Itching ears may long to hear,All is well. Everyone relax.But truth is rarely so welcome, or simple;more often we hear All is not well before it is well.More often the doctor diagnoses before healing;the exiles must first be exiledbefore coming home.All shall be well. All manner of thingsshall be well. But first we must learntheContinue reading “The plans I have for you”
Tag Archives: Jeremiah
Running with Horses
Weeping prophet with the puffy eyes:I’ve run with men and am at my end.Tell me how you ran with horses;tell me how you stood to run.Prophet sitting in Zion’s rubble:did you see Messiah weepingin the broken city’s puddles?Did He lift you, man of tears?Broken prophet dragged by crowds,did you see heaven’s horses’ flight?Arms bound byContinue reading “Running with Horses”
The Weeping Prophet
To be a pariah takes only hateand the unshaken conviction that you,above all others, are right.To be an outcast you only need yellwhen a listening earmight salvage a soul.To be Jeremiah, you need more than that:not only conviction, not only the truthbut the burden of weeping,the burden of love,the knowledge that kingdoms are built ofContinue reading “The Weeping Prophet”
The Consolations of Lent
Comfort sits, unexpected, in our waiting with weakness. No giant leaps needed, only the baby steps of the heart slowly learning contrition. Begin with incapacity, then the slow-dawning knowledge that you are nothing but dust. Dust transfigures at His breath. Exhale in the sigh of your Lenten frailty. Then inhale, inspire. O brother in ourContinue reading “The Consolations of Lent”
20 Contemplations #16: Consolation
With weeping they shall come, and with consolation I will lead them back… (Jeremiah 31:9a, NRSV) Noise. The ages seem to verge upon chaos. Yet crescendo is not crisis. What men of old saw has not failed. Four hundred years of silence did not climax now, to then leave us empty. He always spoke gentlyContinue reading “20 Contemplations #16: Consolation”
The Consolations of Writing 