Needing New Names

As I sat watching the ever engaging "Mulan" with my adorable nieces and nephew this weekend, there was a strange moment of clarity as all three main character sit dejected in the snow after their joyous moment of vanquishing personal demons quickly dissipates into disgrace and Mulan acknowledges that she has brought dishonor to the family, the lucky cricket confesses that he's not lucky at all, and the scrawny family dragon admits that essentially he wasn't even worthy enough to be considered being sent by the 'ancestors' to help Mulan.

Perhaps it was the company I've been keeping of late, Blood on the Tracks, "The Man Watching," and the Heidelberg Catechism, ...but as I watched...I kept thinking about Jacob wrestling with God, of fighting for faith, of how even that faith is a gift to us, of what it is to be found a good and worthy servant of the Lord, of the man in Lamentations 3 who could end by that devastating verse that is so rooted in God's character and not his own circumstances, and what it meant for me that Christ endured opposition from sinful men, so that I could be redeemed. In the end it was about God afterall, not being worthy or lucky because of me, but His love giving me worth. I know all these thoughts seem like a plate of stringy nonsensical leftover pasta but really for one second...it almost was as touching and pertinent as a Pollock.

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small..." Rilke

"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail" Lamentations 3

"...you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Genesis 32

Returning to the Surface

“The one returning to the surface is always different from the one who dives” RILKE

Borders. I sat alone at lunch.

I watched a man darker than me, drinking in a letter he had received in an envelope with red and blue stripes on the edges. There was something so intimate and vulnerable about the way he held it so close to the wet surface of his glassy eyes… that I wanted to look away but I couldn’t.

Just like I couldn’t look away from the cemetery of the naked trees that seemed to stretch their bony fingers towards God at Catoctin this weekend.

Did they rejoice in being part of God’s bigger plan? Were they aware that underneath the shrouds of dead leaves…lies His promise of spring?

“On dit: j’ai rêvé, et non: j’ai menti.
on se réveille, on fait la refonte,
reentrant avec un peu de honte
dans la chamber anéantie.

L’ascenseur nous remet à l’étage,
dit "de la réalité" et s’en va.

Et on montre aux choses sages
sa figure de mardi gras.

Y a-t—il advantage en fait de mensonge?
cela depend du chasseur et de la chasse.
Celui qui revient à la surface
est toujour un autre que celui qui plonge.” RILKE

Nothing left to say except...

if strangers meet

life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)

-e.e. cummings