Turning Weapons Into Instruments | Pedro Reyes 'Disarm'

Pray for Us

In my neighborhood

In my back yard
The Sun Shines through the Cold
and snow drapes the rocks
and the Ducks
 forgot to fly south for winter
 but there's still time, don't dither
 to save their souls
 from the cold I'm told.

 

Let it Always Be

Christmas in your heart and home.

     The Douglas Furs on the sidewalks,  snow covers the cars
      the chill is in the air and the politics drags on
      back to bitter diatribe, the who is right or lied on
      the corruption in the Governors' hide, the devil
      wears Louis Vuitton it seems, snide pundits and comedians
     mock apple pie and you, and things you once held true
     like babies are babies even inside you
     The polar freeze bends in the breeze
     my Charlie Brown Christmas Tree
     on the balcony called fire escape
     where I also draped my tinsel till late
     January just to piss off the building Super. This is the day
     that Jack Frost made, let us rejoice
     and be glad. Though Christmas trees dangle
    from sidewalks and sadness pervades the darkened
    skyscape, insist on the memory you made
    that tells you Christmas is every day
    if you hold in your pocket the baby incarnate
   who dared ask you who he is. Whether he comes on a stork
    or a cloud, he's coming, and ready or not
    It's always Christmas in New York.

Good Day, Bad Day, Either Way

The Sun is Still There

Happy New Year, still.

God is….

God is like an Ocean

   Our souls like sprinklers attached with a hose. We have to decide to turn it on- and it irrigates our lives with fruit abundantly--blessings, inspirations and overflowing love. You can also not try to clean it and it gets clogged and you can't get a pure flow. (Create in me a clean heart and cast not your holy spirit from me)  It can get stuck, so you have to make sure it is clean and the line clear. You can refuse to believe its there so never turn it on, but the Ocean has always been there.

    I am the Vine, you are the Branches. Without me you can do nothing.

There has always been the Ocean and it always tended to flow into anything desiring sourcing from it or connected to it because its nature is overwhelmingly generous (if your own child asked for a loaf of bread are you going to give them a snake?). But if it is dammed up or clogged up it cannot reach the soul.

No one owns the Ocean.


     The reason why 'social conservatives' have lost so colossally politically is because they think they have a superior claim to own the Ocean and this is pure hubris.  It ridiculously arrogantly trivializes God and his people to suggest that they all must be Republicans, or all must vote a certain platform or all must back certain political agendas. It demeans, diminishes God and makes him in our image of political ethics. You cannot imagine an Ocean by worshipping a glass of water in a holy font. You cannot reduce God to a political platform.

     God's love is for everybody and the soul is in everybody as images of Him by virtue of their humanity created by and for him in his image.. He promises that whosoever calls on his son's name will be saved. He loves the least, the littlest, the most marginal , the most despised, the most outcasted, the most forgotten as much as he loves the richest, most powerful, most influential. Perhaps more-because he identified as the 'least of these my brethren.'  His point is that the most despised in human terms is the dearest, sweetest creature to Him.

 So there is no room for political ego or pride, or feelings of ethical or moral superiority. It is an offense to God. It is a sadness.  God is like an Ocean. You cannot stop the torrents of his Love when he wants to flow it into someone who turned on the spicket. God blesses whom he wills.

   

Happy MLK Day- Martin Luther King, Jr. On Life

epiphanies

"Shall I Be Mother?"

   This is a colloquial British phrase said when one is reaching for the teapot to serve tea which is usually responded to by things like 'black please' or 'one sugar' or 'just a spot of milk, please.'  I just heard it again while watching the Iron Lady movie where Meryl Streep plays brilliantly Margaret Thatcher. (Netflix-highly recommend it)

   This reminded me of the questions Elizabeth and Mary both must have had. Shall I---be Mother? Its a question that got answered- complete with names…yes, so sure am I here is his name.

  The spiritual inquiry is met with a pretty clear answer in both cases. Its definitive, its strong, its -here is what is going to happen. Are you with us here? the Angel seemed to wait for a response after the initial skepticism- How can that happen? I haven't been with a guy- promise. Then the Angel says, God will get the job done (nothing is impossible with God, remember). He proposes and waits for a respose . This is the reverse-totally unlike the fallen angels or demons who found the daughters of men so beautiful they raped them-the Nephalim. God proposes and gets consent after waiting for the answer. The demons rape. God proposes nicely.

     The same gentlemanly angel goes to Elizabeth who is ancient and beyond menopause one assumes. Like Sarah you can hear the laughter under her breath. (Isaac's name means 'Laughter' it seemed so ridiculous- it was laughable even)- But what did God do when Zechariah doubted it? He just shut him up until he went with the program- listen, you don't open your mouth until you affirm his name is John.

     So here we have God doing what only God can do- because it was beyond human capacity or conniving to concoct and who really would want to? Mary might have liked to get pregnant a little later- Elizabeth a little earlier- but God has  plans that don't fit our schedules sometimes. God operates out of time and inside time-because he is eternal.


  And so next Sunday we have what we associate with babies- Baptism- the Baptism of the Lord. It happens that the Lord was adult baptized at the start of his ministry- age around 30 we think. But it birthed a new kind of ministry-or a new dimension to his ministry. It birthed a new start into the years where his teaching was the richest, and the mission the clearest. God took about 30 years to unfold that plan so it was manifest to the world while it was simmering inside him for much of his life--at least from the time he was 12 in his 'father's house' reading Talmud -Torah in the Temple.

  God's promises are true and unfailing. Nothing is impossible with God. Because he is God.