Friends feed the inherent desire in every single one of us to be seen and heard and remembered. And that makes us feel immovable and immortal as if the universe itself came alive to witness a miracle. And nothing we say or do will ever be forgotten. (This hints at the foreshadowing of a personal relationship with the ultimate Being—immovable and immortal—who is closer to us than a brother and who created us to know Him and to be known by Him.) But what if this convivial concept of friendship escapes us?

Godspeed

if you’ve dropped your keys,

hat or hash pipe

into the “rabbit hole”

of delusive fantasy,

whirling and writhing down

an eternal abyss of insanity,

further and further away

from the drain of objective reality.

Our reassurance

is His willingness

to be caught in the cross hairs,

a red dot

at the intersection

of an atoning fare

and a predetermined time-slot.

Does Scripture—

the Rosetta Stone

of what sinners’ call “fire and brimstone”—

employ fear tactics of emotional control?

Give me Narnia or 

Give me the Wild Lands of the North. 

Give me Aslan or 

Give me the White Witch

and her black dwarfs.

God: “Truth is self-love that sets you free and enables you to see your sin as an opportunity to talk with Me about why you sin so we can have conversations like this one and walk further down life’s path together. This is My heart. This is discipleship.”

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

A curl within a curl within a curl ad infinitum.   A turquoise fractal with salty skin and a wicked tongue.   The golden ratio— multiplying itself in eternal swirls— a pillow for Poseidon.   I stare out at the horizon, blue walls of hydrogen and oxygen molecules holding hands   as I listen with…

Shadows provide shade and shelter, mine to my son   just till he’s ready to unzip middle-school pajamas and soar into the sun.   Night holds future bodies still, revealing what’s inside,   peeling the last curl of humility that laughs from a ripe insecurity, called pride,   spilling secrets tightly coiled in the nucleus…

Open your eyes.

See the bioluminescence,

ascending rhythmically

up,

up

from the abyss,

or God’s firework show

descending hazily

down,

down

in dancing waves of light,

the Holy Grail of sky watching,

the aurora borealis,

the northern lights.