fragment of a thought: what is the texture of faith?

 The texture of Job’s faith

 was sometimes fine, joyful, breathless…lace of a wedding veil

sometimes soft & grateful, amazed - the blanket wrapping his newborn daughter

sometimes plain and sturdy denim, down to business, every morning rising early to sacrifice on behalf of his family.

sometimes sackcloth, rough burlap, dirt clinging to coarse threads, pain in every fold. texture of the curse. 

at the end, though, shining white, whiter than snow. Resurrection cloth. so perfect he needed a transformed body just to feel it...

the texture of my faith? Gaps like a fishing net: doubt, certainty, doubt, certainty...barely enough cohesion to catch a fish.

but faith’s fabric doesn’t tear. 

Would Shakespeare cringe, listening
as meth-dazed kids discuss Hamlet's great sorrow?
With words so battered and grooved, slang so
casual they puzzle over slow revenge and the complexities
of love and madness. It almost does not seem like speech,
but rather the pre-articulate thought process
of some amoeba-cluster still millenia from evolutionary progress.
No, but if the Bard himself sat here,
methinks he would not protest. Rather, with a
small smile above that stiff collar, he would
start writing a new play....
"The upstart youths do tarry, and we call them knaves, but surely they do see the stars of heaven with their eyes...."

Song of Songs: A Note

"Indeed, A. La CoCaque and S.D. Gotein point out that the woman speaks 53 percent of the time in the Song, while the man speaks 39 percent of the time." - Longman

in progress

God spoke to Moses from a the middle of a burning bush in the boondocks of Midian, I recall hopefully. Maybe he'll speak to me from Joan's space heater out here in rural Virginia - there's sorta a flame at the top

Joan and Cheryl, two ex-hippies sitting on a porch with the fading green hills of October darkening in front of them, concerned with the small prayers and problems of homemakers. God has not called everyone to bleed and suffer and go without sleep and food and flushing toilets; he has allowed some to sit in rocking chairs with dogs and cats and homemade gingerbread warm from the oven. Joan talks constantly, forcefully. She gestures and tosses her short, chic hairstyle for emphasis. She tells informative stories. Around her is the brick-a-brack of 50 years of traveling- bright Jamaican magnets on the fridge, Ethiopian butterfly art on the walls,a mix of Mediterranean and home-style country clutter. In a calm chaos she grinds her Brazilian coffee and warns me not to follow the wisdom of the world. "Put both feet in Truth, in Christ."

kneel down and listen to them pray
feel the warmth through the ceramic
of a mug bought halfway around the world
and wonder
if
a porch and a kitchen
a dog and three cats
two sons
and an introverted husband upstairs reading
is fulfilling the Great Commission.

Just a 3 mile run...

1 a very small rabbit - ears back & fur the color of the perfectly toasted part of a marshmallow.

2. a pair of woodpeckers together on a fallen sycamore log - red-headed & one lattice-backed.

3. two black calves standing about in a creek, nose to nose with their ridiculously long-legged reflections.

4. a happy-to-be-awake border collie patrolling the Rushing's farm.

5. rolling hills speckled with sheep - brown faced, white, some with brown coats. They drifted over the landscape like earthy clouds.

6. fat groundhog waddles at surprising speed, going to ground into a nasty tangle of dead vines (look closer & they're tinged with green).

7. March elms pretending to be sinister & shadowy, not quite concealing their swelling tips.

8. look up at the implausible wingspan of a vulture - the March elms suddenly are sinister.

9. one mostly-tail squirrel skittering from the dog-side to the sheep-side.

10. black horse on new green grass, at the lower end of the field, right before sunrise, looking like the first thing of a first world.

11. boisterous yawn of a rooster echoes after me - you can't outrun the day's dawning.



40 minutes of wednesday on planet earth (& this is not to mention the thronging spikes of daffodils & imperceptible pollen tang in the air, or the american robins staking claim to every thread and dry grass around)--

it's spring.