(marginalia vitae)
and so i said – i will die one day, that’s a fact. and my colleagues at work went berserk with ‘shush, don’t say so’ and ‘you do not mean it’, and ‘how can you say so, we must think of living forever’. and i thought – why should i succumb to the cult of […]
Read More the taboo wordsLord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God. (Jn. 6:68-69 NLT) Jesus stands in the middle of the road and looks at those who find his words offensive. They are the same people he fed, healed and […]
Read More a brief meditation on John 6:68-69*when the sunlight comes into my room, and i, too, am at home, i see cobwebs in the normally dark places. some are ornamental. some are dirt. ultimately even the originally ornamental cobwebs turn to dirt. who’s to blame for that? the spiders, who have laboriously woven their little webs to catch whatever insects happen […]
Read More when the sun shines long enough (a limp allegory)for those who wonder – i live because Christ does. there is no other way, no alternative, however crazy this sound. every good friday, for the past 20 years or so, i think of Christ’s death. of the narratives that are read and repeated endlessly for at least 15 hundred years. whom he met. who […]
Read More good friday 2015the purpose of advent is to prepare for christmas. the purpose of christmas is… what is the purpose of christmas? one answer, rather unpopular, would be: to remember that god came into the history as Jesus, and did all those great things. another answer, slightly more popular, would go thus: christmas is the time for […]
Read More give god a placethere is a strong undercurrent in creation stories. it insists that God created the world by singing. and all that is, visible and invisible, was contained in that singing. (of course, the best ever description of that was made by the old Professor Tolkien in his Silmarillion) and even now, incomplete and dissonant as we are, […]
Read More not out of tunethey are, well, plants. they do not move, nor speak, nor can they defend themselves against loads of things. maybe some parasites, and that only because they have this chemistry going inside themselves. that all said, lilies come in various shapes and sizes, fragrances and colours. they are tall and royally white or purple like the […]
Read More consider the lilies*the big things in life are easy to deal with: they chunk together and stand proud; they can be hit – or missed. they either crush one, or make one taller. the big things, the landmark decisions, the global pain, the ultimate losses are easy. it is the small things that are difficult to manage. […]
Read More not the big thingsyou smell of rain, and dark belanterned sky, of sheets of water,driven at odd angles to reality, or was it horizontal? i forget. you sound like dripping silences, complete with rattling rooftops, shards of skylines tinkling at sunrises, or maybe sunset hours. i do not remember. your eyes are monuments to galaxies, passing and of […]
Read More something that is ‘i’ looks out at something that is ‘you’, asking too many rhetorical questions zeugmaticallyin a world complete with abstractions, i come with my own sunshine, my own wind – the thunderstorms all around me are all of my own making. the clouds over mountaintops, the rocks teething from sod, the devious moonbeams are all of my own weather. to be or to do, to drizzle, or come down […]
Read More my own weatheri have often thought of the images and feelings, and emotions that i associate with the presence of god. and how, contrary to how i am and all that, it is the felis dei, not canis dei that i associate my fe[e]lings (pun intended) towards god with. finally, here’s a picture.
Read More how it sometimes feels to be in the hand of godon the borders of sleep, between what is and what will never be, or maybe, between what was and what only seemed, she steps in. grey, and a little bent over her walking stick, she hovers at the margins of perception, and i know her, always have known. she is my mother. or what i […]
Read More multilevel forgetfulnesstoday i happened across a tv-set, which showed some episode of the ‘blinky bill’ – apparently an australian cartoon where the main heroes are anthropomorphised coala and platypus younglings in search for a) christmas tree and b) snow to c) bring it to no less athropomorphised wombat adult. the quest ended with a christmas eucaliptus […]
Read More Twenty-four. Magici put to you this: the level of friendship or trust can be measured by how much one cleans their home before the arrival of someone. and thus, i make the following list of people arriving, their labels, and the corresponding amount of cleaning: total strangers one has invited for unknown reason total strangers who […]
Read More Twenty-one. Of clearing roomsi am part of a denomination which has a very strange attitude to women. women in general are, not unlike the children of the victorian era, to be seen, but not heard. women who think about ministry, however little, are to be walked through like they did not exist at all. yes, there are few […]
Read More Twenty. GiftsIn his Pensées Pascal writes: 233. Infinite- nothing. — Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else. Unity joined to infinity adds nothing to it, no more than one foot to an infinite measure. The finite is annihilated in the presence […]
Read More the wagerin a world defined by haste and general conformity, be it thinking, fashion or self-expression, it is very important to have someone who sees the unusual in one. alone, we are usual. alone, we do not think much of what we are and how we are. or, maybe we think too much. it is in the […]
Read More concerning some events that make the mundane miraculous“but i want to go to your mother’s grave,” she said. “you can come or not, it does not matter,” she added. “but i’d appreciate a navigator.” “i do not see what i’ve forgotten there,” i said. “but ok, i’ll go.” and so we went. the day was bright and sunny, the road characteristically abysmal, […]
Read More the empty gravesinterestingly enough, the idea of translating This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti seems to be a very good one, and a timely one, too. so, i’ll probably work on the translation the same way i did on The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin (does anyone have the question, what’s with me and darkness here? i […]
Read More if i get lucky‘this is my church,’ she said vehemently. ‘i come here when i feel like it. and the last time i did… i think it was some two months ago, there was a woman preaching, and i do not like churches where the women are in the leadership. and she did not speak with he feeling,either, […]
Read More the ownership, or this is _not_ my churchi still have not figured this out completely, but here are some thoughts: a) the lutheran church in latvia has reached a very unstable point in its development – a point of breaking, even. it reminds me of a willow with a lot of rotten wood, and very few living strands that ensure the flow […]
Read More for the approaching synodwhilst armies march, and their survivors debate who won and who lost, and how much each one deserves, whilst people take sides or walk unreservedly, intensely by, whilst birds hastily mate and make nests and bring forth their young, whilst teenagers try out a first smoke right behind monuments to all sorts of holocaust, and […]
Read More perpetual fragilityroses look cool, and are interesting to raise. begonias look green and red and white and yellow, and are not presumptuous. but if asked to choose between them, i will probably say that i like chrysanthemums best. those shaggy, yellow or white, heavy-headed flowers with the bitter smell. kiku-no-hana.
Read More rose vs. begoniawe are alive by proxy we are strong by proxy we love by proxy in jesus god works by proxy in the known universe in us.
Read More the conclusion of the thoughts about philippians chapter 2: 1-11