When Dracula wants blood, red wine will not suffice.

-ken stewart

Hangling

dangling

naked of bod'

the scribe swung scribbling

scribbling upon the ground

upon the flesh of the sages

we ritually neglect

while cov'ring the lessons 

on the biology of hate.

In a short while

the lords of anger will plunge

a crucifix into his groin

neutralizing his voice.

Tis the day of castrations

the proclamation of guilt

the guilt of accusations

separating truth from facts.

*Thoughts of Frederick Buechner:

  -And then Moses hid his face, the Book of Exodus says, "for he was afraid to look at God", and well he might have been afraid if he had any inkling of what God was going to say next, because what God said next was as holy and fiery a word as there is in the Old Testament or anywhere else.  That word was GO.

  -For those of us who are in the habit of putting on our best clothes and going to church from time to time, maybe it is a good idea to consider what a church is, of all things. What are all these churches we keep coming to, year in and year out?  A church in the sense of a buiding is walls and a roof erected on the proposition that this ancient story of Moses and his burning bush is somehow true - that however you choose to explain that story, you cannot all that easily it away.  Something extraordinary took place a long time ago on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aquabah, and our presence in churches, and the presence of millions like us, is evidence that the reverberations of the event are felt to this day. It is the reason why churches exist.  It is the reason why we go to them though we often forget it and go for shabbier reasons. The old church walls, the old church roofs, were put up in the faith that God is present anywhere in the world, he is present everywhere, and that if the ground that Moses stood on was holy, then the little patches of ground where churches stand are holy too.  The whole earth is holy because God makes himself known on it, which means that in that sense a church is no holier than any other place.  God is not more in a church than he is anywhere else.  But what makes a church holy in a special way is that we ourselves are more here.