He doesn’t know why people keep killing themselves off
through war and terrorism and domestic violence and
robberies and death by way of the highway because they

are only going to live to be about seventy-five on aver-
age anyway but that seems to be the way of the world.
Then he thought about what happens after death whether

at the average age, older or somewhat or a lot younger
due to violence. Most people are pickled, put in a casket,
then in a waterproof, bug proof vault (which has such

a nice ring to it) and then placed six feet in the ground,
when it would be much more helpful for a resurrection if
the remains were burned up as in ashes to ashes to be re-

constituted in a new sort of way if and when the general
resurrection were to happen and if there isn’t a general
resurrection in the way we have been told, there would be

a resurrection of ashes to animal, vegetable or mineral,
earth, wind, fire and water with a personal insignia of
everyone’s DNA on it all in a new kind of earth, so God

would know who to call by what name. Just think about how
difficult it would be, even for Jesus, to enter the water-
proof, cement vault, when he had only walked through walls

and presumably the huge stone had to be rolled away from
the tomb for Jesus to emerge (but then again that was
probably for the visitors’ benefit) and then what do you

do with all the embalming fluid — formaldehyde, methanol,
and other solvents — oceans of solvents? They’re pollutants
and pollutants can’t enter the new heaven and earth I would

think. Jesus isn’t into pollution. He’s into spiritual
reconstitution, otherwise known as resurrection, which
is where everything is to be redeemed, which is differ-

ent from ordinary reconstitution, which is when you
would have to go through the whole mess of living and
dying once again, like Lazarus, more often than not,

from some kind of violence if things keep going the way
they are. The spiritual body thing is better. It’s all
so mysterious. Can’t we just think in metaphors and similes?
Jesus did.

He sat on the front stoop
after school all alone,
no one home.
He thought he had been
abandoned.
He cried the cry of
those in despair
and then his father
drove up and his
mother got out
and all was in
repair.
She said, “Dinner
soon will be
prepared.”
He wiped his nose
on his sleeve
not wanting them
to know how much
he was displeased
but pleased
he was no longer alone
on that front stoop.

It was the holiday travel show of
Europe and Scandinavia and as he
watched he realized what was so
familiar and now seemed out-of-place
demographically to his experience.
There were all the sights and sounds
and people from his background,
his understanding, his experience and
none of the people who had come
to be a part of holiday festivities
in America in recent years.
It was an eye-opener.
He waxed nostalgic
for what had been
but he knew it
could never be again
as an exclusive Christmas.
He thought of the previous Christ-
mas eve in the Southwest suburbs
of Chicago with his Hispanic
relatives by marriage. What fun it
had been to partake of all the food
and festivities.
The Northern Hemisphere
meets and greets the
Southern Hemisphere
and all were of good cheer.
He loves the English carols,
Dickens’ Christmas Carol, A
Wonderful Life, A Christmas
Story and his dad’s Swedish Glug.
He now loves
a Mariachi Christmas with
the spicy flavors, all the
relatives and really good,
blue agave tequila.
Merry Christmas and
Feliz Navidad sung first by
José Feliciano and then
Stevie Wonder, and then
he thought of Andy Williams
singing, It’s the Most Wonderful
Time of the Year, and this year,
it is.

He sought to be a pious mystic
with serene and heavenly
visage, perhaps
Gregory of Nazienzen
who told us we were gods
through Christ, gifts to
God, transformed in form,
or Julian of Norwich whose
soul dwelt in God and
in whom she saw no difference
from her own substance.
Ah! Ecstasy!
But they had not experienced
Holy Matrimony.
Aye, and there’s the rub.
It’s much harder to be
holy
when slogging through
the sometimes muddy
waters of sometimes
unholy matrimony.
It’s not the baptismal
waters so holy,
but then again, he
didn’t want to
give up the
occasional
ecstasy of holy
matrimony.
He simply
would have to
leave St. Julian and
St. Gregory be.

It seems as if they can’t help themselves —
those who have been washed in the blood,
those who have been washed in the water,
those who have perfect attendance chains
down to their knees,
those who have made confession of faith,
those who have walked the sawdust trail,
those who have had holy hands laid on them,
those who gather regularly in bible study,
those who stopped thinking when they were
about ten,
those whose spirituality is in the bowels of
the church basement,
those who wax pious and then crucify
those who don’t fit in,
those who wouldn’t recognize Jesus if
he walked up to them and slapped them
upside the head.
Sometimes mother church is a bitch.
A priest said, “The church may be a whore,
but she’s still my mother.
The priest would have been better off an orphan.

Cour·te·sy
noun: courtesy;
the showing of politeness in one’s attitude and behavior
toward others.
A·nach·ro·nism
noun: anachronism;
a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that
in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously
old-fashioned.

And there you have it: courtesy, an anachronism,
he mumbled to himself as he stood in line
holding two items watching the young woman
in front of him glance at him holding two
items, put two week’s worth of
groceries on the belt and continue
straight on to check out only to
smile broadly and say, “Fine,” when
asked by the clerk how she was. It
was then he smiled at the young
woman and said, “Have a nice day,”
and that was the anachronism.

The dictionary gets it wrong
when it comes to the word
“denomination”:

1.
A recognized autonomous branch
of the Christian Church,
a group or branch of any religion:
“Jewish clergy of all denominations.”
2.
The face value of a banknote, coin,
or postage stamp:
“a hundred dollars or so, in small
denominations.”

One should be two and vice versa.
Money speaks louder than the church
every time — gun control, for instance?
Denominations of banknotes in ac-
counts of candidates speak louder than
any church denomination speaking out
for gun control. How about racism? A
college football team protesting racism
on campus was heard because of all the
“denominations” that would be lost to
the school’s coffers not because of the
moral integrity of the players, as won-
derful as that is. What if denomination-
al campus ministries protested? The
administration would be shaking in
its boots. Not. They would be listen-
ed to about as fast as if they were the
University chess club rising up in pro-
test. Some denominations speak out
and some denominations really talk.

What if all media world-
wide refused to cover
terrorism, but the acts
were known to those
who actually could do
something about them?
Would terrorism decline
or would it just take
over or would the silence
of reporting unleash a
fascist reaction? When,
if ever, should a free
press choose to remain
silent or at least tone
it down? When is silence
golden? In this age of
social media where every-
thing is up for grabs,
does everything need to
be reported or is it al-
ready out there? Probably,
and now what?

Because of a poem he just read
he thinks about the first house
he can remember and tumbling
down two sets of stairs — the
basement stairs which were
steep and hard to his malleable,
pliable body. His dad rushed
him to the hospital; no bones
were broken but his nose was a
little flat against his face
for awhile. On occasion, his
parents would try to pull it.
The other stairway was the one
from the first floor to the
second. It was carpeted so the
tumbles were less painful. They
would end with a thud as his
little body hit the wall just
before the turn into the living
room. Dizzy, he would look up
at the round, stained glass
window spinning above him. He
would giggle and his mother
would yell half out of fear
and half anger.

He sits in the library reading a magazine
article and the author writes that we must

look to the poets for truth and direction.
He is reminded of a meditation where the

priest/scholar writes for himself and quotes
others who say, said, have said that we must

look to the poets for truth and direction.
He notes that many write and say that we must

look to the poets for truth and direction.
Maybe someone should write and/or say that

we should actually read the poets to see
for ourselves if the poets offer truth and

direction, because, to the best of his know-
ledge, hardly anybody does. Maybe that’s

called “passing the poetic buck.”