inspired by Mark 8:22-26, the Blind Man, and the Explanation of the Blessed Theophylact
Go not back to thy village
but straight home instead
it is thy heavenly dwelling
and the Word hath commanded thou thither
Detour not, old soldier
for a world of liquid fire awaits thee
and thou shalt surely face
the wrath of the villagers there
Thy home becomes thy innermost room
a cell within His glory
a particle of His unoriginate light
a place of undistraction
flee there
Official website of the Eastern American & New York Diocese — ROCOR — www.eadiocese.org
Miracles abound
Then, now, there & far abroad
Our Lord Jesus Christ
and His glorious saints
through the prayers of Theotokos
A window undo God
On the way to market
Young Jung lost all his marbles.
The little ones laughed him to shame
while the Big Boys forgot his name.
Then came the long day after
and everyone stood in one line.
YoungJung got everything & then some,
while the hucksters got less than none.
The star of God
knoweth not the rush of applause
the flash of small suns,
the purr of pampered angels –
but the splash of a small stone
lunging into
an infinite sea
And now shall I praise His name
with this most simple word:
Lord Jesus rode into town
with God’s most awesome sword –
Neither a knife of slashing, nor
a weapon for a war
Nor a horse for trampling down
some misbegotten Moor
But a song of love most divine,
a Cherubic Pastoral:
Indeed His Son amongst us is
God’s best weapon of them all.
He powered them with Comfort
that they could bear
the devil orchestrates.
The jeers of men, the fangs,
the claws in cage,
the human rage;
the demon potentates
The mobs had racked up all their
limbs for the stretch –
the grinding wheel
pulled by tormentors’ zeal.
They burned them and they boiled them
They made Saint Stew
they shut their eyes
forever with godless glue
But Satan could not prevail
by breaking backs
(for body is myth
but faith the stuff of facts).
And in the final inning
the devil lost the match;
for each time a martyr dies
his soul doth Jesus catch!
Three hermits dwelt atop
a brooding forest glen
For sixty years they dwelt there,
praying without end
Nary a soul could seek them,
and fewer even cared
For men had lost their eyeballs
from thorns in sins ensnared.
I am not writing this myself, instead I defer to this excellent video post somewhere on the Web. The text is written and read by a woman named Molly Sabourin a freelance writer and Orthodox Christian.
As I venture into later years
the words of God come clearer
Find joy and peace in gospel truth
And don’t daydream in a mirror.
But the Master said that we’d be blessed
if our thinking became cleaner
Blessed be the pure in heart
when the world outside grows meaner.
Seeing God is the next, best thing
to meeting Him in heaven.
But seeing Him in others first was
perhaps God’s intended lesson.
