Gospel & Universe ✝︎ Saint Francis

Rapt Angel

Bodhisattva - The Beach of the Dead - Doctrine - Pascal Revisited - Intentions

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Bodhisattva

My neck is sore from looking up at all those golden things.

Rapt angel, drop downward from your pink abode.

Bring solace to the creeping things that have no wing or soul.

Illuminate just once this darkened path and show us what you mean by love.

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The Beach of the Dead

Before me stretch the lime shades of my third margarita, and in front of me lap the gentle blue-green waves of Playa de los Muertos. I raise my glass, rim-frosted in salt to all those who are actually doing something about the miseries of the world, from the nuns in the mega-slum of Neza-Chalco-Izta (the Ciudad Perdida or Lost City on the outskirts of Mexico City) to the doctors in the jungles of the eastern Congo.

I know that you could be sitting back, daquiris in hand, on the beaches of Puerto Vallarta or Cancún, or water-skiing over the blue-green waters of Kalamalka, breathing in the deep beauty of the northern pines.

I know that you could be thinking that the world is made of order and light and the laughter of children, but instead you travel into the hills east of Kigali, toward poverty and worlds of darkness.You dodge the machetes, clean the same syringe for the fifteenth time, and wonder what miracle might save these people, might multiply like wine this serum that comes in a bright orange package (but there simply aren’t enough bright orange packages).

When you try to sleep at night, what will you do with those memories of an infected village, of a head cracked open, of a camp two miles long? How will these memories sit with the other memories of marshmallows around a campfire and the crackling of the tinder and the pine needles on a warm summer night on the shores of Lake Kalamalka?

To all you warriors, unsung and unarmored, I raise my glass: May you, and all those like you, inherit the earth.

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Doctrine

Sometimes it seems that humans are rarefied angels, eloquent as Dante dancing on the turn of a phrase, on the precise edges of the Primum Mobile, or banked in order, gold on gold:

At other times they’re dumb as brutes, dogs without loyalty, tattered angels scratching at each other on some darkened plain, or in a procession — “Mission Accomplished!” — with fife and drum:

Is it any wonder that preachers talk like mothers, repeating and scolding till the naughty children sit up straight? 

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Pascal Revisited

If the hellfire fundamentalists are right, they’ll be the ones to say, in between sips of nectar, We told them so. If the atheists are right, they won’t have that pleasure.

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Intentions

Now that it's too late, I recall all the beggars I've walked past, wondering why they didn't get a job (and thought to myself better they learn for themselves not to give a village a fish) and all the cries I've heard but didn't listen to because I had better things to do.

I recall all the pretty girls I walked up to with their Because I'm a Girl t-shirts, and how I listened very intently with the best intentions, tempted even to give in and give them what they wanted, but then I walked away, anyway.

I remember this as the road gets darker and the grimy gates clang behind me, and cinders drift downward from the heavy clouds.

[Pinocchio, having been (easily) scammed of the coins given to him by Fire Eater, and having turned into a donkey (because of his laziness and gullibility), becomes the star act in a circus.] 

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