A Crown Fitting


Dear Eugene,

Yesterday afternoon I worshiped and it was worship proper.

It's in a church in a shady part of town.  When the heat ran (and it ran loud) stench from the street was called in and sang beauty with us.  At my own church in the morning my pastor preached about the thin gauzy space between heaven and earth where worship happens.  The space was that much thinner last afternoon, my milky eyes clear, cleared.

Someone prostrated himself, risked being called a clown, or worse, "charismatic," and I joined him in vision but not in flesh; I was too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good, too clean to fall short of glory.  Others waved their arms, chanted, uttered cacophony that somehow blended in; everything all of one piece.  Someone pulled out a harmonica and it didn't shrill like mine.

I looked up and saw a few black wires running across the ceiling, nylon cable ties marked the stations of its pilgrimage.  I'd have cut the end of the cables, to beautify and make neat.  I'd, we'd have done that in our church.  Last weekend during my church reno I was tempted to paint a white wire the new color of our wall to camouflage it; I didn't want it to stand out, right at front, center-staged, distracting me from what is good and proper.

So last afternoon I looked up to heaven with a pair of scissors, snipping things that don't fit.  How hard is that, I said to whoever did the wiring, to make things right?

 Then I heard a voice behind me and I turned around.  The voice spoke, I reign here in a crown of thorns.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. KateNovember 27, 2018 at 5:35 PM

    Dear Eugene,

    “I’d have cut the end of the cables, to beautify… I didn’t want it to stand out, right at front, center-staged… So last afternoon I looked up to heaven with a pair of scissors, snipping things that don’t fit.”

    My mid-life stream of consciousness is a black wire uncut, staged center, front alright, out-standing with things that don’t fit - a convulsion in thorns, a conversation maniac, a conversion to clown in vision & flesh.

    How hard is that, I say to myself, to make things right? I wake, work, walk in good proper space between heaven & earth, my eyes milky like cataracts. I hear no voice, no turning ‘round. Prostrate by night, I await the sporadic awakening, the next wave of hot flashes, the long silent dread of decaying in the tomb of my room. Nowadays 4 hours of sleep is a luxury too elusive, unfit for my withering body. I am restless on high from dawn to predawn. I need no cocaine to crack my head.

    This voice of reigning in a crown of thorns I need to know.

    Yours, Kate

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