customary fog of the Outer Sunset district at the water’s edge. He dragged
Lenny out the car, uncomprehending, toward the Pacific. They crossed sand dunes, the
two-lane highway, crossed the next set of sand dunes to the slope down toward the beach. As
they neared the water, Lenny arose from his stupor, a sleepy mouse in the jaws of a cat.

“What?” he asked numbly, repeated, “what?” Quasimodo composed himself to set his bait.
“I’m sorry,” Quasimodo explained to Lenny, summoning all his portentous, solemn tones.
“We were driving to San Francisco. We had an accident. There was a crash. On a hill, a curve.
We’re dead.” “What?” Lenny mumbled. “What?” We’re in the afterlife. Out of our bodies
now. We’ve passed to the astral plane,  Quasimodo announced, somber, straight-faced.

A true artist throws himself into his role. This is it. The world beyond. We’re moving now.
“Why?” Lenny asked. We’re together. I’ve studied this. Listen to me, Quasimodo answered.
They were almost down to the water’s edge, Lenny stumbling, Quasimodo leading him on.
Can you see your double? Quasimodo asked. We’re at the edge now. Can you see yourself,
like you’re floating above yourself? “I think I can,” slurred Lenny. “I think I can see myself.

“It’s like I can see my body and I’m above it, looking down.” That’s right. It may even look
like someone else. But it’s you. You hit your head on the windshield. I was driving too fast.
You won’t be sure yet, whether this is a dream, or reality. I can see you, but no one else can.
Lenny peered into the first edges of the dark flowing surf, looking for his body. “Is that it?”
he asked of vague shapes. The edges of their adidas were washed with slight surf ripples.

Tell me if your senses are greater now, more acute. Can you see more, hear more? Is your
memory of the accident better now? “I think so,” Lenny answered, his voice recovering a
little clarity. “I think I remember. We were on the highway – going down a hill. It was steep.
I told you to slow down. At least I think I told you. Then it all went black.” Quasimodo was
delighted. He had the fish on the line now. You’re not feeling any pain now though, are you?

“No,” answered Lenny truthfully. “I’m not feeling any pain now.”  Your body is secondary. 
An empty shell. You’ve left the material world. Quasimodo moved Lenny deeper into the
water, up to their ankles. You’re having sensations of the next world. It’s almost liquid, like
water, isn’t it? Lenny had to agree. There’s a dank, salt smell – the smell of the astral plane.
Quasimodo began to wax eloquent. Look Lenny! Out to the horizon- O, can you see them?

The mountains. The snows of Kilimanjaro. We’re beginning to climb. It’s as if we’re in a
storm. Soon we’ll see the sun. Shining down on the mountain – shining on the peaks of
Kilimanjaro. There, ahead of us! It’s going to come with the sun. Quasimodo was pointing
out to Lenny a mountain no one could ever see. It’s so unbelievably white in the sun – the
square top of Kilimanjaro. That’s where we go. We have to – always had to go there.

Lenny strived hard to see the invisible. Quasimodo led him in the cool water to the knees.
Have you made peace with your past life? Are you ready to start another? Lenny had to
ponder this. “I think I have,” he conceded. “I was young. But I think I’m ready. To start a new
spiritual life.” How do you feel about the people you knew in the past, in your past life?
“I still love them,” Lenny answered. “But it’s from a distance.  They’re so far away now.”

They’ll miss you, won’t they? At this, Lenny began to consider his family, his lost life and
began to sob quietly. They would miss him and Lenny would miss them. Separation was hard.
Quasimodo drew Lenny a little deeper into the water, mid-thigh.  Waves lapped against them
in slow, San Francisco rhythm. A few gulls were squawking in the distance. Can you see the
tunnel?  The light?  We’re passing into the tunnel.  Soon we’ll see the light up ahead.

Lenny squinted to look into the dark ocean fog hovering around them. “Are we going there?”
Lenny asked. Yes, we have to go there. Through the tunnel, toward the light. This world is a
dark place – now we’re going to the light. Lenny nodded, was led on. They were up to their
waists. Even as stoned as they were, it was beginning to be uncomfortable. Quasimodo
had a few more cards to play but wondered what to do for a finale, a spectacular exit.

There’s going to be a review, a judgment. It’s not anybody else’s judgment, Lenny. It’s your
judgment, made by you. That’s what judgment is – what it’s always been. Only that counts.
Your own judgment.  Because we make reality for ourselves. Lenny reached a serious
moment. “I see myself floating – my whole life. I’m ashamed. Things I thought were right –
they were hurtful. I did hurt other people. Everything is clear now – it’s recorded, all of it.

“What we do matters.” Lenny’s speech touched Quasimodo. Be at peace now, Lenny. Don’t
be ashamed. All is forgiven. “I want to do something right. Something good for other people.
I’m sorry – all I ever thought about was myself. I want to start a new life.” You’re going to a
new world now, Lenny . Everything will change there. All is forgiven. Quasimodo led him
further into the cold waves, soaking them to the waist.  It’s only karma, Lenny – your karma.

Quasimodo was on a roll. Your soul is going to meet new people. Can you see the people you
knew, coming toward you? A wave soaked shoulder-high. Lenny looked into the fog, saw
nothing. You don’t have to talk in words.  Communicate with thoughts.  I can read your
thoughts. We’re coming to the boundary now. Shut your eyes. You’re out of your body now.
It’s a lifeless corpse, back by the highway.  The body was never important anyway.

You’re spirit. You see what the wise men saw – what’s always been there.  What they’ve
always known. You’re with true masters now, those with knowledge – to be a realized
master yourself.  Quasimodo paused for effect, to savor the last few fog-soaked minutes.
O, Lenny. It’s time for the return.  We have to go back. It isn’t your time yet, after all.
Quasimodo turned Lenny around to lead him, still docile-drunk, out of the chilly waves.

When they got back to the beach, Quasimodo led Lenny to the car. “Was that cool, or what?”
Quasimodo asked. “Wasn’t it a trip?”

3. Off with the Windings

Quasimodo and Lenny stayed in touch after the conference. Quasimodo began to question
his derivative poetry, his esoteric studies, his itinerant life, its failed direction or purpose.
He moved to Wyoming, three towns in succession – Mountain View, Medicine Bow, Laramie,
then San Diego. Quasimodo continued to stay in touch with Lenny, never leaving Cornfield. 
Quasimodo announced to Lenny that he had been recently baptized.  They began long
exchanges, Lenny’s questions swirling.  He noted Quasimodo’s sobriety, his steady witness.

Lenny visited Quasimodo in San Diego. “My church has an Affirmation of Baptism ceremony
every August,” Quasimodo offered. “We dress in white robes, carry palm fronds and wade
out into the ocean in front of the Del Coronado hotel. People who want to be baptized get
baptized in the ocean. Everybody’s standing there, waving palms. It’s pretty cool. Then we dry
off and have this big brunch at the hotel. Food’s great. You’d be a guest so it’s free.”

“So you’re asking me if I want to wade in the water?” Lenny replied. “Yes, I’d like that.
And you’re asking me if I’d like to be baptized at your church?” Lenny paused for a
moment. “It’s your decision,” Quasimodo replied, “but you’re right, I’m asking that too.”
“Yes, I want to do that.” Lenny responded.  Quasimodo smiled, uncharacteristically wordless.
“We’ve been talking for a couple of years. It’s time,” Lenny affirmed. “Yes, it is.”

So early on a warm morning in the middle of August, a crowd of people gathered on a
beach in San Diego and disrobed to their swimsuits underneath. Tables were set up to
hand out white robes and palm fronds. The pastor led the congregation out into the water
up to their knees and then moved with some assistants further out, to mid-thigh. A crowd
formed a ragged semi-circle, waving their fronds, enjoying the warm California sun.

“Is there anyone here who wishes to be baptized?” The pastor asked. In slow, stately fashion
people stepped through the waves, led by assistants. A six-year old boy stepped forward,
a grandmother stepped forward. Baby-boomers, gen-Xers, pre-teen girls, old hippies,
suburban moms, tattooed men, men with Afros, shaved heads, women with body piercings,
one with missing limbs, made their way forward to assemble and approach the pastor.

“Why do you want to be baptized?” the pastor asked each in turn. The answers were as
varied as the people. Because they’d been thinking it over for years; because they wanted
to show the world they loved Jesus; because they’d gone through a difficult time and the
Lord had brought them through; because they felt the movement of the Spirit; because
they wanted to acknowledge the Truth; because they felt a conflict with the world.

Speaking – they believed in God; they wanted to re-affirm something important that
had been done as an infant, but the time had come to make the statement of an adult,
the profession of a Christian. No two answers were identical, answering voices ranged from
soft to loud, from soprano to bass, some accented, one southern drawl – the surrounding
congregation solemn, joyful, making rhythmic movements of the palms to ocean waves.

I baptize you in the name of the Father, said the pastor, a white-haired man of 70,
dunking the acolyte-disciple, each shutting his or her eyes and holding noses as they were
immersed, falling backward into the ocean, held in the arms of the pastor. I baptize you
in the name of the Son, he announced loudly, dunking each person again. I baptize you in
the name of the Holy Spirit, dunking each person for the third time to bring them up rapidly.

Lenny took his turn as well. Asked why he wanted to be baptized, Lenny replied
into the hand-held, cellophane-covered microphone, “I’ve been thinking about this
for a long time. A friend has been witnessing to me. But I had to think for myself. To
say that I believe in God. To say it in public.” Quasimodo, quietly beaming, held their
palm fronds until Lenny, toweling his face, neck and hair, returned, glistening, joyful.

“I’ve never said much to you about that first night in Reno,” Quasimodo said after a
few minutes. They were standing knee deep in the Pacific, gentle, warm waves
lapping. “And that manic ride out to the ocean. I want to apologize. Now’s the time
for me to speak too. I was wrong – to get you stoned – to play with your head. I
could see you wanted to belong. I was wrong with that out-of-body afterlife stuff.

“I was obsessed – in love with death.  I made you a toy, a plaything for my hobby-horse,
my morbid curiosity.” Quasimodo unburdened his heart. “It was wrong.  I was allured.
Death was the invincible card-player raking in every chip at the end of the night.
I was going to pay bribes, make secret friends with death. I was wrong in ways I don’t
even want to speak of now. I want to say it plainly to you. Now I’ve said so – I’m sorry.”

Lenny’s facial expression changed, became more somber. “You took me out to the Pacific
in the middle of the night. Here, we’re in the bright sun of day. We were lost in 3 am fog,
could hardly see five feet ahead. Here, I can see to the horizon line. You took me to a
beach with no one around. I was a crash-test dummy for afterlife stories about the tunnel
and the light. I was so dead drunk, so smashed, I believed you or wanted to believe you.

“Here, we’re surrounded by sober joyful believers. Tribes, languages, peoples surround
us. You tried to make me see a mountain that didn’t exist except in your imagination.
Here I see the gathered saints before God.  Those waters were cold.  We couldn’t stay
there long. Here, these waters are warm. We have standing here, being – for hours if we
want. When that was over, you had to tell me it wasn’t real – a joke, a farce, a stage-play.

“We don’t have to walk this day back – don’t have to apologize for the trick or explain.
This stays real forever. We won’t leave here talking about a freaky, drunken thrill ride.
We have lives God gave us.  In this world, in the next world, in every world to come.
I don’t know whether some of those out-of-body experiences are true or not. But ten
minutes or two hours on the astral plane is not what I have in mind anyway.”

Quasimodo’s face fell, more than a trifle abashed. “I forgive you,” Lenny said. “You
helped bring me to both places. I owe you an apology too. You’re right – all I wanted in
Reno that night was to belong, to be accepted. God gave me a brain, but I didn’t want to
use it – I was ready to trade it in, if only some older writers would like me. It was your sin
to trick me. It was my sin not to think for myself when God gave me a useful mind.

“It’s been a tribulation. Maybe not the Tribulation, but a tribulation. We’ve both been
through it. It’s mortal life. When Jesus wept, it wasn’t because of the anti-Christ. He
wept because two pretty normal women, ordinary people, lost their brother Lazarus, an
ordinary person, to an ordinary disease. And Lazarus died an ordinary death. It wasn’t
anything exceptional. It was just the normal troubles of life. Clothing, shelter, bills to pay.

“Hangovers to sober up from,” Lenny continued. “The sun beating down on your head. 
Ordinary death, ordinary grief.  Jesus wept for it. Before he ever got to prophecies about the
end. Then he raised Lazarus – dead to alive. The windings came off.” Quasimodo thought
this over. “It’s hard pulling away from death,” he suggested. “When I was tricking you, I
thought you’d never believe me.  It was easy – easy to fool you into thinking we were dead.”

“Well, we’re friends now – we stand before God forever.  This is our out-of-body experience.
This is life and afterlife – never ending, clothed in purified robes.  Forever.  The snows of
Kilimanjaro are icy cold, dead and empty.  Kiss ‘em goodbye, Quasi.  God gives life –
in this world and the next. In the body or out of the body.  For endless ages.  The Bread
of Life.  Better than tricks on the astral plane and the cosmic tunnel masters of whatever.”

Quasimodo thought this over. “So Len, what do you think you’re going to have for brunch?
This hotel does it right,” he assured. The San Diego sun was warming the back of their necks
as it rose higher in the morning sky. A squad of marines was running in disciplined formation
along the beach. Surfers were trailing on waves along the edges of the crowd. A mother and
child picked up shells on the shore. “Go for the abalone salad, buddy – it’s to die for.”
__________________________________

The Angel Eulogia

Word-established, surrounded by every tongue, tribe, language and family.
An angel stood near, white-robed, shimmering, in appearance a young man –
beardless, curled hair in ringlets, beautiful, benign, peaceful, purposeful, calm,
determined, mild. Terrifying also – the locus peaceful where Jesus is hailed Lord –
yet a man is not accustomed to shimmering, translucent spiritual beings.

The angel’s robe white yet reflecting a spectrum of color, shifting subtly.
Others stood around us but none interrupted. I looked to read the angel’s eyes
where even celestial thoughts might be disclosed. Those eyes were shining,
filled with knowledge, warm and blazing, perceiving me too directly for
that to succeed. The angel radiated emotions but none I could articulate.

It was necessary for me to lower my gaze at a being mysterious, intimidating,
a holy curiosity, a sacred puzzle of being, will and mind beyond my experience.
The angel fell down on his face to worship God. He worshiped God this way
three times, falling on his face. The angel subtly moved back to allow me to
approach the Throne more closely. I worshiped God, holy and righteous, as well.

I waited patiently until he arose. He appeared to me about six feet tall, but I
had the distinct impression this was only appearance for my sake – he could have
looked three feet tall if he wanted – a cute little cherub – or appeared to look thirty
feet tall if he chose to, a terrifying spiritual giant. Every movement of his feet,
his hands, the flutter of his eyelids, the movement of his pupils, radiated purpose.

As the angel moved slightly in my direction, I could smell sandalwood incense, frankincense,
and myrrh. But those were not the only sense-enhanced fragrances. Roses, honeysuckle, a
mother’s milk, a baby’s breath, the smell of rain, the smell of the ocean at dusk, the smell of
my grandmother’s matzoh ball soup, the smell of a bowling alley, the smell of train-tracks,
the smell of a small, white-walled country church in Pennsylvania.

Respectfully, may I inquire as to your name?
Eulogia.

Greetings, Eulogia, angel of God! Blessing to you!
Greetings. Blessing to you also.

Eulogia’s voice sounded as a carillon of bells, liturgical hours and chimes.
Music was everywhere. More subdued but still audible was the sound of
pealing bells, small choirs and larger chorale groups, symphonic overtures,
folk guitars, sitars, drums, percussion, instruments of uncertain source.
I had some observations and some questions. In fact, many questions.

Would it be possible to converse?
Yes, Christian, as you wish, Eulogia answered.

You were there, at the time of creation?
Yes, when the angels shouted for joy.

You are named among the Elohim, the sons of God?
Yes, we are so called.

And you, individually, may be referred to as “El?”
Use that title for the One God.

The Elohim are ancient, powerful, known to the Hebrews, before Moses?
Yes. We were created before the beginning.

Even before Abraham? Or Noah, or Adam? May I tender my respect?
A man like myself does not have such a history, such a resume.
Your respect is directed to the One God, Holy and Righteous.

You surround the throne of God to offer an ‘amen’ to our prayers,
to repeat, to magnify, our praise of salvation to Christ our King?

Yes, we fall on our faces before God, to reverence in awe and humility.
We worship God and offer up praises for these untellable years.
We tremble, praise and fear God who created us, each one, severally,
separately. In the council of the holy ones, our God is greatly feared.

We offer our blessings – to render unto God His glory, His wisdom.
Our thanks with no end, honor and power beyond measure, 
To sing of His strength – in praise of the Lord, his unparalleled kingdom.
Our God and your God, who has and will reign, our Treasure forever –

Child of Man, stretch your thoughts to grasp – Eons unto
Eons. 
Eons. Unto
Eons.

Indeed, I am challenged.  I am capable of thinking in pieces of time,
but not time unlimited – Eulogia, my mind will not wrap that far. 
Still, bright angels and holy siblings join together in a blended ‘amen’ to that?
Yes. We worship together, sing together, your praise with ours.

The grace of God is glorious –
Because it is never exhausted, Eulogia peaceably interrupted.

The blessing of God is without pauper’s constraint or miser’s ceiling.
God’s glory is glorious – it flows as a miraculous flashing, living river.
His Word, His wisdom is a fathomless ocean of roaring joy, teeming.
We thank and worship him for creating us, acts volcanic, ex nihilo,
Numquam terminabitur, we vibrate, we worship for sustaining us in vita
perpetua – God, triplex omnipotens, conferring aeterno Dei beautido!

God, glorious in holiness, beyond any poet’s words in this, our ethereal world, 
beyond your world. Beyond the imagination of stern angels or gladly-baffled men.
We honor God, Creator of angels – the Lord Almighty, crushing Satan yet wrestling
Jacob, steeped in unfathomable depths of holiness before all creation. The Holy One-
Mysterious in his Being, benign in His patience, unlimited in His love, compassionate
in tenderness, Fountain of justice, Source of hope, Wellspring of mercy, Author of all life.

Well, thank you, Eulogia! I thought I was going to be required
to draw out your speech with questions!
That is not necessary, Christian. We are fluent in many tongues.

And I won’t be describing any scars on you, will I, Eulogia?
No – that would not be possible.

But the scars I have unite me with many others, don’t you think?
Yes, many.  Including One whose scars have a profound importance.

Indeed. The angels who are going to act in judgment, of which I read
in the Book of Revelation – they are also here, standing before the
Throne, worshiping and praising God?
Yes. We are here together in praise and awe of God.

But when they begin to act in judgment, it’s not going to be quite
as mild, quite as peaceable on earth?
We act in obedient service to God.

There are fearful judgments coming, are there not? I’m not mistaken
about that, am I?
There are.

And you angels execute those judgment, like sheriffs carrying out
Court orders?
Yes. We bring messages, we sound warnings, we execute judgments.

Trumpet warnings, bowls of woes? Judgments of great wrath?
Yes, those judgments are part of God’s holy plan and holy will.

These judgments – should I understand them as taking place presently,
or in the future only – or both?

Worship God. The Word of God sits centered on the Throne –
The Holy Lamb, before whom none stand in opposition or defiance.

I noted the earthquakes – the devastations on land and on sea, on
the fresh waters and the stars.
The natural order has a determined end, planned by the Lord.

Even situated here brought safely to heaven, I will learn of the fear
of God as I observe the judgments of the Lord?
You will see with your own eyes. All creation will.
We angels will see as well. All nations will mourn because of Him.
Our God is a Righteous King and Judge – El Shaddai –
who was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty.

We also have conflict, as you have.
And you are led by the Archangel Michael in this conflict?

Yes, we are. But you need only serve Christ Jesus, the Lamb.
Not more, not less. The Lamb himself will determine your part
in this conflict, as necessary as the trumpets or bowls of wrath.
Be at peace. Your salvation was secured at great price. Your
faith is worth more than much gold or silver. Guard it.

Eulogia, I have another question – do you read poetry? I don’t mean
just know what’s in a poem – I mean, do you read poetry?
Go in peace, Christian. The grace of God be with you.

Thank you, Eulogia. May the grace of God be with you also.
Your name means blessing or praise, does it not?
Yes.

May the blessings of God Almighty and Jesus our Lord, be with you!
For ages of ages, eons unto eons. Did I get that right?
And blessings with you, Christian, also. For eons unto eons.

“Eulogia!” I called as the beautiful, enigmatic angel of great age and
youthful appearance was disappearing, receding by degrees from my sight.
“I look forward to the day when you are not so distant – when dignity and
respect are still characteristics you require, but not the only ones.”
Eulogia was gone. Evanescent, ineffable as a child’s first memory –

wrapped in an old man’s dream – now gone. But I continued to speak anyway,
confident Eulogia heard me. “I look forward to that day when there is no longer
warfare on earth or in the heavens – when all our spears are beaten into plowshares.
When I can throw a baseball to you – and you will catch it and throw it back.”
My amen is with you, a voice replied whose speaker was invisible.
_________________________

A Gracious Directive from Madrid

In 1982 I took a vacation to Madrid with two friends, Burt and Dave, all three of us
members of the same men’s bible study, associated with a larger mixed Christian singles
group, organized out of the Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli. It was a one-week
vacation which I initiated, having been previously in Monaco, which they readily joined.  
Prices were good, even at a nice hotel; this was before the Euro or the European Union.  

Burt (imagine an elf with a mustache) was a technical support specialist for a computer
instrumentation company; Dave, with very direct, sensitive eyes, held a PhD in chemistry,
and worked for an oil company. Ultimately Dave would go to seminary and become an
Episcopal priest. I was working as free-lance writer selling short magazine pieces, mostly
about business, investment or computer topics, since they were the easiest to sell.

Our hotel was near the spacious, dramatic El Retiro Park, various traffic circles and along
Calle de Alcala. We arrived in October – there had been some political disturbance
shortly before – some major intersections were guarded by a few soldiers armed with
submachine guns.  Otherwise, Madrid was peaceful, beautiful, vibrant with life. Mornings
there was cafe con leche, flavored somehow with the vague memory of Generalissimo Franco.

We did what tourists typically do – took bus excursions to cultural and historic sites in
Madrid and surrounding areas.  Being Christians, of course we went to cathedrals, but the
country has an enormous history – poignant and dramatic. At night we found a place to eat
and explored Madrid.  Generally, Burt and Dave let me lead, although once I irritated
them endlessly searching on foot for a particular Tapas bar which had piqued my curiosity.

I was distracted. One morning Dave had to pull me back on the sidewalk out of the way
of an oncoming bus. Dave found the young women of Madrid so attractive that when his
contact lenses irritated him, he was concerned it might be punishment from God for
excessive staring. Burt, a little older, calm and more settled, was already seeing Christy and
probably making plans for their lives, as she was undoubtedly as well.

At about eleven we would return to our hotel.  My friends would retire but I would return
to the streets of Madrid to walk for hours. I was a fairly new Christian and full of pent-up
energy. The residents of Madrid were out in force up until about 11 – they enjoy their
evening paseo – but by midnight or 1 am Madrid was very quiet indeed. I walked past long
rows of residential apartment buildings presenting facades entirely silent, minimally lit.

I had been a Christian about two years. Given the undisciplined nature of my previous life,
I was feeling the restraints, the limitations on my conduct, that being a Christian imposed.
My bursting energy radiated onto the street – and the streets of Madrid, like any city street
anywhere – radiated back to me.  I was living a different kind of life – but the old impulses,
the old energy, the tension of constraint, was strong enough to send me walking for hours.  

So I walked late into the night while others slept. I remember empty blocks where I might
see no one but a man, out at 2 or 3 am, washing down his sidewalk with a hose. One night
I walked past a Catholic, Christian bookstore. It was closed, but the interior had on a few
lights, including one shining on a rotating carousel to display paperback religious books for
the Catholic clientele of Madrid.  In the background typical Catholic statuary was visible.

The cover of one book was visible on the display – it had a display of the face of Jesus,
a very common and familiar depiction of Jesus, somewhat in profile, with long hair very
neatly combed and washed, gentle, masculine expression, beard neatly trimmed, eyes
looking up. An internet search today presents similar images in abundance.  I don’t
remember any title on the cover, but that would have been in unfamiliar Spanish.

I stopped in front of the display window, temporarily fixated, immobile. Jesus was on
one side of the store-window display glass. I was on the other. The barrier between us
was impenetrable. He was there, close, visible, the store had some lighting, but he was
on the other side – some place I could see, but not reach or ever get to. I could walk the
streets for hours, but I was still on the street – not where he was, near but untouchable.

The moment didn’t last long – a minute, perhaps two?  My emotions were vivid –
but there I was – there Jesus was – and what could you do? – I walked on and returned
to our hotel. I was sharing a room with Burt so I undressed quietly and got into my bed
with little disturbance. I began to pray silently the Lord’s prayer. I was half-way through
the prayer when I was interrupted.

“Ask me, Tom,” the Lord said from above. I heard his words clearly in my mind.
“Ask you what, Lord?” I replied almost instantly, spontaneously looking up.  The tone
and inflection of my sub-vocalized voice rose quickly at the end of my responding
question – my word “what” ending in a higher pitch, evidencing immediate genuine
puzzlement (what does He mean?) and then surprise (the Lord is talking to me!)

The Lord didn’t speak or answer further – at least not in that way, the way
He just had. The silence following was unmistakable, as vivid as the words.  The 
seconds marched into a minute as I waited for more, minutes marched to more
minutes still, as I waited, looking upward in the dim of a nightlight.

The silence was immediately enigmatic – a conspicuous silence. This happened in the
days I was in a charismatically-oriented prayer group and a word from the Lord wasn’t
that shocking – it was reported from time to time.  I lay in a hotel bed in Madrid, Spain,
looking upward, waiting for more words, more conversation from the Lord who had just
spoken to me. And I waited. But the Lord didn’t speak or answer more.

Forty years have passed since that short directive from the Lord, delivered in a distant
city after a late, very long walk. He has never added to his words in any way that I could
put quote marks around, as I just did in the paragraph above. I have spent many years
thinking about what he said, and thinking also about the silence which followed, which was
as pregnant with meaning as the words themselves.

For some time I considered that this short dialogue might have been an event created
in my mind, perhaps as I was falling asleep. But my given birthname was ‘Gay’ – it wasn’t
until I was 18 years old that I began to use my middle name, ‘Thomas’ or ‘Tom’ as my
first name. At that time I asked the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles to
reverse the order of the names on my driver’s license. Since these things weren’t so sensitive
then, they simply obliged, and I have been ‘Tom’ ever since. But in an interior monologue,
I never refer to myself or talk to myself using any name – and, awake or asleep, I don’t
self-address as ‘Tom.’

Over time, I began to consider more deeply what the Lord was saying – and what
meaning his subsequent silence conveyed. That night in Madrid there were many
questions rolling around inside me – questions that I never articulated, not even to
myself, that I was not aware that I really had. But the most central question I had,
completely unarticulated, was I think the question the Lord was most directly
answering. Will I be able to live this Christian life?

I think that was my real question. That question wasn’t expressing a doubt about God –
it was expressing a well-grounded, well-founded doubt about myself. My history
wasn’t good. My family history wasn’t good. The street, whether it was the streets of
Madrid, or the streets of any city, exerted a strong, real pull on my being, my psyche.

‘Street life’ is a term of art – it’s more than just sin, more than just self-indulgence or
substance abuse. When I was in the Haight-Ashbury in 1967 there was a record album
cover I noticed in a local store. It was an album by the group called Cat Mother and the
All-Night Newsboys. On the back of the album cover, on liner notes, there was a phrase
written – The Street Giveth, and the Street Taketh Away – referring indirectly to the Book
of Job. Yes, in those days, it did.  You can leave the street, but it’s hard to leave the Street.

Street life – its self-willed, perpetual readiness to go whichever way the wind blows –
to taste whatever drug is in the candyman’s bag that day, to admit of any impulse except
the impulse of self-control – to never let anything interfere with freedom.  Freedom being
understood as the absence of all restraints, the absence even of forethought – just
spontaneous disobedience to anything, for the sake of being spontaneous, self-indulgence for
its own sake, being frivolous, being whimsically self-destructive – being free, always roaming
free – exerted a very powerful influence and pull over me.

So the interior question, Will I be able to live this Christian life? – was no small, no idle
question, expressed or unexpressed. Whatever I knew or didn’t know about Christ,
I knew myself all too well.

Will I be able to live this Christian life? Forty years have passed and by the grace and
kindness of God, I have maintained my Christian faith. I have a better answer to my own
question now.  The Lord’s gracious directive to me makes a great deal of sense.  So does
his silence thereafter. Christ directed me to himself. The issue wasn’t what I could do, how
I could fail, how I most certainly would fail. The focus had to change and then the answer to
my interior question would be yes – because it didn’t, couldn’t depend on me at all. I’m not
the focus. We already know who I am. The question is, who God is.

The Apostle Paul had a question too, on the Damascus Road –
Who are you, Lord? And the Lord answered him directly – I am Jesus.

Ask me, Tom, the Lord said. It was a gracious directive, indeed. The barrier between me
and a stock picture of Jesus, printed on a book-cover and displayed behind the glass window
of a closed bookstore in Madrid was pierced, the way opened. I wasn’t looking at a Savior
who was a painted picture. So I think I can be satisfied my question has been answered now –
Ask you what, Lord? – because the God who loves me has indeed answered.  He has been
answering for forty years.

There was a practical, tangentially-related outcome to my trip to Madrid – it was in
Madrid that I decided I wanted to marry Erma, whom I had been dating for a few months. 
It would be four months more, in Banning Park, outside Wilmington, before I even brought
the subject up for discussion, but it was in Madrid that I decided I wanted to marry her. 
There is a purpose for a Christian singles group, after all.
________________________

To Wipe Away Every Tear

Juen
Hammy, Quasimodo, Lenny and Jen were assembled before the Throne
to serve God in his Temple. Their service on this day was to act as witnesses.
A Korean-American woman named Juen, a victim of homicide, was to appear
before the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ was to lead her to springs of living water,
to wipe away every tear from her eye. Juen was accompanied by her family.

Juen was a spiritual being; the witnesses could see her – not only as the young
woman she was at the time of her death – but they saw her spiritually – a teenager,
a pre-teen, a young girl, an infant in her mother’s arms, a developing child in the
womb. She was the daughter of her mother and father, granddaughter to her
grandmother, sister to her siblings, niece to her aunt & uncle, cousin to her cousins.

Juen wore her hair long, straight, dark. She was dressed in a shimmering white robe.
She wore a golden crown on her head and was quietly beautiful. Around the Throne
and the witnesses, the crystal sea surrounded, its own witness. Her mother and father
were also dressed in white robes as were her siblings and cousins. Her uncle Ji-hoon
escorted Juen on her left. Her grandmother Mae, crowned, robed escorted on her right.

Juen had nicknames, known as Kiyomi, Yeobo, or Gongjunim to her family – those names
were visible on her as well. Beyond her immediate family was a community, many Korean-
Americans, but also others who had known Juen.  Juen’s family moved as a spiritual group, 
as if they were a family on distant vacation, enchanted, but most comfortable staying
together. Angels were in glittering attendance, including Eulogia, Doxa, Sophia, Eucharistia.

Beyond the immediate group, there was the radiating presence of many heavenly witnesses.
Quasimodo looked around, commenting, “There are many here. It is no small event.”
Lenny agreed, “Her cries – their tears – were not a small event.” “Her death was not a
small event,” affirmed Hammy. “We will see an answer now,” Jen observed. “That’s why
we’re here.” As Juen was led closer to the Throne, her face radiated anticipation, serenity.

Springs of living water appeared to flow more quickly, more visibly, circling around
the Throne. The Tree of Life stood as a backdrop to the Throne.  Angels appeared near
the throne singing softly in angelic tongues, in Korean, in English, chants sounding in
variations on the phrase “holy, holy, holy,” accompanied for the senses with incense.
A shepherd’s staff appeared overhead – Juen moved with the stately rhythm of a holy bride.

The Lord Jesus appeared on the Throne, the Son of Man. He was dressed in a robe
reaching down to his feet. There was a golden sash around his chest. His head and
hair were pure unwordly white, as white as snow, as white as wool. The eyes of the
Lord were blazing like fire. His feet were visible beneath the hem of his robe. They
glowed like bronze being heated in a furnace. Juen, he said tenderly –  Come forward.

The Lord’s voice was like the sound of flood waters, of oceans, of great rivers, if
such can be gentle, kind while simultaneously conveying such gathered power. In his
right hand he held seven stars, shining with the white, mysterious-enigmatic heavenly
light. His tongue was a conundrum; it was both a double-edged sword and an instrument
of ceremony, of peace, of mercy, of love. His face was as the noon sun, blinding brilliant.

Juen came forward, accompanied by her grandmother and uncle. Jesus reached out
his right hand to her, the stars shifting effortlessly to surround his shoulders like the
outlines of a cape. Juen reached up and toward the Lord Jesus. As she did so, the
Lord changed in visage and appearance instantaneously. He no longer appeared the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Son of God who ordered his universe with absolute authority.

He rose from the Throne – he was our Jesus, crucified prophet of a coming Kingdom.
Jesus displayed nothing but the undergarments in which he was crucified. His wounds,
on his hands, on his side were conspicuous. Put your finger here, he said to Juen. See my
hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. The angels lowered their eyes. It was
shocking, even for the four witnesses. It is shocking – to see him – the Suffering Servant.

Juen did as Jesus directed. A wave, a tide of shared compassion, mercy, love, grace,
fellowship, flowed from the Lord Jesus, through his wounds, into Juen and into her
hands, her fingertips. Her face changed as a kaleidoscope, mirroring this flowing infusion
of the milk of human kindness, compassion, shared suffering. Juen, the Lord Jesus said,
tell me what happened. As he spoke, she maintained her hands touching his wounds.

“Lord,” Juen answered. “I was seeing this boy, Joein. He was a neighborhood boy. He
was a nice Korean boy. His family was big – and they were so nice. I moved to the
neighborhood to live with my uncle Ji. I had a job in the city and my grandmother lived
with him. Joein seemed to have something special. He had some problems, but there
was something about him. He spoke so well. He was sensitive. We started dating.

“After a few months I realized he had drug problems. It was hard to accept. His family
was so religious, so kind. His father bought old houses and fixed them up to sell. His
mother made a beautiful home. But I started to see, he had problems. I knew I had to
break things off, to end things. So I told him. Then he told me he owed me some money –
money, that was one of his problems – and wanted me to come over, to pay me back.

“I just didn’t think. I didn’t know. I was so young. He was so smart, could be so sweet.
So I believed him. I went to one of the houses his father bought. It was right on the
block. He was the only one living there – his father was going to fix it up to sell. I
asked for the money. He changed the subject. He didn’t want us to break up. He
told me he had all these feelings. He couldn’t take it, if we broke up. We argued.

“The argument went on. It got intense. He was screaming at me. I just wanted to
leave. The he hit me. He hit me so hard it knocked me down. It practically knocked
me out. I was seeing stars – I didn’t know where I was. One minute I was standing up –
the next minute, I was on the floor. I had been looking at his face. It was all contorted
with anger. Next, I was looking at his shoes, his sneakers. The laces weren’t tied.

“Joein had a golf club in his hand. He was threatening to kill me. He was screaming.
He got some electrical cord. It was around the room to do the repairs. He tied
me up, tied my hands. Then he raped me – on the bed in the room. I was hysterical.
I was crying – I couldn’t stop crying. He was doing it to me and saying terrible
things to me. I could hardly hear him anyway. I was uncontrollable. Sobbing.

“When it was over, he let me up. I was crying so hard I don’t even remember
what he said – whether I said anything at all. I left and went home. I only lived
a few houses down. My uncle saw me. My grandmother saw me. When they
calmed me down, I explained what happened. My uncle was furious. He called
the police. The police came. They interviewed me, they took a statement.

“The police came and arrested Joein. They put him in jail. The police told me to move
out of the neighborhood for a while, asked if I had someplace else to go. I really
didn’t have another place to go. My family lived in New Jersey – I had a job. So
I called a friend from work and she let me stay at her apartment. I was sleeping
on the couch. But it wasn’t a good situation. I missed my family. I missed Mae.

“So after about two weeks, I came back home. I went back and forth to work. It
seemed like everything was okay. But I didn’t realize Joein was out on bail. One
morning I was leaving home to go to work. He was sitting on the porch of his father’s
home on the block. He came down, started arguing with me. Started screaming at me.
Wanted me to drop all the charges. I hardly said anything. He didn’t make sense.

“He pulled out a gun. I was terrified. I started to run and ran onto my uncle’s porch.
He followed me there. I was trapped. I turned around. He was shooting me. Shooting
his gun – Bang! Bang! Bang! So fast! In two seconds! I put my hands up. The bullets
hit my hands. He shot me in the head. I fell down on the porch. He ran away. Someone
called for help. An ambulance came – took me away. Joein ran up into his father’s house.

“I was in the hospital. I had been shot in the head. They injected me with epinephrine
to prevent seizures. They did surgery, took out the bullets. I was in the hospital for
about a week, then they let me go home. Joein was in jail and now he was not getting
out. So I went back home and went back to work. But I was allergic to epinephrine. My
liver went into failure. They took me back to the hospital, but I died there of liver failure.

“I never saw my wedding day. I never held my own baby in my arms to nurse her or
change her diaper. I never saw a son crawl or go off to first grade.  I never saw my daughter
graduate. I never held my grandchild in my arms. I never said good-bye to my parents or
my grandmother. I never went back to Korea with my husband to see the old homeland,
where our family came from. What did I do wrong, Lord? What? If I knew, I would be sorry.”

During this entire account tears were flowing from Juen’s eyes. Juen had not stopped
touching Jesus’ wounds. Jesus, the Son of God, held her hand at the point of his wounds.
At some point he switched hands. Using his left hand, he continued to hold her hand
to his wounds. Using his right hand, Jesus reached out, touched her face, her cheek and
dried her eyes. When he touched her face, her tears were mysteriously dry and visible.

The witnesses and the angels sighed, as people must have sighed when they saw the
feeding of the five thousand, when they saw the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear.
Hammy, Quasimodo, Lenny, Jen, even the angel Eulogia, all gave out these deep sighs.
It is breathtaking, wonderous, poignant-inexplicable-awe-inspiring, when the King acts
in love. It moves us at levels of our being with which we are not in daily, mundane contact.

After Jesus’ touch dried her tears, Juen’s face lit up like a summer dawn over the Pacific
ocean shining across blue water to the pine trees of Big Sur. Enormous peace, tranquility, joy,
interplayed in her eyes, in her smile.  This happened in a time-stopping moment – perhaps
longer. During Juen’s account, her grandmother and uncle had also been weeping. Juen
stepped back slightly, released her hand from Jesus. Jesus motioned Mae to step forward.

Mae
A Korean woman, face shining, perhaps 5 feet tall, wearing a hanbok with chima in
shimmering scarlet and white silk brocade, her hair in a formal bunch, touched Juen’s elbow
lightly, stepped forward. Living water from the springs of life swirled around her delicate feet
and ankles as if she floated. Mae, tell me what happened, Jesus said gently, speaking in
Korean, as did she.  The Holy Spirit put the understanding of tongues in observing minds.

Jesus took her hand to ease her shyness. “My granddaughter. My Jagiya. She came to live
with us. I loved her so much. I was so proud – she was so smart. She had a good job. She was
full of love in her heart. We were not rich – we were not poor. We worked. We lived in a
neighborhood where people worked. She met a boy. He seemed so nice. His father worked.
His family was religious. His mother kept a beautiful home. I had great-grandbaby dreams.

“It started meosjin, joh-eun. But then, the troubles.  Juen was crying sometime. She was
angry sometime. Sometimes, confused. “I didn’t pry.” With these words, tears began to run
copiously down Mae’s cheeks.  Jesus continued holding her hand, but did nothing at first
about her tears. His wounds seemed to connect to her tears, although in what manner, none
could say. Mae composed herself and continued to speak as her tears continued to flow. 

“What do I know? I’m an old woman. We didn’t do it this way in Korea. But we were
in a new country – America. Whatever it was, I was sure Juen would do the right thing.
She had so much love in her heart. How could anything bad happen to someone like that?
She told me – there’s something special about him. Something daleun about Joein. When
she came back into our home in tears, hysterical, I nearly died from grief then and there.

“My son Ji called the police. They came, they asked all these questions. Juen answered.
Ji answered. They left and we sat with her that night. She cried the whole evening.
Just cried in her room. We sat nearby and listened to her crying, for hours. But the
next morning we found out – it was all over the neighborhood – Joein was in jail. It
seemed like it was terrible, but we could go on. We’re from Korea – we’re not babies.

“The police told Juen to go somewhere so she did. But she came back. Because her
heart was full of love. My Jagiya was back. We didn’t know that Joein got out of jail.
No one told us. Juen was going to work in the mornings. Then I heard screaming from
the street. I heard him screaming, out on the street. I could hardly hear her. Maybe a few
words. It was all Joein, screaming. Screaming at my Jagiya. Then shots. Bang! Bang! Bang!

“It was all so fast. Juen was on our porch, bleeding. Joein had run off. We called for
help. There were sirens. Screaming sirens – so loud it made you deaf. The ambulance
came. There were police cars, just down the street. The street was sealed off so fast, but
they let the ambulance through. The ambulance with my Jagiya, my baby. We followed
to the hospital. We were there for hours. But the doctors came out, said it looked better.

The witnesses were transfixed – even the angels were transfixed – while this elderly
Korean woman talked to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was holding her hand.  He had
moved himself from his Throne to stand so near to her.  Heaven stood stock still.  “She
has a story too,” Quasimodo whispered, “death plays on many hearts.” “Yes, sin does,”
Lenny added. Mae moved forward, forgetting her audience or being shy, seeing only Jesus.

“So we visited Juen every day. And after a while we got her back. Back at home. Back
at work. And this time we asked – the police told us – Joein was in prison. Real prison.
He was in and not getting out. Not anytime soon. We went on – we soldiered on. But
then Juen got sick. Her color changed. Her clear, beautiful eyes turned a sick yellow shade.
She wasn’t well. Could hardly climb the stairs. She had to go back, back to the hospital.

“Then she died. My Jagiya – she died in the hospital. It would have been good for me
to die then too. A sword pierced my heart – cut it into pieces. And every piece was
wrapped in grief. My Juen – they said her liver failed. They called my son to tell us.
I don’t want to talk anymore.” Then, with her tears now running like a pair of faucets,
Lord Jesus  – raised from the dead, glorious – moved very close to touch Mae’s cheeks.

Mae’s tears were dried. Like her granddaughter’s, they were inexplicably both dry and
yet still visible. Her face beamed, radiated love.  God’s love touched her – healing her,
comforting her, with the power that created galaxies at a word.  Jesus tenderly touched
her cheeks, each one, dried away the tears, tenderly held her other hand. Mae’s face was
as one who has moved to a new state of existence. Visibly, her heart lifted and soared.

Then the four angels, Eulogia, Doxa, Sophia, Eucharistia did something surprising even
to Hammy who was well-read, surprising to Quasimodo with spiritual knowledge, surprising
to Lenny who thought deeply, to Jen who had some angelic gifts herself. The four angels
saluted the Lord with crisp military vigor, standing straight at attention. Each angel cried out
in turn: “Holy!”  Each angel shouted in turn: “Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

That was the scene, Jesus touching Mae, Mae beaming, the angels saluting and crying
Hosanna!, Four witnesses who may have thought they knew something, decided that perhaps
they didn’t – and were glad. When Jesus moves in compassion to address human suffering –
it is holy. The King was acting with a power not equal to that which created planets but with
a power greater than that. Our Redeemer God, the Anointed Messiah, bared his holy arm.

Ji-hoon
Jesus allowed Mae to retreat gracefully in a floating motion across the Living Waters
still swirling at her feet, to stand near to Juen. Ji-Hoon, the Lord said, come forward.
You would like to speak words from your heart. I would hear you.  Ji-Hoon stepped
forward. Ji-hoon was about middle-aged, of average height, strong build. He looked to be
a man who spent his life working without complaint. Juen and Mae stood at his elbows.

“My niece was murdered,” Ji-Hoon began. “It broke my heart. She was a beautiful girl.
When she died, it broke my mother’s heart. My mother was never the same. She cried
for a year and then she died too. How does this happen? Where is there any justice in this?”
Ji-hoon paused, then gathered his strength to speak frankly. “Forgive me for being blunt.
Lord, what were you doing? How could you let it happen? Why didn’t you intervene?”

The questions were indeed blunt. “The two women he is complaining about are standing at
his elbows, looking as raptured as any two human beings could ever be,” Quasimodo
observed.  “They are most definitely alive. They’re not crying tears anymore.” “Questions of
justice are always serious.” Lenny observed. “But Ji-hoon’s are not really questions of
justice,” replied Hammy. “They’re questions of God’s will, His distressing patience with evil.”

“Perhaps if we are patient – ” Jen suggested, making her point without finishing her
thought. Then the Lord spoke. Ji-hoon, were there not two men on the road to Emmaus? 
Did they not have questions like yours? Did not Christ have to suffer before entering his
glory? Ji-hoon, would you deny these women you love their deep communion with me?
Jesus changed appearance – to an anonymous traveler in ordinary, nondescript clothes.

Ji-hoon’s face changed as well. Jesus spoke again. Everything will be fulfilled, all that is
written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms about me. Ji-hoon’s mind was
opened to understand. He turned to see his niece and his mother, radiant. Ji-hoon was
radiant too – something was understood that had been like an immovable obstacle to him.
A flame appeared above his head – the gift of understanding – even for a tragic ‘why?’

Jesus’ appearance changed again. His eyes were blazing fire. He was riding a white horse.
On his head were many crowns. He had a name written on his thigh, but none could read it,
not even in heaven. He was dressed in a robe dipped in blood. His name was blazoned –
The Word of God. Armies surrounded the throne. Jesus’ appearance changed again, to the
plain prophet of Galilee. Juen, family and friends, receded with the angels and robed throng.

Hammy, Quasimodo, Lenny and Jen remained, considering their next movements.
“I think our work in the Temple is done for the day,” Quasimodo suggested.
“We serve in various ways,” Lenny added. “Not the least of which would be to think
about what we have seen.”
“Do we ever leave?” Jen asked. “Aren’t our hearts always in service?”
Hammy nodded in agreement.  “Wherever the High Priest is, there is the Temple.”
“Well, it’s nice work if you can get it,” Quasimodo concluded.
“And you can get it, if you try,” Jen replied. “From the heart.”
__________________________

Amber Waves of Grain

Amber waves of full-headed grain stretched like a drumhead.
Riverboat card games on drowsy, muggy Magnolia afternoons.
Cattle drives across dry gulches, arroyos,  Cotton fields spreading.
Health exams on Ellis Island.  Thumping drums on the bandwagon.

Church steeples arising in every colonial city, every cornfield town.
Vermont leaves, maples, apple trees adorn the shaded lanes.
Higgins boats circling to assemble in the Normandy waves.
B-24s come off assembly lines in the Pacific Northwest.

Somewhere we left, a long, tender funeral for a quiet, dignified queen.
From where Puritans brought their Bibles and a covenant.
On the plains, Apaches – in Philadelphia, in Boston, in Virginia,
men who drank down the Enlightenment to fire a new musket.

America, the porkbelly shouting, the collegiate hoo-rahing, the deal-making,
Harlan coal mines, Southern lumber yards, etched rail lines, the all-aboards,
decisive proclamations and even pillow-talk whispers, are not quite what you think.
Because the dialogue is not always about America.

The poet-hobos are riding their visionary boxcars, but not even they know.
The Pilgrim’s Progress started somewhere else, a deeper place, and will
end somewhere else – the Nantucket sleigh ride finds Moby Dick,
but the whale has an appointment with a prophet.

The speakeasy trumpeter has a few of his favorite things to play in ragtime,
Washed-out burglars sell silence; crooked pols trade in enveloped hush-money.
But there are other trumpeters, untouchable – and setting up Presidents,
or even knocking them down, journalist-hunted, still misses the point.

America, laughing husky brawler, hog-butcher, crashing in your velocity –
who can look at you and not breathlessly love? Whose heart can beat without feeling
your astonished bombs bursting in air?  America, so stars-and-stripes distracting – who
remembers that Egypt, monumented with pyramids, looked beautiful to the Pharoah?

Yes, yes, I love my country too. I took a calm, sober oath to uphold the Constitution;
Every lawyer does. Valley Forge America – you are more than a Rogue’s Gallery –
there are heroes, there are saints, there is grace. Pioneers circled the wagons against
fierce Commanches – I can sing a brave melody for both, for many spirits rising or falling.

But with all that – even after all that, America, there is higher ground somewhere else.
I want you to join me, a heartfelt invitation for a road trip.  I’m going one way or the other –
because Christ has called, exerting his power. There is an eternal life in an eternal City
with an eternal Savior who has eternal love and eternal knowledge.

That love, that knowledge, that life, is even better than homesteader-America.
I love you, grand-canyoned America – majestic, poignant, powerful.  I hope you follow.
But the God who flame-appeared to Moses in the desert appeared to me too and
there is no longer a debate about where I am going.
___________________________

The Gnome of Dutch Kitchen

An old man sat at the Dutch Kitchen in Frackville off Interstate I-81,
Appalachian mountains’ memory, ordering dinner  – coffee, cream and
sugar please, cup of clam chowder, turkey pot pie, glass of ice water.
He had walked up a few blocks looking for a newer place to try,
but the cold air hurt his lungs and he turned back to the familiar.

He was there because the next morning he was scheduled to visit
a man in prison – another old man who would be expecting him.
While the first old man was waiting for his meal, a song, only one,
came over speakers that were invisible, played from a jukebox selector
wall-mounted at each table, gaudy prop-room relic seldom used.

A song flowed overhead, almost narrated, treasured when he was 18.
They told me you missed school today,
so I suggest you just throw them all away
the handbags and the glad rags that your poor old granddad
had to sweat to buy you.

The piano music which accompanied the song was slow, melodic,
sentimental. B-flat chords everywhere. It brought back interior images,
pictures of who and what he was at the age of 18, tall, slender, a searcher
in San Francisco, living by himself in a rented room, radio for company,
beginning his period of turbulent attendance at San Francisco State.

Old men, thinking back to their youth, can become nostalgic.
While the song played the old man looked back with some longing,
some distress, some amazement, at what he was when he was 18.
What he had become, now 73.  Yet the past is a clever, lurking gnome.

The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

The grey-headed man he was visiting had been incarcerated for nearly forty years
at Holmesburg, Graterford, Huntingdon, Mahanoy.  He was serving a life sentence
without possibility of parole.  Next morning, when they met, he would be dressed
in maroon.  They would talk about papers for a court petition, health, diet, his youth,
his enlistment as an army medic, his dealing, but not his terrible ancient crime.

The waitress was a teenage girl, petite, brunette, promptly kind and attentive.
Perhaps, alert, she saw the dreamy-hill look on the old man’s softening face.
Perhaps she didn’t, and was just naturally a kind and attentive young lady.
Perhaps she too will someday, many years hence, sit at a restaurant by herself,
engaged in some serious, purposeful errand, and hear a song which reminds her
of who and what she was so many years ago –  when she was a waitress in coal
country, where our crimes and our memories lay hidden with mountain gnomes.
________________________

Spring in Pennsylvania

Spring, not yet appeared.
Frosted grass, fluttering birds.
Soon, sun will disrobe.

O, coy spring,
take off your winter clothes.
The moon has posted the nuptials.
Bring your naked warmth into
my waiting arms.

You are mild and fragrant.
I will show you that my affection
is blazing, vigorous.

You have a mystery
within you.

Spring in Pennsylvania Part II

We are stalked by Satan,
Riven with doubts,
Besieged with conflicts,
And ambushed by Death.
Grief lurks over the eaves, waiting like a vulture.

But apart from that, things are
Not so bad. I look out at the melting snow.
After I am done with my complaint, my articulated
Plea, my noble confession, my temper tantrum –
I see the snow, melting on Pennsylvania ground.

My ontological knickers are unmolested.
I still exist. I stand in this Quaker’s state.
Here I am Lord.
And you have placed me here. I see the red ladder
leaning against the tree, decorative.

I see the bare trees,
the unraked and ungathered leaves, the wheelbarrow full of clutter.
My life is an old wheelbarrow now,
left out in the snow, a hodge-podge of container tubs and yard waste and
a tire which needs inflating.

But it still exists, surviving the miserable winter
And so do I.
You have placed me, Lord, in a good state.
I praise your holy name. My very being is a promise
you have made, upon which I rely.

Angels, praise him! 

You may have conflict in the 12^th Chapter –
But you will survive and praise Him too, who made us.
And I will sing, on behalf of my state, this Pennsylvania,
its buried anthracite coal, its gathered rivers, its stretching forests, its relentless herds of deer, its churches dotted to and fro,
in praise of a Holy God and Righteous, who loves us.

_________________

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