The mystery of the feast.

The Eucharist -the simplest commandment, the richest of our rituals, and by far the most misunderstood. I was raised in a very Low Church environment. “Do this in remembrance of me” carved into the bench of our small-town Church of Christ.  Old people dutifully passing brass containers of unblessed wafers and little shots of grape juice; a dying faith in dying towns all across the heartland, modernist revivals wilting at the waysides. Why? Has modernity collapsed under its own weight, leaving the nihilism of postmodernism to fill the voids?  Instead of little country churches, we have meth. Instead of families, and communities with genuine purpose, direction and meaning, we have a meaningless existence temporarily satiated by the false gods of sports for the fathers, Netflix for the mothers and tiktoc for the children. How did it happen? Possibly because we stripped the meaning out of one of the most important sacraments of our faith. If there is not a real presence, or a genuine meaning in the sacrament, there will be no meaning in the motions behind it, they will soon cease, and the muscles behind the motions will atrophy.  As the church fell, the family fell, and as the family fell, society fell.

The idea of the Eucharist is not simply a ritual that one does by rote as in his morning ablutions. It is for one brief moment, heaven and earth coming together with the angels and archangels, and all Company of Heaven to magnify the glorious name of our savior Jesus Christ, saying “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts; Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory. Glory to thee, oh Lord Most High + blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”  

During this absolutely supernatural moment of praise, veneration, and worship of God the Father, we eat the flesh of his dear Son Jesus Christ, and drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. It is a chemical wedding where the sublime and the profane intermingle and for a brief moment we transcend this earthly shell and get a peek though the veil. That moment of transcendence stays with us, and we carry a little bit of Christ with us out into the wilderness.  It strengthens and fortifies us to forgive the unforgivable, to love the loveless and to follow the first and greatest commandment  to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

My Burning Desire

My Lord and Savior

Please align my will with yours, my heart with your heart, my mind with your mind, that I may know true caritias, that my soul may be purified, all flaws and contaminants burned away in the everlasting forge of your sacred heart. May my love burn as your love burns; may it consume the world.  Amen

Lent

Lent, perhaps my favorite season in the Cristian year, a time for reflection, sacrifice and service. One last push before the return of our Invincible Sun, the birth of Ostara, and the other archetypes of spring, but before we can get there, we must first purify. Suffering is called for, not simply giving up sweets or the impossible task of surrendering coffee, but a willful self-sacrifice to get a person and their family though the lean times of the long dark purifying winter. February may be the ugliest time of the year, scant traces of snow, copious amounts of mud, and a wet-cold that settles into the bones. It is not just a time of self-sacrifice, but also giving of alms, talking on extra service and all the while doing it for the sake of the service itself, it is not simply to feed the ego by demonstrating piety to neighbors. While the ashes are applied they are soon washed away, no sackcloth is worn, no rending of the hair, sacrifice for its own sake, and quite heartfelt prayers to our Redeemer who we have not loved with our whole hearts and service to our neighbors who we have not loved as ourselves.  40 days to learn and perfect new habits, 40 days to become a better man, 40 days to reset the clock.

The Third Day of Lent ~ Prayer of Contrition

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against Thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly Thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please Thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of Thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
~ Book of Common Prayer 1928

Something of a Metallic Kind

I have sin, things that I hide and bury deep down, things that I do not want anyone to see, sins that even-though forgiven, are shrouded in shame and regret.

But the one that I overlook the most is the one that I am encouraged to flaunt the most. I come from humble beginnings, rising up from literally nothing, and even before I attained the age of majority I set out to amass a string of accomplishments that would impress the most learned, brave, or adventurous. My sin is Pride, pride in my accomplishments; baubles and medals to justify my acceptance, trinkets to say “I’m good enough, not some white trash boy from nowhere Oklahoma.”  Many people bury their sins, push them so far down that they bubble up in other putrid ways, but mine, I put in a shadow box. I even have an expensive medal that says to the world that I am a good Christian; even my faith is tinged with pride.

I like to mediate on the idea that when I approach my creator, when I die and see that white light and start ascending though that dark tunnel, I am stripping off my military medals, my shoulder boards, my rings, all my trappings, and haphazardly discard them to the side. That kings have their eyes so fixed on the light that they are removing their crowns and dropping them in the ditch, that professors are absently dropping their tams and trod them under foot, that the pectoral crosses of bishops are strewn to the wayside.

We are divesting ourselves of all metals, all accomplishments, all our arrogance and are unworthily approaching our true master, to transition from this realm to the next we must first be purified; purified though putrefaction that is. Divested of our mortal coil, divested of our golden baubles, crowns and all pride, stripped away to our purest form and prepared for the ultimate rite of passage, joining with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we proclaim His great and glorious name, forever praising Him and saying. “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of Your glory, Hosanna in the highest.”

The Streets of Glory are paved with gold

The ditch along the road to paradise is lined with treasures

And the road to hell is paved with good intentions

Janus is With Us

Restoration Anglican Church

We have just celebrated the birth of our salvation, his entering our hearts with the Holy Spirit, and the imminent return that we long for. Through the symbolic death of the year with its shortest day, and now the long, long cold. It’s cold, purifies, and cleanses, an extremity in temperature, but instead of cleansing by fire, it puts some of the cancerous imperfections into a slumber that they never awakes from. Now is the season of Janus.

Janus the primordial deity of transitions, beginnings, gates, time, duality, and doorways, the archetype of birth death, light, dark, male and female. One face gazing reflectively forever in the past, a melancholic meditation on long-ago mistakes, a regret of things not said, missed opportunities, potential lovers not kissed, an “I love you” not uttered before a sudden death. Janus the eternal and reigning king of hindsight, a keen eye on the things that should have been done, should have been said, and regret. However our month’s archetype is not simply a melancholic cliché; forever sad and beautiful, his other face stares forever into the future.

 He sees all, and evermore into what awaits; not just this future but other realities, dimensions and universes, one small choice having a cascading effect on infinite probabilities; thoughts, feelings, and actions spiraling out in endless cycles. Dominoes stacked and falling in infinite arraignments, more tiles and possibilities than there are connections in ones brain. The archetype that sees the architecture.

As one sits next to his hearth, fortifying himself with a peaty scotch, or a hearty stew during the long, long cold with its short days and purifying snow; may he not fall compulsively into depressive cycles of ruminations, but also planning for his future. 

Link to source

While the cold will make one heave a great sigh of relief to find oneself in the dark vault with the pale dead. The cold seeming to soothe all care, melt away every pain, comfort every sorrow, but alas The bright days of spring with the sun in the south at meridian which is the beauty and glory of the day await his plowshare.

January is the perfect time for reflection, the perfect time for planning, and the perfect time for resolutions. Make peace with those you have wronged, or those who have wronged you. Make peace with yourself. And love, love with all that you have,  for one day the archetype of doorways will compel you to enter and you don’t want to be an “I love you” not uttered before a sudden death.

The Awaiting

With the season of death and morning past us, which has opened our hearts for immense gratitude that our loved-ones and we ourselves haven’t answered the ceaseless calling of Santa Muerte, Baron Samedi, or better known as Death.

Our great Harvest, our American Eucharist has been celebrated though the national holiday of Thanksgiving. A time to set aside the mundane, profane, and appreciate kith and kindred, all the blessings God has bestowed upon us.

Now Advent is upon us, it’s not just Christmas, not just a time for materialism, forced family commingling with drunken pilgrimages to midnight mass, or all the other trappings that come with the secularization of observing the birth of our Redeemer. It’s a time for reflection, anticipation, and celebrating the three comings of Christ. A celebration and observance of his first coming over 2000 years ago, also the deeply personal, easily overlooked, and mysterious manner in which he makes his way into our hearts daily; the source of our salvation in the here and now. Just as importantly it is also his coming at the end of days when all of this pain is washed away, no more broken people breaking others, no more hurt people hurting others, a return to the way it was meant to be. You know that hole you feel in you right now? One day that void will be satiated.

Advent is a time for reflection and preparation, there is a nervousness in the air, a little anxiety that moves though like static electricity. We look inward and hope our souls are prepared. The Invincible Sun will rise again, the cancer will be burned away, and we will reunite with our creator. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. 

Keep Your Knife Sharp

   When I reflect upon my own impending age; I sometimes fret and angst about not pairing up and starting a family. How long does one have while they are in their prime? 

   36, not too old, I just turned it and ran 10 miles yesterday, sure it hurts more, but that’s the price of being a beast.

   Jared Leto is 46, has been working since the early 90s and is still breaking hearts

   So is Travis Fimmel who can be recognized from the show Vikings

   And The Rock is 49.

link to source

   There are two ways to live your life, are you like fruit? Where you quickly become ripe firm and luscious? All the things that society pines for in the movies, only to quickly be harvested, pass your genetic material on and then live vicariously through your offspring, while you watch from the sidelines and gain 40lbs.

   One of the greatest sins of our age is that we do not encourage physical fitness after post secondary education.

   Then we pacify ourselves with television, smart phones and medications because we know something is lacking, but we can’t quite put our finger on it.

   Is this the path you chose?

   Or do you take your fruit; the fruit of your labor, of your body, your mind, and refine it. Are you fresh grapes in the field awaiting the beasts to consume you, or are you a well aged wine? Are your best years behind you, or ahead of you? Are you in a hurry to spill the fruit of your loins like the profane, or are you preserving them for a mate of quality, for someone deserving of all that is you?  Are you grain in the field, or a twenty year old single malt, the choice is yours.

   Hone your body like the Smith forges a blade, hours and hours of refining, amalgamating, tempering, hours on the stone, anything of quality takes time, love, and pain.

    Everyday you should be stronger than the man you were yesterday, you should be smarter than the man you were yesterday and you need to be a little more spiritual than you were yesterday.

   Everyday, sweat, cry, cum, use all your glands; Everyday read, learn, teach, stretch you mind and imagination; everyday pray, meditate, reflect, become more spiritually and emotionally resilient  than the man you were yesterday.

   Don’t be in such a hurry to pair up, breed, live a short while through your children, and then die. There is so much more than that, so much adventure. Don’t just live though your children, sweep your family up in the adventure, a quest isn’t one man’s journey, it is for your wife, it is for your children, lead them, it is the natural order and what they yearn for.

   If you do not have a family yet save yourself for someone worthy, have strong beautiful children when you are stable; both financially, and emotionally. Keep your knife sharp, and seek danger from a position of power.  
   Stop looking for the perfect person and daily strive to be the perfect person,  then yours will find you when the time is right. 
And most importantly love, love with all that is in you, love until there is nothing left, love is all that we have.

coyote

The Autumn of our Culture

link to source

We just finished my favorite holiday All Hallows Eve, Samhain, or Halloween if you prefer. Yesterday we remembered all the saints; may we join them in Christ's eternal glory. Today we pray for, remember, and celebrate all the souls; all those that have gone before us, Los Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead.

Memento Mori

One would think that our seasonal dying is drawing to a close, but far from it. It is time to put your skeletons back in your closet, put your red poppies on, and prepare for Remembrance Day celebrations, or in America, Veterans Day. Nine days to revere our service members and allies who gave so much for our way of life.

How to Explain Remembrance Day to Kids

It is through the reflection of where we have been and what we have lost, that makes a way for our gratitude.
After an allegorical dying and with grateful hearts we can come together and celebrate the bountiful season of life, and beauty that was summer in a Great Thanksgiving; our country's Eucharist. 

link to source

This opens our hearts and prepares us to receive the Redeemer and celebrate the birth of our salvation through Christ's Mass.
Happy holidays everyone.

There be Monsters

There be Monsters

Things that creepith in the soil, under the seas, things in the shadows, the unknown; the unknown is what terrifies us. Yet the evil we do know, we have profaned, subjugated to humor, and into sexualized melancholy.

The archetype of the vampire, the soulless insatiable all-consuming

http://jungian.info/library.cfm?idsLibrary=9

monster that is universal in every sect and society and dating back to at least Babylon has been with us. The question is why, why has he been lingering in the shadows, under the stares, and in graveyards?   

The idea of the restless spirit that has suffered insurmountable trauma, and thus perpetuates this pain has already been explored in depth. The idea that it consumes the sanguine life force of virile humans for self sustainment has also been explored in depth.

Yet what makes the vampire so alluring, so terrifying is the fact that he looks like us. He is the cliché of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is soulless, insatiable, and hurts beautiful things because he is drawn to them like a moth to a flame; for the same reason that lower spirits and beings are drawn to higher levels.  They do not understand why they are where they are, or they have been exiled there due to unforgivable indiscretions, and desire to be on high levels of existence. The vampire whether traditional, psychic, or even sparkly, is a psychopath. He/she has succumbed to Antisocial Personality Disorder (or other personality disorders) a soulless insatiable all-consuming monster that is universal in every sect and society and dates back to at least Babylon. Our ancestors warned us of such monsters and did their best to remove them from the gene pool, yet we have, and continue to glorify them.

Now that they have been sexualized and humanized though sympathy for the devil, they are in a sense seen as a dark protagonist, the unlovable who can be redeemed through love, yet we have forgot that these creatures are at the lower plains because they are irredeemable. This is now to the monster’s advantage, the sheep are literally lining up for the wolves, asking to receive the love bite, the kiss of death. 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-hardy/201502/fifty-shades-grey

And the cycle continues. 

Into the Abyss

We date like we are trying on shoes, we even have a term for it now, "hooking up". There is no courtship, such concepts as commitment, dedication, and investment are antiquated. This has been going on since the 60s but it is devolving progressively from free love to free carnalism. 
But while we are escaping nihilism with chemicals, and f*cking our way into a temporary respite from the fact that we have forgot how to genuinely love. We have disconnected from the reality that the practice of breeding eventually leads to children. 
Children without fathers, children that are not wanted. Young girls that confuse affection for love.Young boys who's ONLY social interaction  is Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and the like.
Why are there so many shootings, why wouldn't there be? There is no love left. 
Every day I try to repair this irreparable damage, but the fire is beyond us, it is burning faster than we can stomp it out. 
Guns, Muslims, right, left, they are bandaids over the bullet hole, everyone is screaming about the symptoms and not addressing the cause. 
Just maybe we should worry about our marriage, and not just the wedding day,  or strive to be old people holding hands in the park, as opposed to bragging rights for gathering the most vagina. 
We have been "progressing" for over 50 years now, do we feel any safer, do we feel genuine love? Do we even feel free?

Nihilism

    When a man’s heart is broken it is not beautifully tragic, it doesn’t have the sweet smell of autumn leaves in decay. When a woman breaks a man’s heart somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks he will go off and build a giant house or find some extravagant way to win her back, because Nicholas Sparks and many others have told her that is what would happen. But Nicholas Sparks was a man, his admiration is first in his loins, so when his heart finally succumbs it’s based on more lofty ideals, his mind has processed why he is in love, his heart is drawn to those little giggles, little looks, the way the corner of her mouth turns when she is about to smile. When men fall they fall completely. Their marriage, their family becomes their identity; imagine a love so strong that it becomes you. The old you has withered away, and there is nothing else.

    If you don’t believe me compare the suicide rates of men vs. women, there are a lot of Romeos going to the Streets of Glory without their Juliets.

    But Nicholas sparks is an idealist, is a man. A much more keen observer of heartbreak, and its after affect on men was a woman. Emily Brontë.  The poor tortured soul of her Heathcliff, who has fallen with his loins, his mind, and his heart, is so completely consumed by his heartache that it twists within him. It spreads like invasive roots through him, and widens the cracks of his fractured ego. He is so inwardly consumed by his pain that it manifests outwardly in his thoughts, words, and deeds. He is not a demon or incubus as some scholars have theorized, demons know their purpose. He is a man spurned by his true love, lost and lashing out.

    When women meet a man like Heathcliff, a man like me, they know from the outset that he is poison, that he, I, will break a string of hearts with our brooding eyes and the blackness behind them, but they will not care, not in the short run, they will succumb, because men who have not yet suffered told them that the wounded beast can be tamed, and we will one day build them a house. 

Wuthering Trauma

When we think of ghosts, hauntings, and things that terrify us when we are alone in the dark, the things that makes us race to the light switch at the end of the hall, the things that make out hearts race or pulse quicken.  

A common theme is the poor soul who has gone through something so violent, so terrible that they cannot move on; they cannot go into the light and reach their full potential. What a terribly sad forlorn idea, it is melancholic because it is darkly beautiful; the idea of some jilted lover killing her adulterous husband and now the spirits locked together, forever in a dark dance playing out the heart ache. Over and over it plays, lost souls trying to find their way out, or home.

Every day we see this with the living as well, some poor girl having her innocence robbed too young, now plagued with eating disorders and confusing affection with love. The young boy beaten by an alcoholic mother and neglected by an absent father, and now he punches holes into the walls and his lovers. On and on it goes; the soldier whose war followed him home and is now hyper-vigilant, the cop drowning himself in whiskey every night, the exotic dancer watching herself in the mirror. These clichés are tragic, melancholic, and far too often the norm. We are haunted in our lives and we haunt after our deaths.

Trauma is such a powerful thing, it is as powerful as hate, as powerful as love, it transcends all language, culture, and even death. 

COR JESV FURNAX ARDENS CHARITATIS

Caritas, there is no word in the English language quite like it, it is like love, but more, it is like charity, but more. It is love for all things in this world; it burns with passion, and is fueled by the Holy Spirit. When you have Caritas it fills you from your toenails to the ends of your hair, and it beams out of you.

 When you have Caritas you have love for the soil between your toes, for the things that creepith next to you, for the sinner and the saint. To bring all to the love of Christ, that is a passionate heart; to love something so much it hurts. And Christ’s own sacred heart loved the world so much that he let it consume his mortal coil.

Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity, have mercy on us  

Reflections of Loss

I remember my beautiful girlfriend at some stranger’s house; they had a small lake in their back yard with a huge diving platform way up in the air. It was so high that when I kissed her, the fireworks from Independence Day were reaching their apex all around us. There was so much wonder, so much in her eyes, her lips, the pyrotechnics, the reflection in the water. The world was brand new, and I am crying right now thinking about it. At that very moment I knew I was meant to marry her. That kiss, that love, it was, and is so powerful.

Our son was conceived on Halloween, and the same night we moved into the house I bought for her. We made love in our new room, in our new home and future. I remember staring into her eyes by candlelight, and having the feeling of our whole lives awaiting us, and the pure love that I felt for my fiancé. Our son was conceived in pure love. I could feel it in the air like electricity, and heavy like the scent of roses. There was literally magic in the air.

5 months later (yes I said 5, never underestimate the power of denial) we found out that she was pregnant, we were both scared, surprised, and crying, even though the night before I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I remember we were sitting in her Jeep Compass after the sonogram, and she mentioned that we could go and have an abortion. I said no, that this is meant to happen, and I naively said something about how we must assume our responsibilities. We got married, got another Newfoundland, and four months later Jabe was born. 

When they cut him out he started screaming, then they cleaned him up, swaddled him, and put him in my arms. Just two minutes before there was a silence, and then suddenly the air was filled with the cries of this little person who looked just like me.

All of the intense love that I felt for my wife failed in comparison to the love and connection that I felt for Jabe. It is simply ineffable.

6 months ago I discovered her infidelity, and it has completely destroyed me. Many, many times I wish that I had never met her. That when she asked me out for that coffee I simply blew her off, and went back to my 19 year-old girlfriend with her 19 year-old body.

But these moments, aligned by the constellations, gravity, and quantum mechanics, all lead to the creation of my son. All of my love and the loss of it lead to my son, because if I had approached her with only half of my heart, she probably would not have had our son, and my life would have no purpose. It’s all a grand scheme; I’m just not big enough to understand it. 

Freedom From

If you are climbing, clawing, and searching your whole life for happiness you will not find it, if you are looking in the eyes, arms, and attention of all around you for love, you will forever long for it.

These aspects of your reality are an ebb, or flow; however you see it.

They are at one side of the pendulum of your life, to constantly search for the pleasure of joy or Elation, is to think that there is only one side of a coin.

There is a duality that we cannot escape by only concentrating on the feel-good part of existence. The duality must be balanced by the third, and that third is peace. Peace with the pain, peace from love, it is the stabilizing aspect of the triad. Don’t pray for love, pray for peace from it; don’t pray for joy, pray to be free from its illusion.

Take a moment and realize that every bit of star dust, every atom, earth quake, and solar flare has been leading up to this moment. You are chosen to read these words, you are chosen to synthesize every wrong and right done to you, and form the complete being that you will one day become. Your life is a ballet, it is beautiful and tragic; it makes one weep, laugh, and love, and one day your existence will balance the opposing forces and give you peace.

What Are We?

    If you were to think about it, are you the result of some mammal that simply got tired of lounging in a tree with a cornucopia within arm’s reach, then it climbed down to battle large predators for the hope of grubs and grains. More explicitly you may not even be that, you may be nothing more than an amalgamation of soulless single celled organisms working in a symphony unbeknownst to them. Just a blob of millions of little life forms going through space and time, while your consciousness is a manifestation created by the legion to merely hold it all together. What if they simply decided to go their separate ways? Is your life, and mine so simply held together, and so easily disbanded?

    What if the earth was a spinning domicile of life and death as Darwin saw it, yet infinitely more complex than his 19th century mind could articulate? What if a single cell was so intricate that its mere existence and operation could be viewed as a miracle?

    Let me offer you an interpretation; you can either rationalize intelligent design out of your reality and thus be intellectually above morality, or you can stop looking at the damn flowerbox and look at the flowers for a moment.

    Your mass of cells working in concert is endlessly complex, not only are they interminably multifaceted, but they work together in infinite relationships, and their entire purpose revolves around one thing; You, or maintaining what it is to be You. Revolving is a key word here, the earth spins, the moon revolves around the earth, the earth around the sun, and the solar system is part of a spinning galaxy. You DNA spirals and electrons revolve around protons in the smallest building blocks currently known to man.

    There is a beat to this song, and it is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, & so on... everything is spiraling from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy. You are but one part of a grand design so vast that we cannot even reconcile the relationships between quantum physics and relativity, just as it is not easy to reconcile Fibonacci’s sequence with Pythagoreanism; the vastness of the mind of God is simply beyond our feeble understanding.

    The cells in your body are a microcosmic representation of the universe. As the observations made by Hermes Trismegistus declare “What is the above is from the below and the below is from the above. The work of wonders is from One”. You are created in God’s image because your body is a schematic of the workings of the universe, the Book of Nature, and thus the mind of God; you’re simply to finite to comprehend the infinite. The very fact that these particulates do not tear themselves apart, the fact that there are “laws” of nature, gravity, and physics that the universe follows gives credence to the idea that someone built the flowerbox.

Wow.

 

Epitaph

http://fav.me/d1bz7pu

I lie in the cool comfortable soil

With my breath still and quite

I finally get to rest

Forever free from my toil

I can feel the larvae tickle from within

While I become a part of the humus

I have the roots of the acacia consume me

And live and die with the plant kingdom again and again

I am carried by the winds

And adrift in the sea

I am purified by flame

With each adventure returning me to my beginning, and my end

I observe the four seasons as if they were nothing

And I am beyond love, hate, and greed

I am even beyond memory

For I am truly unending

The Dead and the Dying

Originally written June 21^st 2008

 

 An uneventful night at the Wynnewood bar with too many toos, too many beers, too many cigarettes, too old to still be living like this.

 Well uneventful until we passed the Paoli Cemetery in a perpendicular manor.

 A field of stone that houses my ancestors, all of them perfectly spaced and planted to await there physical resurrection and the second coming.

 Where by order of the full moon, and the assistance of the exterior lights, our passing reflection was cast in all of that solemnly polished granite.

 A reflection abstracted, yet still discernible

 We were reflecting their death and literal representation of mortality, and they our life and refusal to acknowledge such a notion.

 For that very brief, strange, and beautiful moment, the living and the dead reached across that eerie threshold, and acknowledged each other with indifference. 

Plant a Tree in Me

ESTHER SARTO, 'FOREST OF OBSCURITY'

Plant a tree in me

To feel the roots grow deep

The trunk stretching the skin

How interesting that would be

To stroll in constant shade

Observe the gentle dance of the canopy

Serenaded by song full birds

An experience I would not evade

To watch the lichens grow

Accepting the grubs that bore within

To carry this immense burden

All of this with spirits low

This is my blessing, and my curse

Were I to cut free this monolithic parasite

And be left with the sweet sad cavity

I would have the happiest wounds to nurse