Resurrection Clothes

In the Armor Woods        for Murphy, Betty and Mike Walking here today brings so much back, such joy once had, so sad. Old Murphy, kind sweet man, and Betty Murphy’s feisty fun child-doting wife, who loved our little grandson Gus, loved his hair long, even at age three and four. That’s just Gus! she said.  Now, our preteen Gus has short hair, bleached! Still sweet thank God but not the little dumpling they once knew. Murphy, Betty gone, the woods so fallen too. This windfall must be walked around, this nature going back to nature, as it always wants to do.    So young it seems now (in my early 60s then!) no thought that everything would change this way. But that’s just how life goes and goes and goes.  It is all right. I must believe it so. Choose happy or nostalgic sad. My choice. Let’s smile and love this day, this walk, this time of life. Let’s live! This walk, this day— they’re so much more than just all right!   And as I rest on

Jesus Wept Yes, but before that, and after, You groaned, so deeply toubled, even angry, one translator says and as the word in Greek implies: embrimaomai (almost unpronounceable, the word itself has so much weight). You felt that, Lord, and You exuded that, so much that those who saw, and felt, could tell how much you loved Your brother Lazarus. Anger, then. A strong reaction to a death, but don’t we all, who love the dead, the dying know that anger at the loss? We even blame You, Lord, or Your Father, or Someone who “should have been there,” could have stopped this! Why oh why did this have to be? And then the weeping, Then again the anger. Why? We must let go, though, let You handle this. The grain of wheat must die to bear more life. You have ordained it so. The rising from the dead or nearly dead, is rare, we know. And therefore anger here, and tears. It is all right, we know: embrimaomai. For Bernie and Pollyanna, 6/1/19