Daydream #852

Luke 12:13-21

Sometimes

I think I could

write

a best selling

self-help book.

It would be an

old-fashioned 

budget spreadsheet

with the categories

already filled in:

Love

Faith

Friends

Health

Generosity

Justice

Forgiveness

Change

Hope

And written 

to the

right

of each item is:

How much can I budget of this today?

Working title: Life Budget

But that can change 

if you come up with 

a big enough advance

and an endorsement

from Joel Osteen.

Loaves and Fishes

 David Whyte

This is not

the age of information.

This is not

the age of information.

Forget the news,

and the radio,

and the blurred screen.

This is the time

of loaves 

and fishes.

People are hungry

and one good word is bread

for a thousand.

Idiot Psalm 12

Scott Cairns

A psalm of Isaak, amid uncommon darkness

O Being both far distant and most near,
             O Lover embracing all unlovable, O Tender
             Tether binding us together, and binding, yea
             and tenderly, Your Person to ourselves,

Being both beyond our ken, and kindred, One
             whose dire energies invest such clay as ours
             with patent animation, O Secret One secreting
             life anew into our every tissue moribund,
             afresh unto our stale and stalling craft,

grant in this obscurity a little light.

help me.....

Mark 10:13-15

in trouble

in peace

in pain

in health

in the noise

in silence

in doubt

in faith

Father, 

help me

your child. 

Jerusalem

Yehuda Amichai (1959)

On a roof in the Old City

Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:

The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

The towel of a man who is my enemy,

To wipe off the sweat of his brow

In the sky of the Old City

A kite.

At the other end of the string,

A child

I can’t see

because of the wall.

We have put up many flags

They have put up many flags

To make us think that they’re happy

To make them think that we’re happy.

An Arab Shepherd

Yehuda Amichai (1980)

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion

And on the opposite mountain I am searching.

For my little boy

An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father

Both in their temporary failure…

Afterwards we found them among the bushes

And our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying

Searching for a goat or a son

Has always been the beginning

of a new religion in these mountains.

Love Covers a Multitude of Sins

Soren Kierkegaard

John 8:1-11 / 1 Peter 4:8

The scribes and Pharisees

soon discovered her guilt,

which was indeed easy

since her sin was open.

They also discovered

a new sin,

one of which 

they made themselves guilty,

when they artfully laid snares 

for the Lord.

But Jesus bowed down

and wrote with His finger

upon the ground.

Why,

did He bow down?

I wonder.

Why, 

did he write  

with His finger

upon the ground?

I wonder.

Did He sit there

like a judge

who listens attentively

to the story of the accusers

and then

jots down the principal points

so he may not forget them,

and may judge strictly.

Was the woman's guilt 

the only thing 

noted by the Lord?

Or

did He write it down

in order to erase it

and forget it?

There stood the sinner,

surrounded perhaps by

those more guilty,

who loudly accused her.

But Love bowed down

and did not hear 

the accusation,

which passed over His head

into the air.

He wrote with His finger

in order to blot out

what He himself knew.

For sin discovers 

a multitude of sins

but love covers

the multitude of sins.

For by one word

from the Master

the Pharisees and the scribes

were struck dumb.

There was no longer 

an accuser.

No one who condemned her.

But Jesus said to her,

"Neither do I condemn you,

go and sin no more."

For the punishment of sins

breeds new sins

but love covers

a multitude of sins.