Wounded in life, I seek to staunch the wounds of others . . . . --xoj

"Jack Spratt’s two centavo Guide to Redemption”
©2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

God's tapestry, all creation, my greatest value an attempt to live/love for: in gratitude, mercy, forgiveness, regardless of Age, Race, Creed, Gender, Gender Proclivities, or Generosity . . . seeking to make redemtion salvation & resurrection potential in all unique, precious, individual lives, human, plant, animal, world. . . .through words & images - Jack Spratt ... KISS

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

changed yesterday


Something changed yesterday. I am no longer alone as in all the days before; a lifetime of loneliness realized. Communion, not communication. Being touched; at last embraced in ways that have utterly altered me unspeakable. Incandescent. Not fireworks, apogee, but simply enkindled; becoming fire itself.

I asked, said yes, and Yes said yes back.

Could it be that the author of unconditional love announced being present in ways unimaginable; unconditional? To whom could I give attribution for what inseminated me making new life forever.

Yet, and yet, outwardly I remain as I was before; like Saul on the Road to Damascus; turned upside down, inside out what was hidden now plain.

Love is not the property of any one soul but all in concert; triumphant, symphonic, an endless ode.

I think, knowing by experience, I am not wrong nor mistaken. That which touched me, and remains, is unnameable for no concept or construct is adequate is is the always thou. Truth. What we all seek.

To be transparent. I feel asleep conscious of wanting; a desire to own and possess that which angelically was given. The Truth cannot be owned but given freely unconditionally and so it must be that I remain now nearly angelic in myself: genderless. Something akin to earth, water, wind and fire all in one. But, somehow, more.

By what I discover, I am inadequate the chore, being poor. A mere clay vessel soon to be dust again. Cracked and leaking with an overflowing to be given only to those who like me remain poor, meek, humble. Once broken: mended.

Everything remains, already spoken. We are the only thing new under the sun; we who cannot hear, see, taste or touch. Since our perceptions are addicted to what we want to see not what is.

05:57

Wholely unrelated: M is given, if not actually very fond, of rainbows.

Just discovered: "The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears." - John Vance Cheney

Ofttimes I fall silent. Fearful that I inflect, impose or infect, inappropriately, fatally? my agenda or intents upon others. This concern reminded me of the second then third renewal of wedding vows with Susan, the bride-of-my-youth. Then my, or our failure, to gel into that promised. The first and last conducted outside, once upon the rocky shore, the other anointed with a rainbow.

Humiliated by age and many failures. I wonder now what consequence could, or should, be attached to being touched by grace; at least insofar as I perceive it by all integrated faculties. Adding now, a sense myself both male and female as I knew/know Jesus to be. Not He alone but many who choose to live alone instead of merge with another. Am I wrong in my estimate that in doing so we become something, more or less: other? Naked, bereft of desire, no longer willing to name and claim anything save the ever changing experience; truth being mutable not immutable since it is the nature of creation.

As I am, is all I will ever be. Sufficient for now; waiting what is next. No simile, metaphor, analogy but blank: an empty stage upon which the play of time will incarnate. Enough. In leaving she said; “I want my husband!” Not you as I knew myself then or now. Guilty in my choice or manor, the behavior/excuse/rationalizations. Something formerly unforgivable. More so when she later suggested “closure” would have been desirable.

Now I ask, receiving no answers, is not all life a sacrifice. If so, to what end. Heaven is not milk and cookies. Or laughter as I laugh now. My sense, inarticulate then, but better defined now, is that had I remained I would have been not husband, or friend, but her child; mindless. Totally eclipsed by her choices and behaviors. Not a judgment between good or evil but simple acknowledgment she would be will and I believe she is without me.

Bewildered by yesterday I attempt to compose some understanding. Not a monument, but a life continuing beyond touched by the beyond. Humiliated then humbled and meek.

A love once said of me that I was ‘ribald’ then ‘sullen to discipline.’ Now as I methodically farm quotes, discovered by he who long ago died this day: "Everything comes in time to those who can wait." - Rabelais

I sense myself as erotically charged, a sensualist, needing no touch to make love, since yesterday love was made possible in ways beyond definition.

I belabor the vernacular of life because there is nothing generic about it. The only Brand I can sell you, is yourself.

130409 03:47 MDT something changed

No. Not exhausted, merely tired, as in: ‘When hungry I eat, when tired I rest.’ A luxury only a solitary could, can & may afford. But then when in company: a pair, throng or mass, some are renewed in silence within.
At the horizon of oblivion I thought in reply: “You melt my heart with your words and insights! I carry your missives in my heart like a special gift.” . . . in response I could only annotate my astonishment regarding the most magnificent thing ever directed at me by another in words.

Then submerging in slumber remembered the first ever poem still haunting me: "Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning Which even now, ever more, staples me to the dead tree, The Cross, and He who said; forgive them. From a solitary to The Solitary; whole, holy and complete.

Dragging with me the corpse of what I last wrote. Like a sailor upon the stars leaving no wake. I take what the weather brings without sorrow; for any day is a day in creation, expanding, creating more; happy the ability to acknowledge.

Like a trombone I am on a sliding scale of squeal or blat corkscrewing up and down the scale of all the notes potential. Wondering did I say what I intended. Could or should I try harder to simplify or embellish? Do James Agee or Jack Kerouac, possibly Lao Tzu, simple broadly drawn or, as in the former, so like Inge tickled to the point of embellished insanity; a mirror maze, Byzantine, a labyrinth.

If allowed. I would stand before Him speaking The Beatitudes. Feeling his breath upon my brow watching his eyes. For if love is given free and flown, never returning, then it is love nonetheless true. I can no longer scourge the have and having not. Always emptying and refilled.

Laughter: Not whatever, but writing, asking for more. Empty, what I wrote forgotten, I remain indebted to those upon whose shoulders we stand awaiting the next generation; a human ladder to the infinite. Always curious I ask is it possible, having the methods and means to extinct ourselves, nothing whatever will be left?

Definitions seem, betimes, coffins or trampolines.

130409 10:05 MDT more in reply
© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved