With frank words that may relieve the comfortable of their abusive power
And bring comfort to those abused by being relieved of all power
And
Set right what is wrong,
Bring light to what is hidden in darkness,
And bring hope to those daring to expect, and hope, against all the evidence of this world.
Clouds Dance at Their Time
Here it is quiet
As snow and ice eat all waves
Of water
And sound
And one walks without miracle
On water,
Miraculous that one is still able to walk,
With or without the blessings of holy
Water
And
Being.
And the time to leave
Crawls up on the interloper
As the sun wanes, and is blown down the side of the side to its depths of hours long
Awaiting its rise
As
A
New
Last
Day
Arrives
Edited, where ‘xxxxxx’ is inserted, to comply with a Court Order
I am.
I am a man.
I am a man who is still standing.
I am a man abused.
xxxxxx
I am a man who was abused first by the church.
That’s not uncommon, but sinfully common.
xxxxx
I am a man who is still standing, but standing in the face of what has been done to me, I am standing only by the Grace of God.
I am a man.
I am.
Last night we sat and watched Antwone Fischer, the movie, by Antwone Fischer, a true story about living with abuse as a man.
It was painful to watch, and see another man survive, be given opportunity to tell his story, and to work to heal.
This is not offered and possible for many men xxxxxx.
Perhaps it is more palatable for our culture to see a man deal with abuse suffered as a child, to watch him adapt, survive, grow and flourish as he comes into adulthood, with his whole adult life ahead of him.
xxxxxx
It’s pretty painful no matter how you cut it,
Painful to know if we switch just the genders around in true stories of men xxxxxx, the outcry of shock and dismay is almost without limit; but when the story is told with the genders as they are, xxxxxx, there is no outcry, just a concerted effort to make the man pay, with his honor, xxxxxx, with everything that can be taken from him.
And he is fair game for any lie that can be told, any attack that can be posted to social media.
Tonight we sat and watched Antwon Fischer, by Antwon Fischer, a true story about living with abuse as a man.
And I cried to know that someone else suffered …
Fought through,
Survived,
Flourished
And found someone who would believe him
Someone who kept him from being destroyed. For all the men who are still standing: May the Blessings of Christmas (Of unconditional love, of scapegoating ended, of the promise of wholeness) and May the Promise of the New Year (of prosperity, truth, justice, grace, and hope) Be yours.
We wait, taking in the celebration of light, looking through the lens of Grace that Jesus makes clear, hoping that this time, especially this time, God will come to us and set things right, before there is no more time to set things right,
That truth will be heard, the lies uncovered, life reset before the twilight zone came to visit my world.
But the world always resists Grace, since Grace comforts those disadvantaged, and disadvantages the comfortable.
There are things to see.
There are things to say.
There are truths which are being played with, and in the end the next generation learns that the lies are better than the truth.
It is like photography, everything is simple, even beautiful: until you realize something is being sacrificed: something precious; something basic and fundamental; something that seems …
Something so fundamental that there is nothing left if this is sacrificed.
We visited the mountains, to help me recover from acute bronchitis that just would not go away.
New Camper
In the parking lot, a brand new camper compared to the ancient one we were using, having to fix it so it did not kill us.
There is something refreshing about breathing the mountain air.
But when it’s full of CO it puts a throbbing headache in the way and had I not opened the door so often that night ….
So this seemed a better option but not possible for us.
There were beautiful things,
beautiful light and snow on pine trees and clouds,
if you raised your head, which is always really hard to avoid.
Light
On the way I caught the fog, again and again, and coming out of the fog is marvelous, for photographers, because the light … the light plays with reality to make it seem different, special.
Dull Fog
It’s not always special; sometimes it’s just ordinary.
Light on the Road
And then the sunlight hits the fog while the road flies by.
But then … then
It hits you.
See the Office
And there are lots of shots that show its beauty that just hit you.
Light on Trees
As you stop the light hits the trees.
Light on Trees 1
And all that can be played with making it even more …
Light on Trees 2
It looks great, even if it is not real.
Picnic
But the picnic table is real.
Pyramid
Simple real in the early, early morning hours just as light starts to peak around the mountain air.
Pyramid 1
And Pyramid Mountain never looked so good, as the camera pushes through the darkness and the software reveals what the human eye could barely see.
And the software can make it look more than surreal, more than a cloudy mountain top with pines and fog, but how can more be really more when the reality is quite enough plus some?
Pyramid Real
Even if you have to wait a few hours for the sun to shine clear amid the clouds and shadows of late afternoon.
Simple skiing, now that’s real with the real mountains and clouds and snow laden pine trees … and the clear mountain air healing the bronchitis.
And that makes the waiting of Advent a waiting for truth, the truth God revealed on Christmas.
John the Baptist knew crazy but he never knew crazy, not crazy like I’ve had to suffer since ….
