Suffer The Little Children
I think they have suffered enough.
Or is that why at the beginning of my first class, the campus monitor comes rushing into my room to tell me that two of my former students NEED me in the office. Why? Because their nine-week-old baby has died.
What the hell can I do with that but cry with them, see the joy that was finally in their eyes drain away, and pray that they had nothing to do with it? No accidents, no nothing. Just SIDS. And is that a comfort? No really.
So I will be rising for a funeral tomorrow morning for a child I held in my arms less than a month ago. A happy little bugger who squeeked like a cute, tiny raptor from Jurassic Park.
A co-worker said that this might be a blessing in disguise; as if God habitually dresses as the devil. Halloween came early this year, and his favorite costume is out: Death.
Why
______________________________
agnostos theos
(after Mark Jarman)
The conclusion I dread is not, ‘so there is no God,’ but,
‘so this is what God is like. Deceive yourself no longer.’
~ C.S. Lewis
in which of these details does God inhere?
within these tiny stiff hands? the blue face
which turned in the night, filling his nostrils
with the pillow screaming from mother’s hands?
the post-partum bottle found empty
beside the crib? the coroner’s exam,
which absolves his parent six weeks later?
where in these details is the hand and heart
of the silent but loving God? buried
beneath his many omni attributes;
beside their son; His own? or is it here:
John 3:16 read above the body
of the once 8-weeks-old; evil words of
sacrificed son and higher purposes.
~ MEH
Mlk
Devil, Religion, Singing . . .
“She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn’t have the brains to avoid evil without it.
For people like herself, for people of gumption, it was a social occasion providing the opportunity to sing.”
~ “The Displaced Person,” Flannery O’ Connor
Are You Listening???!!!!!
Yes. You probably are, and that’s probably a large part of the problem.
It’s late and I’m sitting here writing a song; not for me, but close enough.
It will be for me soon enough, I have no doubt.
For now I will post a few of the fragments that came by sitting, plugging in a couple of mics and a guitar, and praying for a friend:
Can you hear me?
You said you’d fill my cup,
but I’m so thristy
One drop would be enough
. . .Am I breaking up . . .
What do you want from me?
What do you need me to say?
I’ve been on my knees for what seems
Like forty, or maybe forty-one days. . .
(The bridge is the only thing solidified:)
Don’t dare to tell me how Daniel waited
or all the shit you put Job through;
This is the here and now, I’m not a Hebrew
and oh my God, I swear, this is between me and You!
Can you hear me?
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More from Mark Jarman’s Unholy Sonnets
Someone is always praying as the plane
Breaks up, and smoke and cold and darkness blow
Into the cabin. Praying as it happens,
Praying before it happens that it won’t.
Someone was praying that it never happen
Before the first window on Kristallnacht
Broke like a wine glass wrapped in bridal linen.
Before it was imagined, someone was praying
That it be unimaginable. And then,
The bolts flew off and people fell like bombs
Out of their names, out of the living sky.
Surely, someone was praying. And the prayer
Struck the blank face of the earth, the ocean’s face,
The rockhard, rippled face of facelessness.
Playing With The Site Again.
You can now see what I can see from my Dashboard:
The most recent posts! Only took an hour. ..
^ My seal of approval. . .