El Roi

A woman sits amidst the wreckage

of a building ravaged by American bombs. 

In her arms she holds the lifeless body of her son,

who mere days before played in the streets of the city. 

A rain falls from a grey sky as his head lurches back into her lap. 

The rain is nothing compared to her tears, which will not, cannot stop.

She remembers her ancestor, how she left

with her son, carrying nothing but a satchel of bread,

a skin of water, and a promise from a God she named El Roi:

‘The God who sees.’   The promise was that He would always see,

her, her son, and their descendants, be they as numerous as the stars. 

And she thinks, as her son’s eyes

loll backwards in their dead sockets,

and the tears that will not, cannot stop,

cascade from her dark eyes, that God is surely blind. 

Accuse her not, dear Christian,

from the comfort of your pleasant pew,

whilst ignoring the very genocide we pay for. 

The blindness is not hers.  Nor is it God’s. It is ours. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

The captioned image is a detail of Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert by Frederick Goodall, 1867.

See, Genesis 16; 17:20; 21:8-21; and 25:12-18

The Dark

When did we learn to be afraid of the dark?

Was it in our nascent days, as newborn eyes

slowly opened to a world full of light

that illuminated so many things we could not name

as we learned what faces were, and found one or two

we could trust, only to have those faces suddenly

disappear in darkness as the light, suddenly taken,

plunged us into distress that could only be assuaged

when the faces reappeared in a resurgence of light?

The faces tried to help of course, and out of love

gave us small lights that burned through the night

or else little glowworms that eradicated darkness

at our touch.  Or else rushed at the sound of our cries,

turned on the big lights, and held us as they whispered,

‘There, there, everything will be alright.’

And so, we learned that light was safe, and darkness –  

something to be feared, cast off, avoided at all costs. 

All of this is understandable, of course.

For the dark can be filled with terror, something

we learn more fully as we grow to discover

the existence of wild creatures, criminals, and worse.

As stories of evil found in darkness become more

than just stories, and teach us that we were right

to be afraid of the things we could not name

which are now all the more terrible for the naming. 

But the dark is more than this, is it not? 

It is beauty.  Grace.  Stillness.  Silence. 

‘Large and full of wonders,’  Dunsany said.

It is the place where moon gardens bloom,

where stars find space and power to shine.

It is where the Aye-Aye creeps to life

and nature shows a side we seldom see. 

It is where lovers so often meet,

and life itself is blessedly conceived. 

Was it not out of darkness that earth came to be?

Did not God create the darkness and the light? 

And were we not, before we learned to fear,

safe and secure in the dark of the womb,

where we were ‘fearfully and wonderfully made?’   

Jesus knew darkness.  Indeed, he ran toward it. 

Both the darkness of the skies and the darkness

of the hearts of men.  The darkness of his slowing

breath.  The darkness of his coming death. 

A darkness embraced of his own free will.

‘Into your hands, Father, I enter the darkness.’

His body would lay in darkness for three days, he said.

Yet even at this he did not shirk.  Knowing, unlike us,

that there was no reason to be afraid of the dark. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Luke 9:51 – A Meditation for Ash Wednesday

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

He set his face

to fear, hate, and jealousy,

violence, lies, and treachery,

division, wrath, and envy.

He set his face

To the agony of the garden,

the betrayal of friends,

the fists of soldiers,

the scorn of elders,

the dance of demons,

the might of empire,

the filth of politics.

He set his face

to bone studded flagella

that tore his flesh,

the weight of the beam,

the bite of iron nails,

the slow loss of breath,

the knowledge of impending death.

He set his face

to the full weight of sin:

theft, lies, adultery,

abuse, neglect, cruelty,

guns, bombs, missiles,

war, famine, genocide,

my country right or wrong,

silence, fear, cowardice,

complicity, ignorance, indifference.

He set his face

to cold death surging

through his veins,

to pulses of unending pain,

to the mockery of passersby,

to the contempt of those

for whom he’d die.

He set his face to

to you and me.

To all who lived

or would come to be.

To the criminals gasping at his side.

To the soldier watching as he died.

To the women gathered ‘round his cross

To all the least, the last, the lost.

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

On the Superfluousness of Words

Using many words,

I stretch and grope and strain

to understand the ineffable,

to explain what I can’t explain.

I’ve done so for so many years,

trying to understand.

Asking, answering, questions,

gripping reason with my hand.

An expert I’m supposed to be,

the guy who knows it all.

But now at last I’ve come to see:

The time has come to fall,

Into the grace of silence,

where questions cease to be,

where reasons do not matter,

Only you and me.

With you I find my answers

though neither of us speak.

My arguments, superfluous,

it’s presence that I seek.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Why all the Poetry?

‘I’m singing this note ‘cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing’ – The Who

You may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot of poetry lately.  I have no idea whether this is being received positively or not, but for what it’s worth, I thought I might explain why my posts have taken this surprising turn. 

It has to do with my spiritual journey.  Those who know me know that for the past few years, I have been delving more deeply into what Brother Lawrence called ‘the practice of the presence of God.’  It began with John Eldredge’s Pause App, where I found the value of stopping throughout the day to re-center and rest in the presence of God.  As time went on, I found myself increasingly drawn to silence, stillness, and solitude.  I began checking out Lectio 365, which drew me more deeply into the books and writings of the 24-7 Prayer movement, where I began to create a ‘rule of life’ to govern the way I approached prayer in particular and life in general.  Then, last year, I enrolled in an 18 month program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation designed to deepen both my spiritual life and leadership in the church. 

In the course of this journey, I have discovered that the clearest path to the presence of God involves shutting down my discursive mind, that part of myself that is always thinking, always bouncing from one subject to another, rambling about in search of answers to both complex and not so complex problems.  I have lived most of my life this way.  I suppose there are some deep psychological reasons why this is so, things I don’t need to get into right now.  But this way of being has both upsides and downsides.  On the one hand, I enjoy being a thinker, a guy who reads books and knows things.  On the other hand, a mind always in motion, one that seldom rests, can be damaging to one’s soul.  It can prevent the soul from connecting with the God who dwells both in and around us, who invites us into the awareness of our union with him. 

And so, I have learned the infinite value of Silence.  Stillness.  Solitude.  The emptying of my mind to simply rest in the presence of God.  Of entering into what an anonymous 14th century Christian mystic termed, ‘the cloud of unknowing.’  I liken that cloud to an experience I once had atop Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park in Maine.  My wife Megen and I had driven to the top, only to find ourselves enveloped in a dense fog.  Our dog Phoenix took the drive with us, and as we walked around, Megen took her a short distance away to, well, do what dogs have to do after long car rides.  Suddenly, the fog became so dense I could not see anything, Megen and Phoenix included.  It was just me and the cloud, nothing or no one else in sight, for what seemed an eternity (in realty it was probably less than a minute or two).  I was concerned that I couldn’t see them at first, but slowly I began to rest and trust that they would reemerge from the cloud.  I began to sense their presence even when I could not see them.  And soon enough, there they were. 

I’ve been learning to rest in the cloud with God.  To know he is there even when I sense nothing.  To rest in his presence.  Sometimes, it is nothing more than that.  But sometimes, he emerges from the cloud, and I experience his presence even more deeply.  It’s not like I hear words or see visions.  It’s more like what Mother Teresa once said when asked by a TV reporter (I think it was Tom Brokaw) about how she spoke with God in prayer.  ‘I don’t say anything,’ she said, ‘I just listen.’  The reporter then asked, ‘Well, what does God say to you then?’  To which the beautiful nun replied, ‘He doesn’t say anything.  He just listens.’ 

If you don’t understand what that means, I don’t know if I can explain it to you.  All I can do is encourage you to try it out for yourself and see what happens.  I trust you will find it wonderful. 

In any event, my spiritual practices have taken me into such spaces, where all else fades away and I simply rest in the presence of God.  It doesn’t happen every time.  Spiritual practice doesn’t work like that.  To borrow a phrase from Henri Nouwen, often, ‘as soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree.’  I’m still learning, and I suppose that I will always battle my discursive mind. 

But sometimes…

I’ll enter a time of silence, or take a walk in the woods, or contemplate an experience of sacred memory (and all memory is sacred), or practice Lectio Divina, or engage in some other practice, and fall into a state I can only call grace.  And sometimes, the felt presence of God emerges from the fog in ways my discursive mind cannot possibly explain.

And somehow, for reasons I cannot fully explain, I have discovered that when I leave such space, poems emerge.  I don’t know where they come from.  They just come.  They seem to emerge from the cloud, from my experience of God’s presence.  Perhaps it is that when a person touches their Creator, they cannot help but create. 

The poet Jane Hirshfield says, ‘one reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world…poetry is the release of something previously unknown into the visible.’  Yeah.  I think it’s something like that.  Somehow, when I emerge from the cloud, I do so having discovered something, something I didn’t know existed, a thought, a feeling, a part of who I most deeply am.  And when I go to journal about the experience, words emerge in a form that leaves my discursive mind behind, that is, in the form of poetry that just flows from the deepest recesses of my soul.  I don’t think much as I write the words that emerge.  Again, they just come, making visible something I previously had not known to exist, something that was always there. 

I honestly don’t know if my poems are good or bad.  I suspect that discriminating poetry aficionados scoff, snicker, or worse, at my paltry attempts.   I honestly don’t care.  The only thing that matters is that my poems are real to me.  They reflect the deepest parts of myself, the parts that reflect my truest self, the parts that are most in touch with God, the parts I want to reflect more genuinely in the whole of my life. 

They are my heart’s prayers. 

So, whenever one appears on this blog, I invite you to make of them what you will.  I hope that at least some of them have been, or will be, meaningful to you.  And that perhaps they will inspire you to seek God’s presence as well, and discover, well, whatever it is that God wishes you to discover. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Mary’s Oil

A Meditation on Mark 14:1-9

I’m not going to stop evil. 

Not entirely.

I mean, who ever did?

It’s like perpetual motion,

a machine that won’t stop.

A devouring, raging brute,

clawing its way from age to age. 

I read the signs, my heart flutters

to history’s latest frenzy. 

Things fall apart, as Yeats observed. 

All I can do is break my flask,

offer my libation,

proffer my resistance,

pour out my love,

as small and meaningless

as these may seem. 

But at least He will know.

At least the fragrance

will fill the room –

if only for a moment. 

What good will it possibly do? 

Perhaps no more than a fleeting respite. 

Or, perhaps, by God’s grace,

all the good in the world.    

Time will tell. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Dark Sunrise

I rose before first light

to behold the sunrise

on the morning after

a drenching winter rain.

But the sky was darkened

by long trains of clouds,

racing across the heavens

on stacked parallel tracks

as if to keep a schedule.

So I did not see the sun rise.

But I did see her light.

And a kettle of vultures

shaking off their slumber

to spread their wings and take

possession of the skies.

I heard the dark eyed junco,

with his feathered cousins,

the wren, sparrow, and jay,

battling the morning cardinal

for supremacy in song.

I heard the roosters crowing,

calling the monks to Lauds,

if any could be found, and

felt the breath of a new day

filling my lungs with glory.

I did not see the sun rise,

But she rose just the same.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Benefits of the Singularity: An Essay

Name: Donald Zuckerberg

Date: January 24, 16 A.O.A.

Class: 8th Grade

Subject: History

Teacher: Musk Avatar 3000

Location: Subterranean Station 775

Essay Topic: Benefits of the Singularity

It’s the year 16 A.O.A. (After Our Ascension), or, for the Neo-Luddite’s who insist on using the old Gregorian calendar, 2052, and there has never been a better time to be alive!

True enough, the scorching temperatures at the surface have forced everyone to live either underground, as I do, or on a Blue Origin Satellite Station (at least those of us who can afford it).  But the stunning simultaneous achievement of Artificial Super Intelligence, Biometric engineering, Neuro-Nanotechnology and the perfection of gene manipulation techniques in the year zero (aka ‘The Event’) has, among other blessings, brought an end to the indignity of labor (aside from the writing of this essay) and enabled the entire human race (at least those of us who can afford it) to enjoy unlimited amounts of leisure time.  What we used to call ‘work’ is now taken care of, here below, by the lesser drones of our AI overlords, and, on the surface, by those unfortunate humans who, probably as a result of either laziness or stupidity (or a combination of both) foolishly refused any and all of the many available biometric implants, genetic improvements or positronic enhancements.  For those of us here below, or way up above, life has never been better!

But by far the greatest gift of our age is the gift of immortality (at least for those who can afford it).  Long Before I was born, when people’s bodies wore out, people would just…die!  Can you believe it!   Now, we can extend human biological life for decades, all the way up to the age of 125!  And when a person’s body wears out, we just download their brain data to our Advanced Afterlife Machines (AAMs)! From there, people can live on and continue to interact with their friends, family, and world in digital form forever.  This is our new heaven! In the words of that ancient trumpeter and balladeer Louis Armstrong, ‘What a Wonderful World!’

Nowhere have we been more blessed by these developments than in the field of politics. In the old days, we had things called ‘elections.’   Our AI overlords, and our long serving President, Donald J. Trump, praise be unto his name, often remind us  of  how horrible those days were.  Before The Event, our Lord and Savior had to fight all sorts of unjust systems to stay in power.  There was an alternative political party, if you can believe it, that once threatened, and even interrupted, his reign!   In 2028, four years after he had wrested it back with the help of the Founding Tech Overlords (including, of course, my Dad), he needed the help of something the ancients called a ‘Supreme Court’ to allow him to hold office for a third term, and in 2032, he and the Blessed and Eternal Party (BEP, formerly known as the GOP), had to formally abolish the wicked and nasty Constitution (something they had already by and large achieved by 2026) to hold on to power.   But since the event, we have never had to worry about elections again!  When the year Zero came around, they were simply called off, and our Lord’s brain was simply uploaded into the first AAM, from which he has ruled and reigned ever since!  Now he is everywhere!  Watching everyone’s every move! Sharing the joyful meanderings of his very stable genius mind with the masses, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Oh, how we have benefited from his surpassing wisdom! Thanks be to God (that’s him now) and to the armies of AI Droids who enforce his will at every level of society!

The future is just so bright now (especially on the surface).  There is talk these days of uploading all of us into the AAM in a few years, decades before our projected natural deaths, that we might live whole and free, interfacing with the essence of our eternal leader and all the greats who went before us (at least those who could afford to be so uploaded).  Aside from the obvious benefits, this will save us all from the daily risk we face of having our lives cut short by all the flying bullets fired from the plethora of automatic and semi-automatic firearms that exist in our society (everyone owns them, even in the space stations, they kept that part of the Constitution of course) or by the marauding unwashed hordes from the surface who raid our tunnels from time to time in search of food and water (thank the Lord and Savior for his army of defense droids!).  

Until that glorious upload comes, I will grow and mature as I continue to receive implants and genetic modification treatments to help me endure the radiation that somehow manages to seep down into even the lowest levels of our subterranean paradise, rest assured that my well-being will always be first and foremost on the mind of our great leader. 

There has simply never been a better time to be alive! 

A Forest Trail

Is there anything more lovely

than the sight of a forest trail,

when you are standing at its head

where it stretches to who knows where?

More beautiful still are those that

rise in uneven stairs fashioned

by rangy and gnarled tree roots,

inviting you to step up and in

to wherever they wish to take you.

Proceed at your peril dear traveler,

for beyond the sylvan horizon

are treasures beyond imagining

that will make your life seem dull

despite its urban complexity.

Once you touch the face of God

your heart will burn forever.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Mercy

As snow falls tenderly to earth,

so mercy alights on stony hearts,

softening their terrain.

Or so I would like to believe.

I saw a gentle prophet

speak words of mercy,

words of grace,

as truth sprung forth in love

spoken on behalf of the vulnerable

who lie in the crosshairs of a Caesar

whom, I must confess, I despise.

Her pacific tone reminded me

that even he needs mercy,

as do we all.

O God of mercy

let your snow fall freshly,

to tenderize his heart of stone

for the sake of the vulnerable.

For his sake too.

Amen.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Inspired by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea to Donald Trump at the January 21, 2025 Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral.