A Christmas Story

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Men decided

They could improve

 upon The Manger

 A chandelier here

Some red carpet there

 Custom carved pews and podiums...

 Layer upon layer replaced "Line upon line..."

 Though more is just more

They persisted

Reducing posterity and Providence

Into princess and the pea

The essence buried 

Under stacks of superfluous nonsense 

And once again

In tragic irony 

The Sovereign Ruler 

Finds no room at the inn

Deity displaced

Emmanuel eclipsed

 A baby's cry 

Barely heard

On a Bethlehem night...

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"For unto us a child is born,

Unto us a son is given..."

-Isaiah 9:6

Rare bird...

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Seven years ago

A friend saw these wings

On the bark of a seven times seven

Year old tree...

Seven years later

Their re-emerging 

Graced me with the harbinger blessing

Of fleeting things, 

Of encounters with the Elusive,

Prized precisely because 

of their ephemeral nature

Treasured for their rarity...

Whether once in a lifetime

Or once every seven years,

How Precious are the wings we are given,

In whatever form they come...

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"He who holds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy,

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise."

-William Blake

Echo

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Lovely Echoes

Of Long Gone Lovely Seasons

Bitter Sweet Beauty

Gilding amber branches

And prophetic falling leaves

Once-Upon-A-Times

Linger golden with last light

The aurous encore

Before their flight

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"To everything there is a season,

And a time for every matter under heaven."

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Interlude

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The Tristan Chord of our lives
In tremulous tension

Craving,
Reaching,

 Longing for resolution,

Rest

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"For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come."

-Habakkuk 2:3

Bathwater

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Religion is the ultimate counterfeit of God

 Seemingly innocuous

Sometimes attractive

But always a Trap

Selling the tasty treat of Belonging

Which our Souls so crave

Which is meant to be found in God

Not rituals and regulations

It is a sideline

A deadly detour

Derailing us

Distracting us

From

Deity

Well meaning atheists

and waylayed agnostics

were right to reject 

this ersatz nonsense,

In their intelligence they saw it

for what it was

Failing only to compartmentalize

the counterfeit from the Creator

Thus the Baby

Born in the manger

Got thrown out

with the 

Bathwater

Leaving
Otherwise
Wise men
Defrauded

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Counterfeit--made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud.

One Thing

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See me

 Scraping and clawing at your word 

Trying desperately to find the metaphor 

Which makes sense 

of my existence...

 My failings,

 My agonizing misses

 My utter lack of character

 My Self 

It is here

 In the middle of this crazed kerfuffle

And not in some pious white washed prayer time

You meet me

You gently take my chin

You reel my gaze back in to meet Yours

And to look

Instead

For You

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"One thing is needed..."

Luke 42:10, 12

Prisoner's Paradox

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We write

Like Paul

Out of our own imprisonment

Which 

In the end

Is what makes others

Free

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"The spirit of the Lord is upon me...to proclaim freedom to the captives."

-Luke 4:18

Saved

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I am the woman at the well

I am Mary

 I am the one caught red-handed, 

The Pharisee in me poised with stones,

Saved by Grace alone 

By The God Who Sees

 And loves anyway

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"I have loved you with an everlasting love."

-Jeremiah 31:3

Gambler

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We all play our cards

As best we can

All we're made up of,

For better and worse,

Informing each move

We sometimes play cards we desperately wish we hadn't

We despair at the cards

We did not play instead

Our hindsight a merciless taskmaster

Keeping us fettered to the futility of regret

It is not a new hand we need

 or even a new game,

But faith in The Dealer Who still holds an ace up His sleeve 

Faith in the fact,

 that when all is said and done,

 It is His hand which will play out,

His hand, which so tenderly holds us,

which also holds all the cards

And in the end,

Wins.

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"I am the Alpha and the Omega

The beginning and the end,

The first and the last,

I am He."

Revelation 22:13

Third Day

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A pensive stillness

As the crowds

Which had dissipated

Stopped

And

Turned...

... There was movement

They saw it

Unmistakable

The body thought dead

Was Alive

What was that?

Another movement

A Breath

They were sure if it

The dead was being raised,

Back to Life

The Breath Giver

Held her in His Arms

Resuscitating

Reanimating

Determined in His Purpose...

...She 

Would

 Live...

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"I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not evil, to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

-Jeremiah 29:11

Wings 101

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The wisdom of winged things

Their flight

Their smallness

Their delicate strength

Their Simplicity in the Scheme of Things

No wonder His eye is on the sparrow...

...We would do well to follow His lead...

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Matthew 10:29

Jonah's Prayer

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Caught between

Sun

and

Storm

This pause

This middle

This nothing

Throw me overboard

Off this ship

Swallow me

Swim me

Spit me

Out

Onto the Shore

Of forty second

Second Chances

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Hosea 2:15

Second Day

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The crowd had dissipated

With the disciples hopes

Thousands of had-been believers

Up in smoke

The overflowing stadium emptied

The over-rated throngs withdrew

The jig was up

Game Over...

... Thus Began

The eternal three days,

As most Real stories do,

In Ashes

And in the Still Small Voice of the second day,

In that comparative silence,

Destiny had been decided

Despite appearances

For Beauty was brewing

About to bloom and burst forth

Unbeknownst to any

Unwitnessed by any

Save one...

... The Summit of Time

The Sublime Moment

Would not be seen by millions

But by Mary,

A hooker turned fisher of men

(Gotta love God's sense of irony,

Redemption in a nutshell right there)

God would wait

Till the masses had melted away

To whisper His secret to one

No fanfare

No pretense

(Truth needs not these fineries)

But in an atmosphere of

Utter Anticlimax

And the anonymity of the grave,

The stone would roll away....

Just because the crowd is gone,

The lights are turned off,

The door is locked

-tell-tale signs of the second day-

Don't suppose the show is over...

...It may not even have begun.

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"My ways are higher than your ways,

My thoughts are higher than your thoughts...

Though the vision tarries, wait for it, it will surely come...

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not evil, to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

-Isaiah 55:9, Habakkuk 2:3, Jeremiah 29:11

Lovely wings...

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I have flown so far

God's wings have flown farther still

Watching over me...

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"I have loved you with an everlasting love"

-Jeremiah 31:3

Haiku

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This Becoming is

itself in the end, indeed,

will be, Homecoming

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Birth

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Again and Again

We are born,

In one life

We live Many

But A Thread holds together

And runs through

The Whole

As fragmented 

And disconnected

As the Pieces may seem,

In the end

We shall see

They fit together,

They have always fit together

Beautifully

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"God gave us the gift of life,

It is up to us to give ourselves the gift of Living Well."

-Voltaire

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Outpost

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We are

 breadcrumbs

 white blazes

 beacons

 He has placed 

on this planet,

throughout the path,

 plotting out the way 

to The Way 

Himself

 We are Found for the Lost 

Lights in the window 

We are outposts of the Kingdom of Heaven

 for Travelers

 who feel themselves to be

 so very

 far

 from

 Home

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"Behold I tell you, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you and among you"

~Luke 17:21

His eye is on the sparrow...

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