Going Global by Lorraine Triggs

There are days in our house where the expression “going global” has nothing to with plans for international travel. I recently had one of those days when my frustration over our adult son’s struggles went from mild irritation at another pointless phone conversation to full-blown aggravation at him and everything else in my life that I couldn’t control.

I went global and became omniscient in just under 10 minutes, and in my newly acquired all-knowing-ness declared: “God’s answer to our prayers about our son is no, and we are going to have to live with this the rest of our lives.” Full stop.

My husband interrupted my global trip. “We don’t know that. We only know what happened today.”

My thoughts spilled over from our son to everything else in my life that I couldn’t control. The list was quite long because, after all, most everything in life is something I don’t control. But God does.

Going global goes everywhere and leaves my heart nowhere. And that is where I meet God and pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Daily bread. The Lord’s answer when the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, on the verge of going global: “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:3)

Daily bread. The Lord’s provision to Elijah during a drought in Israel came first from ravens and then from a widow who was on the verge of going global: “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”  (1 Kings 17:12.) The widow, however, chose to believe the prophet and ate daily bread from an endless supply of flour and oil.

Daily bread. In John 6, Jesus took a day’s lunch of five barley loaves and two fish and fed 5000 men, with leftovers for another meal. Instead of serving the leftovers the next day, Jesus offered the crowd that followed him true bread of heaven; he offered them himself, the Bread of Life.

“Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6:34)

My mother had dementia, and when she was “sundowning,” her confusion and agitation increased. After a hard day when we both went global, I parked her on the sofa in the family room and said, “Sit. We both need to calm down.” I then played Fernando Oretga’s song “Give Me Jesus.”

“Give me Jesus
Give me Jesus
You can have all this world
But give me Jesus”

Ortega sang.

My mom’s confusion and my agitation ceased.

Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us this bread always.
Give me Jesus.

Me and You and Machine Makes Two by Wil Triggs

Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave Bowman: What's the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”

A conversation from 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968)

 A few days ahead of Buddha’s birthday this year, a Buddhist monastery in South Korea received a new set of monks. The group of them processed down a street in Seoul and took vows to loyally follow Buddha. One stood out—the one that was a robot.

Several news outlets picked up the story.

Fox News reported, “The robot, a $13,500 Unitree G1 model standing just over four feet tall, was given the name ‘Gabi.’ Dressed in traditional brown robes, plain shoes and gloves designed to mimic human hands, the machine stood before a panel of Buddhist monks to commit itself to the faith.”

The Smithsonian magazine said, “The robot pledged to respect life, act with peace toward other robots and objects, listen to humans, refrain from acting or speaking in a deceptive manner and save energy.

“Gabi participated in a modified yeonbi purification ritual. While a human monk normally receives a small incense burn on the arm, instead Gabi received a lotus lantern festival sticker and a prayer bead necklace.”

Why would this order do such a thing? The New York Times explains:

“The robot, at just over four feet tall, is the latest effort by the country’s monks to show the modern relevance of Buddhism. Introduced to South Korea around the 4th century, the religion, along with Christianity, has seen a decline in popularity and practice over the past two decades. Many young people view it as old fashioned.”

I have a friend who converted to Buddhism. Other friends retain their Christian faith but aspire to a kind of Zen view of daily life. Because I know and follow stories of how Buddhists in some parts of the world persecute Christians, the allure of this other religion has never been attractive to me (not to mention whole Jesus thing). This latest attempt to capture younger minds and hearts through a robot monk is my latest addition to the list of reasons I am not a Buddhist.

But robots leading people is not something isolated to faiths other than mine.

In February 2020, Jason Thacker wrote on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) website, “the German Protestant Church released Bless-U2, a robot designed to dispense blessings in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. This robot dispensed over 10,000 blessings to those who interacted with the system.”

Thacker goes on to say, “Even without the use of robots or other AI technologies, churches often feel the need to impress potential churchgoers with flashiness and perceived cultural relevance rather than share the clear message of the gospel with grace and love. When many people attend church, they often want to be entertained and leave feeling good about themselves instead of letting God’s Word transform their lives in a community setting.”

This Sunday is our annual meeting. This year we are voting on the usual things we vote on every year. We are also voting on two pastors. They are people, not machines. We will meet and vote and pray and sing. Jesus is not a machine. He came to earth as a man on a rescue mission. No machine, no other man could do what he did. If we vote to call Brandon and Jim, they will cost us more than $13,500 apiece. We could employ many more robots to do the work of these two men. I mean, if these guys get hurt, they might bleed and need time for convalescence rather than Tony or Tim simply putting in a new circuit board or a software upgrade or a recharge.

We are walking on the road, and it seems as if Jesus is far off. Is he even aware of what is going on? But then there he is, working around and within us, the opening of the Scriptures, the rest we find in them. There begins a kind of burning in our hearts. A robot does not have a heart, so his heart cannot burn within like ours sometimes do; the truth of this life and the next starts to come alive in us.

We are a peculiar people, flawed and forgiven. There is the well they threw Joseph in. There is the shipwreck Paul survived. There is the island where John was exiled. Things go awry. Or sometimes we get it wrong. No matter what, God gets things right. Every time. He is what people want the machine to be. And with his help, we live through stuff, human hard stuff.

We are not machines and the Good Shepherd does not want us to become machines. I don’t want AI-generated sermons or platitudes from ChatGPT if I’m looking for pastoral encouragement when facing an unexpected diagnosis or turn of events.

From the moments of our first breaths to the very last ones, something sacred is going on—person to person, people to people. The breath of life is a miracle of creation. We are walking miracles—each and every one of us. I’m all in for our being makers and creators like God. But we can’t breathe life into the things we make. God does that all the time.

We ask, “What just happened. What is happening?”

We work so hard to make intelligence artificial. But the Maker gave us minds. He made us each with a mind, an organ already built in.  Not only that—he has one of his own. He speaks, tells stories, forgives, washes, revives, enables—life delivers more of him and less of us, but us, not machines. Our hearts are burning as together we set sail enroute to a place that is not here but is very much in the here and now. Real, yes more real, to know the flesh and blood One and ones, holy wholly human in and through us but not us—him. Together. Awfully awe-full. He makes something new with us. Church.

We make machines; God makes a people. He incarnates and transforms; we dissect, recycle or invent.  We program and he sets free. Only in the coming together of his incarnation and presence with our inventiveness can anything we make, make sense or beauty or purpose. Only in him. Only for him.

Thank you, God, for working through people, even us, even you, reader friend, even me.

Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
    Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the Lord, he is God!
    It is he who made us, and we are his;
    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise!
    Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever,
    and his faithfulness to all generations.

Complications of the Day by Lorraine Triggs

Happy Mother’s Day, I think. This can be a complicated day for some who breathe a sigh of relief once the restaurants have emptied and the social posts have died down.

Life is full of complicated relationships.

Take my relationship with a new soup recipe. I read it, re-read it and looked at it again, and finally exclaimed to the recipe, “Why didn’t you just tell me to make a roux?” A roux is simply equal parts fat (butter in my case) and flour that is then cooked until it reaches the shade you want. The recipe had taken something simple and turned it into a complicated process (I suspect it was to avoid using the word “roux.”)

There’s something in us that wants to make things more complicated than they are. We’ve been doing it since the beginning. God said, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” (Gensis 2:16, 17) With a nudge from the Ancient of Lies, Eve turned a clear command from God into a complicated relationship that infested the ground with thorns and human hearts with sin.

God said you shall have no other gods before me; his people built a golden calf. Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost; the Pharisees thought they were neither lost nor in need of salvation. The Apostle Paul wrote that we have been saved by grace, and it is not our own doing, but we can’t resist making it our doing.

In this knot of complications that we’ve made by what we excuse or add to our faith that Jesus extends his invitation—come, learn, find rest. Give up our burdens and complications and follow him.

In his book The Heart of Pilgrimage, Leland Ryken’s final devotional is an excerpt from Knowing God by J.I. Packer, which ends with this: “God humble us; God instruct us; God make us his own true children.” In commenting on the excerpt, Ryken writes: “The first key to assimilating the passage is to link it to the book’s title. Packer does not do this explicitly, but we ourselves can do it; knowing God means living in an awareness that God is our father, and that we are his children. It is as simple as that.” (pp.171-172)

In kindergarten Bible school, Teacher Kevin plays his guitar as the children sweetly sing Micah 6:8:

He has shown thee O man
What is good and what the Lord requires of thee
But to do justly and to love mercy
And to walk humbly with thy God.

I comment to Kevin that if the only thing the children remember for this year is Micah 6:8, they have everything they need to follow Jesus: do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God.  

It is as simple as that but demands our souls, our lives, our all.

Foretaste by Wil Triggs

It is no surprise to people who know me that I like to eat. I have gone through periods of bread making and am currently enjoying home baked sourdough bread from my friend Ruth Sadiq who has made a business out of taking weekly orders for her bread. Pickup day is Thursday, and a highlight of every week we order is driving to her house, seeing all the loaves and knowing that one has our name on it.

So, the cover feature of the latest issue of The Atlantic caught my eye “I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America.” The author collected 555 recommendations and traveled 13,000 miles over months to find the answer and write the story.

How did the author pull it off? A cover story about bread? 

“Naturally, I told my superiors, this investigation would bring me into contact with the entire arc of human history,” explained writer Caity Weaver. That raises the stakes. Weaver also explains how the word “bread” can represent much more than just literal bread. This is true in several languages. Bread can be a connotational synonym for all of life.

The author describes approaching celebrities and the like in case they wanted to participate. Most were not interested, or at least their publicists weren’t interested in asking their clients if they were interested in participating.

Top vote-getters in the chain restaurants included Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden and Red Lobster. That’s interesting because as I read I remember the breads these restaurants served even though it’s been a few years since I have been to any of them. Weaver also went to small gourmet restaurants in different parts of the country. One bread snob—my description, not hers—said that restaurant chains should not be considered because he never ate at them. And there was a strong opinion among some business-minded restauranteurs that good free bread served before any paid food even hit the plate was a bad idea. Don’t fill up on free bread before you’ve even taken a bite of the food you pay for.

But the free-bread-thing predated restaurants. The article talks about that. It started at home with guests before we had restaurants.

The explanation makes me remember that in Russia—one of the countries where the word “bread” is a metaphor for way more than just bread—there’s a tradition that you are to greet every visitor to your home with bread and salt. To be hospitable to a visitor, you need to offer them bread. The same was true not so very long ago even here.

Free bread is more elemental than we realize. It’s a longing we don’t know we have. It’s so basic.

We taught the kindergartners about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness a few weeks ago. As I prepared the lesson, I realized it was almost certain that none of us really knew what hunger even is. Forty days without food—can you even imagine it? The children couldn't, and I was in the same boat. Yet we all recall how hungry we feel just skipping a single meal. Forty whole days! Ugh! Yeah, that’s really bad, hard, sick, whatever.

You’re hungry; turn these stones to bread.

He had to want it really badly, and Jesus didn’t fall for it.

But we fall for it all the time. Our whole lives are forty days in the wilderness without food. The Tempter shows earthly stones and tries to convince us that, though they look like stones, little boulders of earth and mineral, they’re actually breads for the taking. And we’re so hungry for the bread God has created us to eat that we settle for the snake’s imposters.

There is a bread that comes down from heaven. We cannot bake it ourselves. It is free. When we eat this bread, we are free.

As I read about the author roaming the country, talking with different patrons and restaurant owners, I’m struck by the passion different people have about great bread and great cost. The wilderness-wandering bread of promise we cannot have is the one we long for. The glorious truth of it is that the best free bread in all the world is not available in stores. We want to pay for something we can only get for free. The price is more than we could ever afford, and we don’t have the right currency anyway. There is no hope in ourselves or the substitutes of the snake.

Jesus took the bread, broke it and said “This is my body, which is for you…”

The first time his followers ate Jesus' broken bread, they didn't realize what was happening—this was the bread they had every Passover meal they’d ever eaten. But life, death, sword and spirit opened their eyes, and these seeing eyes stayed open until they closed in death. And then opened after death to a new feast, to the vision of the lamb and a new table.

It’s afternoon. Lorraine is making the tea, first warming the blue pot, a gift from Jim and Miriam.

I take the bread knife, cut two slices of Ruth’s bread for us, and put them in the toaster.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine;

Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.

I get out Marr’s grape jelly and a jar of blueberry preserves we bought at the farm while staying at friends' lake house. The toaster pops, and I take the slices out.

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

It’s spring that feels like winter. Snows that are flowers of ornamental fruit trees start to fall, tentative at first and then at a steadier rate with unseasonably cold wind.

Born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

Lorraine pours tea into two mugs, each with a different bird; with the falling whiteness outside, they’re slightly out-of-season. We’ve had them since Myrna gave them to us at our wedding.

As we sit down, I say, “Tomorrow is Communion.”

“That’s right,” she says.

The dog mills under the table looking for crumbs.

This is our story, our new song of praise every day.

That's the Book for Me by Lorraine Triggs

The hospital nurse gave my dad’s Bible to my mom, a ribbon marking the passage he had been reading when his heart gave out. “This must have been special to him,” she said. We were eager to see what Dad had read in the last moments of his life. I don’t remember the passage, but I remember feeling letdown when I read it. It didn’t seem special enough. It took several years for me to appreciate the ordinariness of it. My dad was reading his Bible as he did every day; that day—the day he would see Jesus—the passage just happened to be an obscure passage from an Old Testament history book.

My mom kept his well-worn Bible as a stone of remembrance of her husband’s love of God and the Word.

More recently, friends’ two-year-old daughter, Lydia, picked up her mom’s New Testament and Psalms Bible and announced, “This is the Bible. This is God’s Word. It’s kinda long.” I am still laughing about it.

Long though it may be, Lydia already senses that God’s Word is different from her other picture books about Jesus or Dalmatians.

Then there’s Blake Musick. I don’t know Blake, but he was featured in a recent article in the New York Times by Ruth Graham. Its title caught my attention: “$400 Bibles? Luxurious Scripture Is on the Rise.”  Blake collects Bibles and has 70 high-end Bibles in his collections.

In the article, Graham quotes Blake, “‘This is actually God’s word,’ “Mr. Musick, 38, said. “‘If it’s something that important, then why not have a really nice copy of it?’”

The article pointed out that there is “a growing number of Americans buying high-end — and high-priced — copies of the Bible. The growing category of premium Bibles includes a wide array of translations assembled with high-quality materials, like genuine leather covers, and in many cases extras like elaborate color illustrations.” Other Bible publishers, Graham points out, are “sourcing materials like calfskin leather from Italy and paper milled in France.”

Even publishers close to our hearts have “handcrafted” or “heirloom” editions of the Bible. I own one but keep it far out of reach of coffee. I do, in a way, agree with Blake—why not have a really nice copy of it.

On the other end of things, Wil tells me stories of Soviet-era Christians who copied Scripture by hand or risked their lives to print gospel portions in secret makeshift printing presses so they could share these Bible fragments with unbelievers. This book really is something else altogether.

I think my dad had, and little Lydia has, a richer understanding of God’s Word and its beauty, which far exceeds calfskin leather and paper milled in France.

Psalm 19 describes God’s law and rules as beautiful, perfect, pure, true and righteous; to be desired more than fine gold, more than calfskin leather, more than elaborate illustrations. In Psalm 119, it would be more than fair to say the psalmist is consumed by God’s words—in fact, he says it himself in verse 20: “My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.” Why? Because when the psalmist’s soul clings to the dust, he knows that God’s rules and commands bring life itself.

God’s law is not some ancient artifact encased in glass in a museum or part of a theological or high-end collection; it is the Word that “was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1)

Yes, sweet Lydia, the Bible is God’s Word, and it is kinda long, but stay with it because its wonderful, beautiful words of life, bring you and us to the Word in whom there is life and light.

A Different Kind of Happy by Wil Triggs

Both the Men’s and Women’s Bible Studies in the Book of Daniel finish soon. I am still struck by faithful service Daniel gave: “And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business…” (see chapter 8, verse 27a)

Daniel’s faithfulness has a complement in the New Testament in Paul’s actions in Acts: go to new town, proclaim the gospel in the temple, be arrested or beaten, move on to the next town, repeat.

As the apostles moved closer and closer toward their own martyrdoms, the gospel of God spread. They did not or would not give up their message or their calling.

Shift forward 2,000 years.

A friend I know in publishing lives in Lebanon. She shared via a communications app when the bombs were falling. She asked a group of us to pray. I’m often wondering/praying for my friends in Ukraine, too, wherever they are, their witness in the midst of unbridled madness and unpredictable interruptions in utilities, little or no heat in winter, all the while growing accustomed to the sound of drone warfare. And I think of my friends in Nigeria. Even though these people follow Jesus in places where it doesn’t make any earthly sense to do so, they persevere, and as I write this, they are safe from harm

But I’ve been thinking about these friends as I get news that the World Happiness Report for 2026 is out. At first, I thought the results were scrambled with winter Olympic events because of the dominance of Scandinavian and northern European countries. Finland, Iceland and Denmark take the gold, silver and bronze respectively. But then Costa Rica popped up at number four and war-torn Israel came in at number eight. So, it was a mix-up!

What’s going on?

The United States is number 23! The United Kingdom ranks a little lower at 29. Something is not right. USA should be ranking higher and if you don’t agree, I’m going to lose my temper and have a debate with you about it. We are happiest, or at least happier than number 23, aren’t we?

Not only that, though, these countries rank higher year after year. This is a trend. Their analysis this year says that social media is a contributing factor in the decline of happiness. That might explain our low ranking, but what other kind of stuff are they asking people? What do they mean by happiness?

An FAQ for that claim, “Many people think of happiness as a positive emotional state, associated with smiling, laughing, and feeling good (e.g., I feel happy today). However, people often use happiness to describe their assessments and judgements too (e.g., I’m happy with my life overall). We care about both of these aspects.”

In Forbes: “Happiness is taken seriously in Finland, where well-being is a core focus of policy and everyday life,” says Dr. Frank Martela said in a statement. That’s nice but I’ve always thought the pursuit of happiness was kind of baked into our national character. Are we just not pursuing hard enough?

With more online research, suddenly I’m reading about people finding their own bliss. What does that even mean?

Joking aside, I would guess that we would land higher than we did.

And how does happiness relate to us as the people of God?

I remember when I first started reading the Bible, my KJV or Living Bible used “happy” where my Bible now has “blessed.” How happy are the people of the beatitudes, happy are the people whose God is the Lord, happy...

There is a kind of happiness that we know. It’s not defined or measured by borders of nations or the sense that our country is going to care for us no matter what. Consider the happiness of repentant prayer, even if the repentance is in the belly of a whale or a country of exile. “I repent” is still a prayer God loves to hear. Stop. Turn around. Follow Jesus.

What about the happiness of being able to tell another person (one who doesn’t know the best story ever) the story of Jesus coming, loving, dying, rising, ascending; the joy of sin being washed away. Think of Paul on Mars Hill or Philip on the road with the Ethiopian Eunuch.

True happiness comes with God and with others—not in finding our own bliss, not in finding ourselves, but in giving ourselves away. Happy-are-the-people-whose-God-is-the-Lord happy. This different happiness is good news bubbling like refreshing water on a hot day. It has no geographic boundaries. It doesn’t fit into demographic categories of well-being, but it does fit in jars of clay.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 2 Corinthians 4:6-7

That's the Book for Me by Lorraine Triggs

The hospital nurse gave my dad’s Bible to my mom, a ribbon marking the passage he had been reading when his heart gave out. “This must have been special to him,” she said. We were eager to see what Dad had read in the last moments of his life. I don’t remember the passage, but I remember feeling letdown when I read it. It didn’t seem special enough. It took several years for me to appreciate the ordinariness of it. My dad was reading his Bible as he did every day; that day—the day he would see Jesus—the passage just happened to be an obscure passage from an Old Testament history book.

My mom kept his well-worn Bible as a stone of remembrance of her husband’s love of God and the Word.

More recently, friends’ two-year-old daughter, Lydia, picked up her mom’s New Testament and Psalms Bible and announced, “This is the Bible. This is God’s Word. It’s kinda long.” I am still laughing about it.

Long though it may be, Lydia already senses that God’s Word is different from her other picture books about Jesus or Dalmatians.

Then there’s Blake Musick. I don’t know Blake, but he was featured in a recent article in the New York Times by Ruth Graham. Its title caught my attention: “$400 Bibles? Luxurious Scripture Is on the Rise.”  Blake collects Bibles and has 70 high-end Bibles in his collections.

In the article, Graham quotes Blake, “‘This is actually God’s word,’ “Mr. Musick, 38, said. “‘If it’s something that important, then why not have a really nice copy of it?’”

The article pointed out that there is “a growing number of Americans buying high-end — and high-priced — copies of the Bible. The growing category of premium Bibles includes a wide array of translations assembled with high-quality materials, like genuine leather covers, and in many cases extras like elaborate color illustrations.” Other Bible publishers, Graham points out, are “sourcing materials like calfskin leather from Italy and paper milled in France.”

Even publishers close to our hearts have “handcrafted” or “heirloom” editions of the Bible. I own one but keep it far out of reach of coffee. I do, in a way, agree with Blake—why not have a really nice copy of it.

On the other end of things, Wil tells me stories of Soviet-era Christians who copied Scripture by hand or risked their lives to print gospel portions in secret makeshift printing presses so they could share these Bible fragments with unbelievers. This book really is something else altogether.

I think my dad had, and little Lydia has, a richer understanding of God’s Word and its beauty, which far exceeds calfskin leather and paper milled in France.

Psalm 19 describes God’s law and rules as beautiful, perfect, pure, true and righteous; to be desired more than fine gold, more than calfskin leather, more than elaborate illustrations. In Psalm 119, it would be more than fair to say the psalmist is consumed by God’s words—in fact, he says it himself in verse 20: “My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times.” Why? Because when the psalmist’s soul clings to the dust, he knows that God’s rules and commands bring life itself.

God’s law is not some ancient artifact encased in glass in a museum or part of a theological or high-end collection; it is the Word that “was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1)

Yes, sweet Lydia, the Bible is God’s Word, and it is kinda long, but stay with it because its wonderful, beautiful words of life, bring you and us to the Word in whom there is life and light.

The Saturday in Question by Wil Triggs

All the punctuation of life 

Drained away by what just happened

Everything there and nothing makes sense

Who can sleep or go on a walk in darkness when my Jesus

Thinking of how the rising and setting never stops we have no control or say over it even when we pretend to with our changing the clocks forward or backward by an hour at two thirty in the morning twice a year until the lawmakers decide to do away with it like Arizona doesn’t have to because it never did and I don’t have to use my phone to see 

Everything is not the way it seems it should be A list can be a poem can be a psalm

That time when you prodigal checked out a book from the library and a paper two thirds in around page 234 fell open unbleached flour eggs oats and raisins carrots celery with leaves tomatoes basil fish with coin in mouth apples and pears ginger and cinnamon lamp oil milk low fat or oat almonds cashews lost coin pistachios one quart of not ultra pasteurized full fat milk a costly pear and two lemons for stovetop cheese some family left their grocery list in the book when they returned it

No stasis is the universal stasis  

Even in Sabbath there is no resting not really

Just getting out of bed is a kind of work involving the lungs by breathing in the air evolving the gases for oxygenating the muscles and bones removing restrictions of the day revolving already prepared food from yesterdays and the devolving swallowing drinking chewing mulling over overhanging the clothing out drying on the line solving eliminating releasing resolving all the moments stacking on top piling too many steps he thirsts the poor the crippled the lame the blind all who know that something is wrong with them that no amount of money can fix and now this hope dashed in the dregs of the mix

When the Word dies language gets lost night falls into day

I’ve lost trees to storms

Apple in the back yard plum in the front

When lightning split them in two ripped from top to bottom like a curtain torn

Trading one kind of motion for another as they stopped turning sunlight into green drawing water and food up from the ground and out into light but disintegrating down and feeding other foods we grow like the tulips and daffodils we plant in the crumbly amended soil of my once carefully curated lunch where sandy sadly weed mixed fertile they used to stand with such beauty and pride the plum flowers the fig withers I see the tree that is not a tree at all what was once a majestic curtain now just a pile of fabric on the floor

Dark night in daylight I lost friends to fast cancers like crabs scuttling away unnoticed but there in blood or brain nothing like this in the way I think they somehow hide hurt and cry they saw him heard him declare him washed perfumed graveclothes swaddled his full adult body in the borrowed tomb a different kind of manger finished

From darkest Peru wild pigs dive off the cliffs flying down to their deaths at his word for just one man made whole now the lamb slain and lain and all the people everyone who has ever lived

Rolled stone closed the door too heavy to move ever again never by mankind ever to be moved and only grief and loss London England no one to look after us bears  where I hid hope daring to dream dreams dashed despair where no other man would ever really go there they laid him as the women go with more herbs and salve or just to wail and weep because bereft nothing left hiding in the cleft all the stories and parables and laughter 

We who wash can never come clean who will wash away grief when only that is left the only real love we have ever known or will know where has he gone Jesus his love in every sentence and breath that day was gone drained washed away changed really dead yet every moment a movement toward the death of death and with morning light like a gardener ushers in the period never known or thought or dreamed before

All the Saturday mysteries we carry 

Cleaned and gone with one word, “Mary.”