A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry

Desire

Sally3 Comments

Dear Lord God,
Do I miss
The questions?
What is this

That I want
Most? Am I
Afraid to
Ask You? Why?

Yet You ask,
Sally, do
You want this?
Though You knew —

Long before
Your query –
You’ve known I’m
Too weary

To even
Realize
How good You
Are — and wise

Do you want to be healed? John 5:6

This is one of my favorite exchanges in John.

We’re introduced to a man who has been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?” which is a simple yes or no, but his answer is haunting and heart-breaking — “Sir, I have no one…”

So Jesus heals him.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.

fiction

Ajar

Sally25 Comments

The door was ajar.

“Dare you to go in,” chided Magnus.

“What’s in there?” asked his little brother, Ulysses.

“Probably dead bodies. Maybe a few dead animals,” answered Magnus. “Just a bunch of dead stuff. Nothing that could hurt you.”

As if on cue, the wind blew a flurry of dead leaves past the boys with a dry rustle. A few settled in the open doorway. Ulysses instinctively stepped behind his brother, so Magnus was between him and the door.

“Dead stuff can’t hurt you, you know,” Magnus continued. “It’s dead.”

Ulysses cowered even more.

“Dare you,” Magnus said again.

The stone faces on either side of the door frowned at the two boys as if to say, DO NOT ENTER. The door creaked a little with the next gust of wind, like a low heavy sigh.

“Did you hear that?” asked Ulysses.

Magnus nodded. “Dead bodies moan sometimes. I read that in a book.”

The door moved, almost imperceptibly. Both boys looked at each other.

“Do dead bodies open doors?” asked Ulysses.

“Don’t be dumb,” answered Magnus. “Just go look.”

Slowly the younger brother tiptoed toward the door, looking back at his brother multiple times.

“Go on,” hissed Magnus.

Slowly, Ulysses placed a trembling hand the massive stones framing the door. With his other hand, he pushed open the door.

Suddenly, a hand from inside reached out and yanked him in.

Magnus screamed and ran.

The Unicorn Challenge: Write a story of no more than 250 words. Base it on the photo prompt.

Who/what is behind that door?! I wish I knew.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry

Condemn

Sally9 Comments

High-minded
People may
Make others
Shrink away

Feeling not
Enough, not
Worthy, an
Ugly thought

“Neither do
I condemn
You.” Peace in
The mayhem.

John 8:10 Has no one condemned you?

This is one of my favorite stories — the woman caught in adultery, the scribes and the Pharisees who want to stone her, and Jesus there, writing in the dirt.

Don’t you want to know what he was writing? I do. I think about that question a lot.

But we’ll never know. We only know that He didn’t condemn this woman when it felt like the whole world was.

Pretty amazing.

How can I be like that?

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.

poetry

Love is

Sally14 Comments

Constant
Begun with sleep loss
Cleaning up bodily fluids
Listening
An umbrella of security
The gift of time
Hard work

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week given by Murisopsis.

She asked us to write a Cameo whose form is Heptastich (7 lines), Syllabic (2-5-8-3-8-7-3), and unrhymed. Also, she wanted the theme of love and added “try to incorporate some other kinds of love for a change.”

My youngest daughter called the other day because she had food poisoning or a stomach bug or some such thing. She spent the night on the bathroom floor.

Had she been closer, I would have gotten her ginger ale and saltine crackers, and taken care of cleaning out the throw-up bucket for her.

I’ve done it.

Love is cleaning up vomit.

One time, when I was taking care of my father, he collapsed on the way to the bathroom and wet himself quite thoroughly. We called the ambulance, but he wanted to be presentable when they arrived so I helped clean him up and got him dry clothes.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” he said, over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Love is cleaning up urine.

My oldest daughter is expecting her first child. I remember as a young mom going to a baby shower for another new mom. We were all supposed to write advice for the new mom on little cards. Everyone write things like, “Tell your child you love him/her every day,” or “Live, laugh, love.” I had just had a horrible outing with my baby, where he did one of those poopy things that up his back and down his leg and got all over me when I tried to change him. We were an hour away from home. For the baby shower I wrote, “Always have a spare change of clothes in the car for you and your baby.” I was dead serious. It drew a lot of laughter at the shower.

Love is cleaning up poop that’s everywhere.

Can I say here that love isn’t candlelit dinners? It isn’t fun vacations. It isn’t bouquets of flowers or pretty jewelry. It’s the nitty gritty stuff of life.

Is that the kind of love you were talking about Murisopsis?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · Faith · poetry · questions

Blind

Sally13 Comments

John 9: 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

First, forgive me for the language, but this question from the Bible irks me. It really does. I think “who sinned” in modern vernacular would be spoken today in the words I chose.

Who f*cked up?
Someone did!
Remember –
Adam hid

When he f*cked
Up and ate
That apple!
Think we’re great?

We can’t see.
Humans fail.
All people
Are so frail!

Yet some one
Not like me
Must be flawed.
We should see

Who is at
Fault, or who
F*cked up. We
Have no clue

The thought behind the question is what irritates me. Whose fault is it that someone is blind? Is it his? Is it his parents?

How small minded we are!

Here are the questions I would ask — and do ask! How can I help this person? What can I learn from this person? I’ll bet they have some amazing stories; would they share them with me?

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is probably true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry · questions

Authorities

Sally7 Comments

What gives a
person auth-
ority?
Yes, whence doth

Command come?
A strong arm?
Lifted chin?
Wisdom? Smarm?

Who are these?
Why do their
Words carry
Anywhere?

Yet we yield
To what they
Say, believe.
We obey

And turn blind
Eye, deaf ear.
Instead of
Faults, we hear

What we want
To hear. We
nod and don’t
Disagree.

Authori-
Ty. Poo-poo.
Let me think.
Same for you.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge. These verses inspired today’s poem.

John 7:26 …Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?

John 7:48 Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

When it became more and more evident that there was something different about Jesus, the common people began looking around to see what the “authorities” thought of him — hence the questions — hence my poem. But they were AFRAID to say anything — John 7:13 Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

But, between you and me, this particular topic is a sore spot with me. Depending on what news source you watch or read, you will have very different views of what is going on in the world from those who watch the other news. We need to be a THINKING people, who investigate the truths and falsehoods of what we’re being fed.

poetry

Open Hands

Sally14 Comments

I remind myself,
Unclench your hands
Hold them open

I remind myself,
Take a breath,
Don’t hold it

This week, the W3 prompt is to go on an introspective free verse journey. To do that, Allpoetry suggests starting with an image. I started with an image of open hands.

As you can see it was a struggle.

I wanted to write about how when you hold things too tightly, they cut into your hands and cause pain and injury.

I wanted to write something about that time my uncle grabbed onto an electric fence to show us it was safe, and like gullible little nieces and nephews, we grabbed on, too. And it wasn’t (safe) and we knew it before we did it but we were so gullible and trusting which is a kind of open hand even though it’s a closed hand on a wire.

I wanted to write about that sensation that I still feel of a dragonfly in my hand that flew away.

I wanted to write that cheesy sentiment that flourished in the 70s right along with the yellow smiley face and peace signs — it said something like, “If you love someone, let them go. If they return, they’re yours. If they don’t, they never were.” I was in high school in the 70s — first loves and all that — but the more I think about it, I don’t think it’s true. I think in some situations, like children leaving home and finding their way in the world, they don’t come back, and that’s because you’ve done your job well. I have a daughter in London right now. She has fallen in love with a city that’s far from home and I couldn’t be happier for her. I hold her with open hands.

So I open my hands to the people in my life.

And I’ll breathe through the stresses in my life.

But I won’t write a very good introspective poem.

fiction

The Date

Sally24 Comments

He looked at his watch and sighed. It had been 20 minutes, then thirty. Her vest still hung on the back of the chair.

Surely she would be back.

When he had seen her photograph on the dating app, he knew. Okay, maybe creating that fake account posing as a younger man had been deceptive. Maybe even creepy. But he had to meet her.

He described exactly what he would be wearing. She would have no question that he was the man she was meeting. Nobody else would be wearing a brown argyle sweater sitting at the exact table he described.

He watched her stop when she entered. Her face went blank for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and smiled that glorious smile as she approached him.

“Dan?” she asked.

He nodded and rose. She hugged him, something he hadn’t expected.

They ordered drinks and chatted without a word about his age or appearance. She simply chatted about her work as a nurse and her orange tabby that greeted her each night.

He barely heard a word. He was studying her perfect lips and teeth, her high cheekbones, her tiny nose. He had been correct.

When she excused herself to go to the ladies’, he resolved to tell her when she got back. She was his daughter. He knew.

She never came back. The bar closed. The vest still hung on the chair.

As he was leaving, he realized that his wallet had disappeared in that hug.

This is my submission for this week’s Unicorn Challenge. The Unicorn Challenge is simple: write 250 words or less (DON’T YOU DARE GO OVER) based on the photo prompt.

One of my co-workers is newly single and he was reading me posts from Facebook Dating. We both open at the facility where we work — so this was about 5:30 AM when he started. He wandered off as people came into the facility, but later stopped in my office to read me some more. Later I saw him sitting in another office, reading posts out loud.

At the end of the day, he stopped by my office again. “When I first started reading them posts,” he said, “I thought they was pathetic. Now, after reading them all day, I think they’re just funny.”

Yes, funny. In a pathetic way.

fiction

Revenge

Sally14 Comments

He slipped into the water. Before he started swimming, he patted the arm pouch strapped to his left arm. Yes, it was there. The bulge told him the contents were safely inside.

The masts lit up the boats. The harbor was awash with light. But he needed to avoid being seen and recognized.

Silently he breaststroked towards the boat, the water barely rippling behind him. He focused on the goal. The light from the mast stays shone on the water. Each time he came near a finger of light, he dove under and swam a distance. No one must see him.

The closer he drew to the boats, the more light he had to avoid on the surface of the water. Over and over he dove and swam. Each time he surfaced to breath he would reorient his direction so that he was headed for the Euridyce.

Finally there, he heaved himself up over the side, trying to time his efforts with other waves hitting the boat. It would less likely be noticed that way.

Silently, he unzipped the pouch and pulled out the square box. She would recognize it, he knew. She had been hinting for months.

He kissed the blue velvet cover and whispered, “This will knock your socks off.”

And more, he thought.

Down in the cabin, he left the box on the shelf beside her. He had no doubt that she would see and open it.

God, she looked lovely sleeping there.

Next to him.

This is this week’s Unicorn Challenge response.

The Unicorn Challenge is simple: 250 words and base it on the photo.