Vengeance of Healing?

restoration, healing
generosity of gifts
of wholeness
or just the visionof Godd

I s a i a h 3 5 : 4 - 7, M a r k 7 : 2 4 – 3 7

Heart strangely warmed by the Divine Love, persevering.

It's a story really, about people who have been in a bad place. There have been wars and interference from nations outside their own and now the Divine One is going to come in and clean up a bit...

Oh, nope, sorry that's another section, this one is all about healing. The Divine One is coming to bless and heal the sick, injured, blind, deaf, and physically impaired, as well as going to break open the door to the supplies, to the most necessary things in a middle eastern country – water.

No, wait, this section does talk about coming of the divine in “terrible recompense”... Godd will heal...

That's not what we expect is it?

God's gonna come in here and clean up this mess
of oppression and violence...
-- by opening eyes, freeing tongues, and opening up water resources...

Well, let's look at Jesus then. Maybe he's gonna be more straightforward. He goes traipsing all over northern Palestine – off to Tyre this time. And he didn't want anyone to know, but somebody finds him, and comes in to ask for help. And she is NOT a Jew. She is a gentile and still she comes. And she has the nerve to ask Jesus to heal her daughter.

Here Jesus is way out of town, far from a lot of Jewish people and Jesus is asked to heal one of the people who lives there!?

Well, Jesus responds;
Actually, let's feed the kids first, before the ... dogs...
Then the woman who has sought and found Jesus out,
because of her devotion to her daughter,
pursues Jesus some more –
this guy whom she knows has healed people before,
who has come to her town –
having crossed boundaries to get there away from his people...
This mother says,
Yes, and even the puppies under the table eat the crumbs that the children drop.

Here's the rub, isn't it? Jesus the crossover guy, is being invited, cajoled, corrected by love – the love of a mother for her daughter. What will this man inspired by the Divine Love do?

I expect his heart sobers up, from the drunkeness of fatigue, or it opens his eyes that are rummy from sleep-travelling. I expect that some part of the Divine Heart that burns behind our own sleepy, tired, or tear stained eyes, ignites with some insight –
perhaps out of humility, perhaps out of some shame in putting on another the self-disgust, or just self-disappointment we feel – a mother agreeing she and her daughter are dogs to the man who can help them...

Jesus, the traveller beyond boundaries, and across borders,
assents... agrees... receives the request this mother has brought. More than that, this Mother draws him into the Divine Love again.

The healing that we hear about in the Isaiah text is all about the Divine One coming to shake things up!
She is going to bring... ... a heavy hand ... of...
eyesight,
of enough water to grow food,
and loosened tongues to tell of good work, and the marvelous acts of God!

Jesus, may be a bit slow, or un-seeing, but this mother, the woman takes his hand and lifts him up to the Life he is intended to live.

Do you notice what the key is though? It's the crossing, the going over, more, beyond the comfortable, the easy. Both of these texts are about the Divine going beyond, over, and healing.

That is our work. That is what our call is – to go beyond and over to the “other”. You know there is a whole religious tradition about loving the “Other” since really, though the Divine is working and resides within us. She is terribly concerned about the children of creation – the ones that are human and the others, whom St. Francis (among others) called our sisters and brothers – sun, moon, water, fire, birds, wolves, and other creatures.

Martin Buber is the one who especially articulated that our relationship with the Divine is a relationship with an other. What that means is that somebody's got to move for us to get to the Divine, or Godd-ess to get to us. This is helpful, even though we believe and claim Godd is within us, because it illustrates that we cannot control the Divine, nor can we totally understand her...

You can see how this text is really about Jesus crossing over again to the “other” who is the Lover, the One. We as followers of Jesus, then need to pursue the Divine in the other we meet – that is how we will see Godd. That is how we will serve the Divine, like Jesus who was collected back to himself in Godd's vision.

...So we are practicing peace-making, working out justice, answering calls to help make the way this world is more like Godd's vision.

We make way for the other and ourselves on this way, just like this mother and her son.

poem - Fall II

Grandpa save me tight

she said afterwards...
she mostly listened

“Grandpa save me tight!”
she said afterwards

Mommy had said
Stay back from the edge

She mostly listened
Her sister did

While grandpa and mommy
Pulled and strained and lifted

One three year old up
The other sat

Holding sunglasses for one half hour
Straight

But hands move when seats don’t
And sunglasses didn’t bend that way

Thank Godd only sunglasses broke
When one child listened

poem - flood III

not so lucky
or rebuilt
are those in Louisiana
coursing horsefloods overrunningbanks, homes, schools

Yes, we’ve been here before.
The watery stampede has
Challenged the banks of the slough
The bridge support is rebuilt.
The earth below is fortified.

Not so lucky, or rebuilt
Are those in Louisiana
Coursing horsefloods overrunning
Banks, homes and schools.

I thought perhaps the floods here
Might be love. Not so
There, the destruction of
Love’s homeward trails.

The powerless (the poor) still have
To tame the horses, clean out
The stalls and stalling of
Sad powers too late
Certainly afar from places
Of hurt, from home trials,
Except perhaps re-election
(Or personal reflection).

How can whole cities clean up, clean out,
from tiny and masculine rampages
of stormy horsefloods and the cavalry of
the driving storm?

How can whole countries of people
Be left to fend off nature’s cavalry? To
Clip nature’s ability to reproduce this havoc,
A sterilization process for a herd
Of some yet unseen gathering
Equine teamed torrent…

What nation would do that
to its own people?
Or is that offering too much,
That water flooding both sides meet.


band names: horsefloods

band names and a good quote

...band names
religion, Godd, children
unchurch, recipes, mandolin,
reading and travelstapled and taped

band names:
ballustrade - nice architectural word
light e - can't remember why I thought this was good
burnside B - humorous CD line
temptown - not quite temptations
spite - "mean enough to succeed" good album name
barn igloo - cool idea
the breakers - probably been used
GBB - Grass beneath the bannister

Aldus Huxley said:

The technique of mysticism, properly practiced,

may result in the direct intuition of,

and union with, an ultimate spiritual reality that is

perceived as simultaneously beyond the self and in some ways within it.

poem - That Baby

...blue sky
disfigured by smog clouds, brown
reflecting city lights, wells of light,
gathered around lamposts strewn in some dot pattern

The baby of the blue sky
Disfigured by smog clouds
Brown reflecting city lights
Wells of light gathered around
Lampposts strewn in some
Dot pattern below revealing curb and
Crosswalk. Those clouds
Flee in windy chase towards
Their brightening morning address.
Capped in brighter tones of
Rising, revealing sun. Rumors
Only that steeple and flag
Receive sun’s glow first.
Risen sun, the Other, showed
First not on our caps, but in
Our need – that baby again.

published April 2008 in Poets Espresso

poem - That Baby

...blue sky
disfigured by smog clouds, brown
reflecting city lights, wells of light,
gathered around lamposts strewnin some dot pattern

The baby of the blue sky
Disfigured by smog clouds
Brown reflecting city lights
Wells of light gathered around
Lampposts strewn in some
Dot pattern below revealing curb and
Crosswalk. Those clouds
Flee in windy chase towards
Their brightening morning address.
Capped in brighter tones of
Rising, revealing sun. Rumors
Only that steeple and flag
Receive sun’s glow first.
Risen sun, the Other, showed
First not on our caps, but in
Our need – that baby again.

poem - I remember you father…

white light of
the stove
standing outside the
spitfire while Ichanged muddy soccer clothes

After George Eliot "I remember you mother"

Dribbling honey on your dry 6:15 am wheaties
Lit by the white light of the stove.
Standing outside the spitfire,
while I changed muddy soccer clothes within.
Listening to the AM radio station play old shows,
when we drove to the post office in the dark early night.
Picking blackberries beyond the fence,
Nibbling some and feeding others to the hanging coffee tin.
Celebrating a birthday at Snoqualmie Falls Lodge,
Where the syrup is dropped from taller than you.

Standing next to me singing Beautiful Savior,
In the church your father founded in Kaizer.
Driving the car through all the back streets,
I do that too.


band names: stereo hearing, boardsun, cleanout