Posts by John Blase

Time passes so quickly we forget the extravagance of loss until something plain stands in our way to say Remember. Opening the refrigerator to see a jar of olives, that treat your father loved to snack on. Standing in the checkout line as the overhead speaker plays Love Is Blue, that tune your mother swayed…

Dear John, Have you been with someone when they died? Signed, Was Wondering ~ Dear Was Wondering, Thank you for such a question. I find myself wondering where such a question came from… To answer though, yes, I have. In what now seems like another life I was a pastor, or a minister, or a…

I want to write poems for the people who live in the little pink houses, that’s where my people come from. It’s an act of honoring the fathers and mothers who gave me roots so I could fly. The poetry need not be easy but dependable, such as a chain and a swing that will…

If I oust you out of the driver’s seat so you have to sit in the back of the bus and now I get to drive then yes, something has changed but the saner question is are we better off? An alien looking in might think there’s just been an exchange of eyes, and they…

Dear John, I know and believe that gratitude is what one practices in order to create space for joy to thrive. Counting and naming the gifts is where goodness and mercy meet in our hearts and spill over into our days and nights and weeks and years. But then there is this: what do you…

We were seated in the back room at Parvicini’s in the red leather semi-circled booth big enough for the five of us. We really didn’t have the money for such extravagance as commoners never really do but we did it anyway because with George Bailey as our witness we won’t wait until our children grow…

~ I thought of you early this morning when I looked out into the windowed sky and saw the full phased white orb casting enough light to rival the sun. I thought that’s what you are to me, to us, that although your body has slowly waned your heart has only continued to wax, brighter…

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly…

Dear John, 11 years ago I won my girlfriend over (and now wife of 10 years) because I was a serious writer. I wrote short stories, little poems, and especially small strings of love lines for her. As much as a fairly ignorant 21 year old could, I knew how to choose really good words…

In the face of seasoned waves of evil that we would sing that old noel, that we would hang lights on branches, that we would give gifts to others even if that gift is only ourselves – this, this is a defiance seemingly impotent against the principalities and powers who daily conspire to convince us…