I should be glad of another death.

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;

By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.


- From Geronition, by T. S. Eliot


A few weeks ago, I accompanied my mother and sister-in-law to the Womens Bible Study at our Church. Though I had not done the homework, my mother has the entire Bible recorded on her iPhone, and I listened to the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke on our 45-minute drive to church.

I have read them many times before. I have heard sermons preached on the tired passages, and a hundred movies and Christmas plays. I used to play with the plastic nativity set my parents bought specifically to be used by the children. Growing up with an advent birthday, these stories were nothing new.

Traditionally we celebrate the birth of Christ in December. I have heard arguments for a Christmas in July. For whatever reason, the women's bible study decided to discuss it here, in the fall. In the hot, North Carolina September, when all my friends are off at their respective universities, I am to turn my mind eastward to the most dysfunctional family. To two fathers with a mother who never knew either, and the smelly audience of strangers.

"Do you think the baby, nursing at His mothers breast knew that He was God?" We were asked. It's a part of the story I am unaccustomed to considering. But in a room full of mothers, the question was pertinent.

"Did Jesus, as a baby, continue crying when His mother shushed Him?" My own mother, to whom disobedience is undoubtable a sin, needed to know. Despite experiencing my nephews Christmas birth two years ago, such questions had never carried particular importance to me.

If that kind of disobedience is (as my mother so adamantly holds) a sin, should we not, as parents, think very carefuly about the commands we give to our young ones? Is not giving constant orders to children who barely have self-awareness, who could barely know if they were the God of the universe, spurring them into sin?

I suppose as someone who requires so much forgiveness myself, I've been over concerned about condemning others. I've long regarded Saint Peter's keys to the kingdom ("I will give you mthe keys of the kingdom of heaven, and nwhatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.") as an exciting opportunity to leave a great deal unbound on earth, and, therefore, in Heaven.

To me though, I have always viewed Jesus, as man and child, as Love incarnate. Something important happened when Christ was baptized, to be sure, (He was given the Holy Spirit, whatever that means) but I must believe that the Father spoke to Him before this.

Many women brought up the Anne Rice novel that I have not read, in which the Boychild slowly realized His divinity. But I cannot see it that way. To me it is always God. God Himself, lowly and vulnerable. In need to warm blankets, and a mothers milk, and the muscle memory to form words, and friendship. But of course, as my pastors wife reminded us, in this discussion, we are always on the fringe of heresy.

In the end, though, the conversation dropped back to the horror of the entire situation. Most women in the room knew the terror of labor, but it was more than that. Following His birth, they fled to Egypt. Saint Mary seemingly did not tell Saint Luke much about that trip, only that it happened. What went on in those years in a foreign land? And Saint Joseph labored for the rest of his life for a wife who, according to Catholic theology, he was to take care of without ever taking. Sure, there were angels to instruct them, from time to time, but in the end, if that child had not been Love, could they have sacrificed themselves so completely for Him?

The tune of the conversation turned my mind towards T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi . Which you can hear him read here.


And here were my reflections, shamelessly stole from Mr. Eliot, as usual.


Sunday Sonnet XXV

A hard and bitter coming they all had of it:
The evidence of birth, and yet the death.
The baby made adults seem counterfeit
As deity and mortal shared each breath.
And Joseph’s wife, whom he could never touch
Could not refrain from calling herself blessed
Through Egypt’s desert days, and swords, and such
As even thinking, mothers are distressed.
The word within a word Who could not speak
Let angels help the man who was not Dad.
Let angels speak the bitter for the meek
And mild Who took the peace they never had.

And yet we read their tales with jealous eyes
Though blessing breeds her trails in disguise.

There be dirt

When I was meandering my way through Orson Scott Card's 'Ender' series, I was warned beforehand that 'Xenocide' was really no good, compared to the others. I should read it, I heard, to continue the story, but should not expect the qualities I had loved in the first two books.

But stumbling my way through the book, little bits and pieces and concepts would stick in my head. One thing, amidst my self-disgust and trouble with forgiveness was the trials of the godspoken. When the concept of the godspoken (which turns out to be a human-created strain of OCD, neutralizing the point that could have been made) was first introduced, the reader was told that "the first message of the Gods was the unspeakable filthiness of the one they spoke to."

The sentence paints a harsher picture than I would have painted with the concept, but the concept itself is the same. We are unwell, we are filthy. We are aware of it because we understand that there is such a thing as well, as clean. Those who hear the voices of the gods would know.

Reading over my high school year book earlier this week, people flattered me with assertions of my free spirit, or of the beauty I see in everything. But if I am free, it is only because I first realized I was a slave. If I see beauty in anything, it is only because I have dug my way through the atrocity that is on the surface.

I still have problems forgiveness. There is a paradox in that we recognize horror only in contrast beauty, and our beauty only through coming to terms with our filth. In the same book Card described "the decency to be appalled by my own brutality." We are not beasts, we are self aware enough to be ashamed. Our shame is not a result of punishment. Our shame is a result of goodness.

All this in mind, last week my sonnet, number XXIV, was on the terrible frustration of both the desire to be pure, and the inability.



Sunday Sonnet XXIV

Because my hands aren’t clean I cannot touch
The broken body of True Purity.
Because my hands aren’t clean I want this much
The body broken for scum such as me.
Because a beauty beats amidst this bone
I will not end this battle with defeat.
Because a beauty beats but isn’t shown
The twisted glory makes darkness complete.
And I am wrought with half hope, half despair
United both with Christ and prostitute.
Yet even shadows light in open air
And we are fully saved, but destitute.

Yet once God claimed that He’d make all things new,
So promptly Christ was born, and prompt withdrew.

Sunday Sonnets Part II

I'm still not so good at posting these every week, as implied by my last post, months ago. However, I had another installment of several. Really, I'd like to post them every week, as poetry binges can be exhausting to read, but we do what needs must.


Sunday Sonnet XIV

This is but the beginning of the nights
Which were never lonely till he came and
Went again. Yet with no end in sight,
It's worth the nights to fin'ly understand
That wer were never meant to be alone.
Like crim'nals fin'ly comprehending crime
Who'd not know mercy without horror done -
So I endure the drought for harvest time.
Even in our mortal ways of being
Whole, there is an echo of the feast to
Come, when marriage takes a truer meaning
And love is always fresher and more new.

So I'll love the night in all her terror
Because she shows the truth behind her error.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XV

Theres some forgotten Latin mys’try
Which I might humbly enter in to share
Yet reaching out t’interact with his’try
I find my grasping hands but clasp the air.
“It’s not about you.” They will interject
“We come to worship wholly through but one.”
Yet then behind the scenes I might suspect
My presence but a candle in the sun.
Yet burn we all a fire just the same.
And candles find their use when earth is turned
Away from light, like lovers in their shame.
And we receive the lack of faith we earned.

So come together as you break your bread
But know we do the same through song instead.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XVI

WE are the broken, sickly world who beg
A doctor of our fellow invalids.
We see them hobble and request a leg,
Like parents leaning wholly on their kids.
For we fulfill love by its own destruction,
Creating Superman out of the ants
Who were not made for lonely production
But to hobble, where e’er the Master grants.
We might find moments wholeness exhaled
Like the air, then fall again through time and
Atmosphere, and all else we ever hailed
Before we turn, like seashells into sand.

So let me be a patient now, at last
And lead not forever towards the past.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XVII

We’re building up our castles in the sand
With crushed up bones of shells from years before
Whose very fall’s the reason why they stand.
The final tide’s the glory of the shore.
Our beauty is no less for breaking down
With every wave that laps against our walls.
That foam which wounds us makes for us a crown
When bodies finally bend to ocean’s calls.
For there is something moving in the blue
That smooths us with a soft brutality
And something half forgotten but full true
Will make our very death a victory.

And so we’ll fall again, though we’re afraid
For we, like sand, unravel as we’re made.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XVIII

“Lord, heal me of the pain,” we say with hearts
Still shattered, still ripping the binding from
Our wounds. Addicted to the poison darts
Until the poison’s all we have become.
For if we lost an arm it’d n’er grow back
(Though some might argue that perhaps it would)
And we’d define ourselves as handicap
(Though some might argue that perhaps it could).
And should it? Maybe some not distant day
When scars are a flash of decoration –
If they are there at all (I cannot say).
Though One let fingers trace His laceration.

So take not from me pain, but sorrows jive.
Which names the pain as proof that I survive.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XIX

And when you hear the voice of God speaking
Turn not your tearing tender heart to stone.
For though you’ve all you need you’re still seeking
Some small solution that might build those bones.
Be not as faithless as your fathers were
Demanding answers when they couldn’t see
The way. For He who makes a stone thirts cure
Fulfils his spoken word eventually.
Call not his voice imagination’s sway
And claim a doubt of God a doubt of self.
For magic does exist in wide array –
Physics, faith, hope and love – it’s called instead.

You’ll hear the ordination in your head
Call not the Word insanity instead.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XX

So He who bade us not sew mixed-seed fields
Still bade young Esther leave her native breed
And Ruth converted despite pagan yield,
So even Joseph bore a tainted seed.
So those who kick against a weighted yolk
May yet redeem a less-than righteous spouse.
For it was he who’d never marry spoke
The inconsistency, he with no house
To warm his feet, or soothe his sun-sore eyes.
And yet, young Esther might argue his case.
Necessity can still torment the wise
And even back bruised cattle keep some grace.

So Love is like the Irish with this rule
Who wills it break before He’s made a fool.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XXI

There is a land that’s void of shopping malls
Where women balance water on their heads
Because the wild is the way, not call,
Their diamonds build the suburbs here, instead.
There is a place where straw and mud keep out
The rain, they say, though hunger still seeps through,
Yet there’s a wholesomeness in dirt. Without
A safety net, it’s God they look unto.
There is a land I’d like to meet, and stay
With for some time. My roots could grow along
The farms it holds in less time-centered days.
We travel far to find where we belong.

Yet lest I call fantasy ordination
I’ll wait until I’m asked to join the nation.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XXII

I hope to see you ne’r again, for my
Sake and for yours. For old heart-strong grow weak
With strain and snap when played so out awrey.
Because I do not hope. I seek
To satisfy with longing, what longing
Cannot forget. This world is not our home,
So our hearts yet search for some belonging.
It’s chasing wind. Through vanity they roam.
And so I hope you’re warm, and well, and fed,
And find fulfillment in your journey.
I dare to hope you won’t have time ahead
To let your heart linger on memory.

For I could hurt afresh for all your woes
But past is near enough the way it goes.

----------------

Sunday Sonnet XXIII

Because I do not hope to turn again
To memories I’ve over worn in time.
Because I do not hope for foe or friend,
I linger on the or’gin of the rhyme.
Now fantasies have surpassed memory
And you no longer must needs to exist.
If you were ever more than words to me
Then is it man or myth that yet persists?
I do not hope for reconciliation
Because I do not hope, lest I despair.
And through I once grasped dreams of recreation
They over ran the truth behind my err’r.

But I’ve heard echos of a hope someday
When all my false idols will start decay.