blossom, flourish, wither and perish
St. Denio
Goodness, for a holy man I do sometimes wander from the divine Subject. Or Object, don’t I, is the divinity Nominative or Accusative? May D be l.c. or capitalized, an issue in English that German solves: nouns are caps or is that rule fading? Is deity common or Proper, abstract as in Love, collective as in Elohim, animate, or compound as in heavenly host? Or theologically is God a verb: Love may be an active verb or an abstract noun, which is it? What means “God is Love” unless God is predicate nominative and a verb -- is I AM the same as I BE --
Sitting down with coffee first thing every morning I generally think for a moment about whether to open Pages to start typing and decide halfway through what it’s about, or to open Google News and see if Flt-370 has been found, or to open G-Mail, or to open Lectionary A and think on Bible readings for the upcoming Sunday.
Probably most often, unless something hits as I swing round and place flat feet on the floor, I come downstairs boggleminded and open the news. What a horrid way to open a new day. Anymore, Flt-370 isn’t even a news item, news is unspeakable sectarian atrocities in Iraq, Tony Blair washing his hands and justifying that we got rid of a dictator ayfsm, Saddam never murdered this many over there, over there, the Yanks are coming, the drums drum drumming in what an apt HuffPost OpEd over the weekend termed a barbaric nation of barbarians that we never bothered to understand in the first place; and oh, Dubya ... ... Dubya? Knock knock, who’s there? Dubya? -- anybody home? Barry assuring us no boots, we’ll see it when we believe it. VA system being stripped naked as shady, shadowy and corrupt as they come, although personally I was always pleased with my VA experience at the local clinic. Cantor saying there’s division while Priebus insists no there’s no split. Gotcha.
What to write about then? At this state and age I feel pretty much like a spectator, a member of the audience no longer on stage. Standing, not sitting. Weeping, not clapping. Hobbling toward the exit.
Monday lunch: bream, panfried outside on my grill’s gas burner. If it’s too hot to work outside in the yard, I may struggle to finish my Easter resurrection project, something about the essence of our closing hymn yesterday, verse three,
To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
Then wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
Then wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.
sung for the first and many times, lustily in a WW2 army chapel, roof of palm and palmetto held up by palm tree trunks, open sides screened against mosquitos but not noseeums, breeze drifting through off the Gulf yards away behind an enormous Celtic Cross, my summertime best friend Jack Dennis playing the reed organ for the congregation of young people -- when I was seventeen ... it was a very good year ---
The Cross: abstract or concrete? Concrete poured into a wooden frame, the four holes created with a #3 pork and beans can, ridges still there. Concrete or Abstract?
Save me a place, Jack.
Save me a place, Jack.
W no plus