Posts by John Blase

to avoid gentile jabbering my said petitions have long been brief:      watch over her, and our children.      have mercy on me a sinner. thank you. as far as I can tell the predictability of my provincial prayers has offended neither the son nor the father. i fancy they are lines heaven has grown…

Happy. Its the first word of the Psalter’s first day’s morning prayer. So whatever the further turnings in a month The reset word is always Happy. Its hard to say the word and not Straighten your spine Like those trees that keep on Treeing, refusing to wither In season and out. Things grow thorny after…

I rose crestfallen from a dream in which a preferred cast of characters from my past (plus me) were leaving for the epicest concert of all time. But I hadn’t showered and was still in day clothes unsuitable for the best night of our lives. So away I flew to the bath but it was…

Every year at the Great Big Gathering of the Righteous the young wannabes would stand so tall before the assembled to be asked the all-important what-do-you-believe-about questions in order to determine their fitness for the furtherance of the faith. What-do-you-believe-about women preachers? What-do-you-believe-about gays? What-do-you-believe-about tongues and healing? What-do-you-believe-about the just war?   For years…

I cry a little every day.   Veterans told me sending him off to college would be hard but I did not expect to feel forsaken. Parting’s sweet sorrow? Like hell. No, its more a coarse sawing   much like when that hiker had to amputate his arm in order to free himself. That’s how…

A man I admire told me there are many benefits to letting the world fall apart. He said this sitting in his own ruins with a ashen smile on his broken face. Although I have known him for years it was hard to tell in that moment whether he was trying to convince me or…

Here. Take this makeshift poem. Copy the lines on a sheet of paper then cut them into tiny strips. Find a shovel and dig a hole. Bury the ribbons of words. Water that spot for seven days. Watch. Nothing will flower there.   This will teach you something about love.   How it begins with…

Years after the break that broke our father’s heart, he came back. He hadn’t come to his senses as much as he’d grown deathly sick, some wasting disease contracted in the country far away from us.   I’d buried our father in those saddest years, dug his grave all by myself. The servants were let…

Years after the break that broke our father’s heart, he came back. He hadn’t come to his senses as much as he’d grown deathly sick, some wasting disease contracted in the country far away from us.   I’d buried our father in those saddest years, dug his grave all by myself. The servants were let…

Older believers know this. So we take childhood verses or quotations from dead mystics and wrap them over pastoral scenes of wildflowers along the highway. We do this all the while shuddering deep inside because despite our best efforts to cast a more Christ-like God, efforts I applaud, there remains the God-like Christ who may…