Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

I have re-found my obsession with my friend death.  This is due, largely, to my joining a writing group that meets on Thursday nights and the opportunity I have to really follow this journey that I began years ago. One of the challenges I have with befriending death is reconciling the invitation that Christ gives me to die with the inescapable reality that death has wounded me and, even more, has wounded others that I know and love. The staggering implications of the death of a loved one is inescapable as we try to mourn well. We really try. Clay that we are we don't often succeed when his unavoidable striking lands so close to our hearts. I am not sure where it came from, but I thought of the wounds that friends of mine have inflicted upon me. Some have caught me off guard and have cut me so deeply I needed, literally, days to recover. Some so deep that I can still feel the warm blood on my hands as I breathlessly assessed the damage. These are my friends. These are their woun...

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, And naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD." - Job 1:21 This is what you want This is what you get This is what you want This is what you get This is what you want This is what you get - Bad Life, PiL Though I incessantly seek it, I am not allowed to rest in certainty. My "why" questions are rarely answered and so much so that I try to invent reasons why my affairs are ordered in this way or that. I ask God, "Is this the solution?" only to have it be not only not the solution, but fuel for the random, dancing fire that has taken me over. Should I find comfort in the "No, not that. Well, not that anymore..." or the "This is as far as you go..." or the "I'm sorry but we're not doing that right now, or ever..."?  I'll forever be the child asking the parent if they can go here, or spend that, or watch ...

Searching out fear in the gathering gloom and suddenly A movement in the corner of the room And there is nothing I can do When I realize with fright That the spiderman is having me for dinner tonight - Lullaby, The Cure And when will it end? When will God stop revealing the spidermen in my life? When will the struggle against them be over? When will I stop and warm myself in the "gathering gloom"? God has told me when.  It is when I taste death.  The struggles will be over. My rebellion will end. My weaknesses will be crushed. My eyes will be undimmed and my hearing unstopped. My tongue will build and my hands will form. My knees will bend low and my feet will be quick. I will have clear thoughts and a bright visage. I will be different; so much different than I am now. They will be vanquished for I will no longer give them room in my life to torment me or my family. Their candy stripe legs and poison will hold no sweetness for me and I will long for only One. Liter...

A man in my shoes runs a light And all the papers lie tonight But falling over you is the news of the day... - Ghost in You, Psychedelic Furs It wasn't the best of mornings. All in all I would have chalked it up as one that I would have rather not had. Relationships were strained in more than one way. I was distracted by this and that. Running out the door I didn't think to take care of something important. I was confronted with something that I would have rather not dealt with and I knew that a difficult conversation was to follow.  But then the invitation to pray came. I would have continued down the path that I trod save this one thing: As we sat there with closed eyes I felt her hand on my knee. Her hand. On my  knee. I placed mine on hers and we held on. We held on didn't we, Dad?  Just us. No one else. Nothing else.  You put us there didn't you? You did. And you know her hand, though rarely warm, is my not so secret security.