maranatha now

60F on my porch, balmy innit. Everything brings something to mind; this me at eight or nine years old wandering in our back yard on December 24, short pants, barefooted and no shirt, wondering if time actually slows down on Christmas Eve to torment boys. 

Pitch black and wind in the palms and cedars. Best I can do for myself at this moment is be out on the downstairs front screen porch and enjoy the creation. There’s the green flashing light, is that you, Daisy? It's dark and I can't swim that well, send χάρων, send the boat for me.

My thought might have been for the dancing fingers to trip lightly over the Gospel according to Mark and what to talk about in this morning's final session of our Fall 2014 semester. But the little red flag flashing at the top right of the computer screen was CNN saying more than 80 people, mostly children, killed in a school shooting, and the distraction horror grabbed hold of me. It was the Taliban in Pakistan, where the world and obsession with self is almost as insane as here but where parents are as doting as we are. Why? If everyone could gather together and look up at the night sky, we would see that we’re just specks on a speck of no consequence, and try to look after each other instead of our obsessions with our own points of view.

It makes no difference to anyone else here in the Milky Way with us what we are so fervent about that makes us hate every earthling who is different from us, hate murderously and break each other’s hearts so cruelly.

We are dust, and to dust we shall return: meanwhile, nothing matters but agape’

Maranatha: Come, Lord.

Tom+ in +Time