the ears of my ears

In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents,which bit the people so that many of them died.Then the people came to Moses and said,“We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.Pray the LORD to take the serpents away from us.”So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,“Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.”Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole,and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. Numbers 21:6-9

I love the imagry of the Old Testament; the garden, the ark, the rainbow, the burning bush, the tower, the dreams and this, the caduceus. I have always wondered where the icon of the medical field came from, that serpant on a pole, and it turns out, from Moses himself. It also turns out, that with a humble heart, we can be healed by the bitter consequences of our darkest side, if we are brave enough to lean into them and look that snake right in the eye.

This week might be a big week; soon I am to meet a person that has recently come into my life through no aspiration of my own. This person has done a heinous thing, a thing truly and really terrible. The thing is a grand slam for the Dark. It's the type of thing that to accomplish it, you would have to be as dark as you could be yourself, with only the absolute minimum of light present in order to execute. To do this thing the person did, you'd need to be dark and it would need to be utterly dark.

I am not afraid of the person. I am not afraid of the thing. But I am anxious about what lies ahead--not only for the person, but for me. When will I begin to understand? What do I need to help? What will happen or who will intervene so that somehow I will summon the wisdom to say or be something that will matter? That will make me an agent of healing and redemption?

I do not know much about the thing and I know less about the person. But I do know it's going to be the roughest, trickiest, most treacherous time of the person's life. And I'm to walk along. I am grateful for what this week will bring and for what last week brought, with every single person I saw giving me energy and courage and love. I need your prayers, to awaken my ears and open my eyes. Don't forget me--it feels like I really am walking into the valley of the shadow....

i thank you God for most this amazing day

e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth

day of life and love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

JBelle

Bellemaison

The 'Kan EWA