With Christmas past the path laid before us now is an ascent to Jerusalem and all that implies. Ironically the ascent is one into darkness or tenebrae as Christ sets his sights squarely on the temple and the cross. I say ironic because one envisions an ascent as leading into light and while the calendar journey to Easter leads us to more hours of daylight it is deceptive for at the end of the line is death.

Of course there is light in this death in the sense that with the great sacrifice having been made no more are required and the cross becomes a tool of justification, righteousness and ultimately a lamp of grace. Still, darkness before light.

This God is interesting. Rather than eradicate suffering this God chooses to participate with us in it, silently suffering alongside us until we pass through death and come out clean and whole on the other side.

I hope this months ahead can be months of contemplation for myself and others. A time to contemplate the point of Christ in the world. I am reminded in a myriad of different ways that when I take my eyes off of Christ and focus on myself and/or others I become disoriented and lost. So often the journey of the cross is marked by the watching of other travelers on the path and how they walk it to such a degree that one misses the bumps and is tripped up, falling while others stumble past.

Easter is the pinnacle of the liturgical year and the cross is its centre. All things radiate from the sacrifice of Christ – truth is found in its most pure form in this one death and existential meaning is there as well for those who care to look.

“Jesus is not building on violence; he is not instigating a military revolt against Rome. His power is of another kind: it is in God’s poverty, God’s peace, that he identifies the only power that can redeem.”

– Benedict XVI

Hosanna
is that word
pregnant with
pleading praise
that shout of need
that cry of recognition
It says –

I know who you are
hail holy one help me

all in one breath

This is why I like reading Pope Benedict XVI aka Joseph Ratzinger – because I cannot read more than half  page without writing notes.

His observation about the need for the historical-critical method to “evolve” and become theological in nature is truly correct and brilliant. He writes in Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two, Holy Week –

“One thing is clear to me: in two hundred years of exegetical work, historical-critical exegesis has already yielded its essential fruit. If scholarly exegesis is not to exhaust itself in constantly new hypothesis, becoming theologically irrelevant, it must take a methodological step forward and see itself once again as a theological discipline, without abandoning its historical character. It must learn that the positivistic hermeneutic on which it has been based does not constitute the only valid and definitively evolved rational proach; rather it constitutes a specific and historically conditioned form of rationality that is both open to correction and completion and in need of it. It must recognize that a properly developed faith-hermeneutic is appropriate to the text and can be combined with a historical hermeneutic, aware of its limits, so as to form a methodological whole.”

TRANSLATION: The best form of historical-critical exegesis and one that will be most complete is that done from a theologically informed faith perspective – recognizing the strengths and limitations of both.

Personally I believe a theologically informed historical-critical approach is the best approach, or at least the foundational approach that should undergird all others.

i want to talk
but i can’t
no i can’t
so i ticka
tickatickatok
toktoktok
just want to talk
but not tok
measure beat
by heart
take time
by tongue
twisting tongue
tickatickaticka
i tok
let me talk 

she moves
through the wild, wild world
quiet one beneath the storm
giving the lost their names back
leading the battle-worn home

she dances soft upon the end of all things
handing laughing love to the dying
trailing hope as a wildflower wake
till we follow as cracked innocents
letting her wipe blood from our brows
letting her heal our hot disease

she steps bold into the beckoning black
with soft cries of  “fall in and upon me here”
and the darkness in despair departs
for
she brings her own light with her
she echoes eternal in her happy harmony
calling to every deaf ear –

“sing with me that this song may become forever for you”

there are stars in the sky
behind the noon day sun
veiled invisible to unclothed eye
with silver shy moon overhead
hidden in the shrouded folds of blue
lost to every searching sense
while crowding on the earth
7 billion lamps fight for notice

with all this bright
from break of day
till fallen night
what is the rhyme
what is the reason
that coal black cloak
must cover us over
before one seems to see
the smallest hint of light

Watched Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition Blu-ray for the second time in three days today. Itsy watched it with me. I appreciate Tolkien for creating a world with a spectrum of characters…good, bad and everything in between.

I admire many characters but the one I most identify with is Boromir, perhaps the most human character in the series.

too many
are leaving
these days
wandering off
as if
a pale bus
being driven
by a pale driver
is gathering friends
is gathering family
driving them away
no ticket
no transfer
no return

sugar rots
but for the veneers
that hide the black
saccharine drips
as sick sweet venom
into the cracks
of the heart
splitting it
breaking it
apart

give me good black soil
that i may go to ground
for cold and honest are
the bones of the earth
where there is
a breath on the wind
that speaks life
to ears that hear…