"Hold me up once more"

Soul-mates

Hugging with passion

chaste as a virgin's blush

we hold as friends

caring in sharing

lovers intercoursing

guiding sex toward the heart

with a God-loop of hope

tween our centered selves

Ah the full embrace

the straight talk in trust

and full-light of truth

that we come and go

till the tide lifts us ashore

and we sit face to face

nestled in God's grace

*Death  is our greatest freedom.

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -As we get older, the full truth about ourselves involves a long story of mistakes, betrayals, loves, failures and successes.

  -When we look back over our lives there is more and more to regret.  There is much to be thankful for, too, but it is often the failures that stick in our minds.

  -Our longing for truth becomes much more like a longing for integrity and forgiveness than the longing to rearrange the facts of the past in our favor.

  -To be committed to the truth is to be betrothed to it.  And like all intimate relationships, it is subject to betrayal and disappointment, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Someone

on whose breast I might rest

or they on mine and be at home

I'd say yes modestly but sure

and pillow down upon fleshy bones

to roost in their moods secure

I'd pick heart-beats to sing

or hum lullabies to nurse upon

in knowledge that they'd heed

with caring ears to sooth me thereby

I'd thank Jesus like John

posing questions and sup in peace

gathering crumbs that drop near lips

upon that board treasuring my tears

or any manner of me lounging there

content

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

-Truth-tellers are called to disturb boundaries, erase thresholds, and muddy clear divisions, because - to use the language of faith - in Christ there is a new creation.

-Contradictions helps us identify false truths and move into more generous ones.  It becomes a means of transformation.  Truth-tellers are always looking to change the rules of engagement that diminish and enslave us.

-The process of integration requires cunning, the old principle of losing oneself to find oneself.

-We become authentically human by transending ourselves, by being pushed beyond what we think are our limits.

-There is a special happiness in "letting the world happen."

-Wonder eludes us when we insist on having a "fix" on everything.

Sol Invictus

Sol Invictus call it Christmas    allied with dollars    to get rich quicker

Feast of Lights    the Lord of Light    now forgotten    midst material delights

People prancing    dollars dancing    lots of buying    children crying

We seek a savior    in this punning    slow down people    he's a comin'

Christmas 'pon us    benefaction    pause from running    for conception

Sol Invictus    Jesus savior    born within us    if we let him

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The liturgy is one of the instruments of God's loving cunning.  The sacrament of bread and wine unmasks us and feeds us at the same time.

  -Part of the church's task today is to be subversive, but subversion must be driven by gratitude and joy, not resentment and fear.

  -When you are in a world that you experience as a great lie, how do you change the "false truth" into a liberating one?

  -What do you do when you are born into a world where two distinct moral systems are in conflict?

  -One of our tasks is to steal the restored image of God back from those who diminish others.  What rules, for example, should we violate in obedience to the inclusive and subversive table of the eucharist?

softly

below the window-sill

birds land

pecking at scratch

laying bare the soul of the grey stone

exposed beneath the trees

in which they shape their nests

artist's sketch

to rest from work

and laborers rest

between their play

watching both another day

another day

of rest from play

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Truth and fact are different from each other yet intimately connected.

  -...we need the poetic imagination to tell the whole truth.

  -Religion tends to be abused for political, ethnic, or personal advantage, so that "truth" becomes a weapon to do harm in the name of righteousness.

  -Money is a vaccination against one of the most virulent diseases of the soul:boredom.

snowflakes fell timely

in groups

bunches of white-down floating

then whisked upon a wind-draft

to a sound of music they hear

at the dance of the universe

swaying on mysteries

unexplained

such was the afternoon quiet

that birds spoke

while the ground lay cold

coaxing the six-point stars

to warm it

with heat behind clouds

to cover it

with blankets of soft

till the sun calls it upward

to the clouds from which it birthed

*Death is our greatest freedom.

*More than ever, we'll need to constantly keep in mind that memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing.

 -Elizabeth Loftus

*It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

 -Mother Teresa

*The more you protest against life, the more bogged down you get in it.  That's a truism.  The problem is how to leave this earth behind, rise up, and go further.

 -Ilya Kabakov 

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -As neighbors we need to recover the old humanizing disciplines of imagination, worship, and human conversation, which take a certain level of civility.

  -...civility on the part of the powerful has always been a ploy to keep the powerless in their place.

  -...civility requires that I treat my fellow citizens as people of good will.

  -"Laws on sexual harassment and 'hate speech' sprout up when people do not share a code of civility" (Stephen Carter)

snagging a spot of silence

for silence

(the silence of hearing

the sounds about one

the silence within one)

is pleasure most scarce

a waif bears of hands

one grabs for the treasure

clings to the pleasure

till the air fills the space

and smiles up the face

as the treasures spill forth

in the hole in the soul

the spot's a longing

a foundling

like a babe upon a stair

for loving-embracing

for nurturance and grace

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -Truth lies in the interpretation.

  -Words mislead as well as reveal, lie as well as tell the truth.  We can say even true things falsely.

  -...there is very little agreement on the meaning of words we use to convey our deepest sensibilities.

 -We have lost the skill of seeing our life as an art in which we try to discern many different levels of reality at work.

  -...each one of us is a work in progress, and it takes a long time to make a human being.