Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
Never mind the endless cycling
of what we call news
ensorcelling tales of political theater,
social distress, and un-
natural disasters
things happening
elsewhere.
We are in the salutary midst
of the fall.
What is close
is real.
Think of children
now schooled
How can a virus travel
and not love?
Or are we not now all infected
with shame
at our human nakedness?
We don’t want to know our own evil
so profess good, pretending
to smile without hurting.
So painful.
The Tiananmen butterfly warns us:
cyclones we’ve stirred with our grasping
While the world shudders.
A reading from today’s Global Meeting for Worship
1st Century – 1 John 2:27 (New New Testament version)
“But for you the anointing that you received from the Christ abides in you, and you are not in need of anyone to teach you; but since his anointing teaches you about everything, and since it is a real anointing, and no lie, then, as it has taught you, maintain your union with him.”
This story was originally published on Walhydra’s Porch in February of 2007. For those readers who don’t know her, Walhydra is my grouchy old crone storytelling persona. When faced with some petty or significant annoyance, Walhydra gives voice to my complaints.
The only rule for these stories is that she has to come to some even-older-but-wiser resolution by the end—either on her own or through the intervention of The Goddess. For more Walhydra, see here.
This past year, I’ve been using C.S. Lewis’ anthology of selections from the writings of George MacDonald as my morning devotion. Mom gave me a copy of this book years ago, and this is probably the third time I’ve read through it.
Coyotes
by Mark Jarman
Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there’s the new moon, there’s the Milky Way,
There’s the rattler with a wren’s egg in its mouth,
And there’s the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?
And yet we’re crying over the stars again,
Jim and I sat with Mom for the last couple hours of her life last night.
Before sunrise on Wednesday, I had awoken from a powerful dream, in which the vibrant, out-going Mom whom I haven’t seen in several years was holding everyone’s attention at a party with her three brother and other family and friends.
Later that morning, when I visited her at St. Catherine Labouré Manor, I found her in her recliner in the sunny hallway
…
It’s been a bittersweet year for us here in Jacksonville.
In April, my mother could still walk with a walker, feed herself and converse with relative normality. Due to Alzheimer’s, she has declined in rapid stages since then.
She no longer remembers
…
For my mother, recovered from hospital yet confused and afraid as Alzheimer’s steals her memory.
For my partner, since she is his mother, too.
For my brother and sister and their families.
For my father, whose last, eldest sibling has died.
For my friend whose mother has just
…Nothing convicts me in my heart more than the contemplation of Jesus as a historical person.
All my decades of wrestling with spiritual paths and theologies are self-indulgence, compared with the blessèdness and horror of that man’s life. Every day’s news is full of the brutality and painful neediness of humankind. That Jesus walked compassionately into the midst of it all is reason enough to follow him—and to be dismayed whenever I fall short of doing so.
…