Rich gnat, poor camel

I chuckle–morosely–anytime I hear a religious person state their belief that someone surviving a life-threatening event such as a shooting is “god’s will”, especially when someone else dies. Quite a god you got there. Sounds a bit capricious, sort of like Zeus.

There are shootings all the time. Some bullets hit their mark, others don’t. Some people live, others die. “Time and chance happen to them all” reads Ecclesiastes 9:11.

What’s ironic in the case of the current “subject of discussion” is the widespread belief that a bullet that missed him is regarded as a sign of a god’s favor and somehow makes him an “instrument” of that god’s will.… Read the rest

’Tis grief

’Tis grief.

For story unwound

For truth obstructed

For lies unbound

For faith deconstructed

For country splitting

For Lady spayed

For Liberty flitting

For patriots betrayed

For servants abandoned

For dirt poor dying

For now open-handed

For despots thriving

What I am feeling

’tis grief.… Read the rest

Near misses

Slow, arcing convergence.

What are the chances?

One in a million?

A little more headwind here,

A little less tailwind there.

Totally different outcome.

“Time and chance happen to them all.”

Old words written truer than new ones hastily spoken.

Here we sit in the glow of our screens,

Survivors of a thousand near misses.… Read the rest

1/20/25

ἀντίχριστος:

Limp, slouching wolf of unbridled appetite and self-love

Cloaked in a FAKE! “Made in China” tunic of an ancient itinerant Jewish preacher

And immigrant

Who didn’t give a g-damn about politics,

Head crowned with 47 red-tipped, gilted thorns and a

Halo of Lies.… Read the rest

11/17/24

For E.C.

It was a most excellent  “36th birthday” . . . /s

I shared CHEEZ-IT communion with E.C. and held her hand.

I watched her go down the tube slide “One more time!”—many times.

Thinking her Dad was trailing behind her (a physical improbability), she stuck her head back into the maw of the slide, cupped her hand to her mouth, and called out:

“You comin’ Daddy? You comin’?”

How does an “almost” 2-year-old girl learn to amplify sound with her cupped hand and call out around a blind curve and through a tunnel? From whence comes the courage?… Read the rest

a strong case for “fat, dumb, and happy”

And I went to see the doctor of philosophyWith a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his kneeHe never did marry or see a B-grade movieHe graded my performance, he said he could see through meI spent four years* prostrate to the higher mindGot my paper and I was free

—“Closer to Fine”, Indigo Girls

*personal note: twelve years

17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.

… Read the rest

two short poems to posterity fused one week apart

11/5/24

My ballot is a match.

I strike it and

Burn down a joker’s house of cards.

Fight fire with fire and

Forge a Freedom House.

I vote

’La.

(one week later)

11/12/24

Wait.

What just happened?

I’m confused.

I struck a match

and fought fire with fire

but the joker’s house of cards didn’t Burn.

(Freedom House just a “concept”)

I ask AI Chatbot:

Why didn’t the joker’s house of cards Burn?

AI: It_is_coat_ed_ with_flame_ re_tar_dant_ Lies.

Me: How can it Burn?

AI: Self_im_mo_la_tion.

Me: What do we do?

AI: Let_it_Burn_____Stand_ by_to_ launch_ res_cues.… Read the rest

american proverb

There are three things not worth defending—no, four you should walk away from:

a con man selling cheaper eggs,

a nation trading its birthright for a blow* of traitor,

a “concept” of a country,

a church that fails to recognize an antichrist when it sees one.

*spelling correct. reads as intended.… Read the rest

message to sisters and brothers by different mothers

The social media apps and texts started dinging around 6:30 this morning (we already knew).

Friends reaching out, grieving, trying to process.

I tossed a couple of scripture grenades on Facebook using the flawed “Swing the ‘two-edged sword’ so it means whatever you want it to mean!” methodology of exegesis to get it out of my system and kick a dent in the side of the moment.

Yesterday, and then again today, two Facebook “Friends” from high school (one of whom I honestly don’t remember) showed up, as if on cue, to reveal their theological obsessions with genitalia and scatology by regurgitating debunked lies in an effort to explain why it was necessary for them to vote into office—again—a white man who is a manifestly horrible human being, sexual predator, criminal, and traitor over a biracial woman who is a manifestly decent human being, the wife of one husband, law-abiding, and true to her oath.… Read the rest

A little too much off the back

T. has been cutting my hair for nearly 10 years and knows my head like nobody else in Huntsville. She has every curve, trouble spot, bald spot, and protuberance of my ample 7 ¾ hat-sized head down cold.

Even on occasions when she might be unsure of the “way I like it”, she asks me, but she also checks my “dossier” on her phone just to be sure: Thin, but longer on top (my hair grows up like a beehive, not out), shorter on the sides, with an even shorter taper down to my neck.

Over the years, she has been a consummate pro and the best barber I’ve ever had.… Read the rest

Making old things new again

Attending an estate sale is an excellent means of practicing memento mori, the ancient discipline of contemplating one’s inevitable death. Whether you’re the family left behind, the estate sale company workers who plan and execute them, or the buyers who gravitate from sale to sale picking over the material possessions and detritus of a person’s life, there is no dodging the hard facts: someone is dead, and soon, you will be too.

A fresh wave of awareness of my own inescapable—and ever close—demise washed over me recently when S. and I attended the Joffrion family estate sale. The Reverend Emile Joffrion and his wife Martha had served their beloved church family at the parish of the Church of the Nativity (Episcopal) in Huntsville, Alabama for some 67 years.… Read the rest