Running

As a veteran of the church scene, I am well steeped in the metaphors used to talk about things of God and the life of faith. One particular phrase that seems to have significant staying power suggests that following Jesus involves “walking in the footsteps of the master.”

For the longest time, I associated this phrase with the famed poem “Footprints In the Sand” as if Jesus only ever walked slowly – methodically – purposefully. But this, like many of my images of Jesus, is somewhat inaccurate.

The Jesus I read about in scripture is also a runner.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son as a way of introducing people to the idea of how God pursues his children. The story ends with the father running to meet the errant son. Hardly the picture of a meandering God.

Even his followers appear to be more like Frontrunner 10K clinic members than slow moving couch potatoes. They ran to meet Jesus, they ran to the empty tomb, they ran to tell each other that Jesus was coming and ran to get ahead of the crowds and get the best seat in the closest sycamore tree. Even the soldier who offered the dying Christ some vinegar is reported to have run about trying to find the right stick and sponge.

The reason I have been mulling over this notion of Jesus and his followers as runners is that I too have become a runner.

It started simply as a desire to shed an extra pound or two and to stave off the genetic disposition to early death caused by cancer and heart disease.

That was three years, two half marathons, three 10Ks, two 8Ks and close to 800 kilometers ago.

Someone recently asked me why I run. It still has something to do with the health benefits. It also presents my wife and I a chance to spend scheduled time together in the middle of chaotic personal timetables.

But lately I have begun to think about what I have learned as a runner because the lessons have been many. And the more things I realize I have grasped during my fledgling running career, the more I see parallels between running and my spiritual life.

Lesson One: It is easier to run if your coach runs with you.
I have recently started another running clinic in preparation for an upcoming half marathon. But unlike previous clinics, I have noticed that this one is markedly different because our run leader/coach actually laces up his shoes and runs with us. Michael never asks us to do something that he is not prepared to do himself. He sweats with us. He runs laps of the track with us. He feels the same heat, experiences the same thirst, and gets the same blisters as the rest of us. The only difference between him and the rest of us is that he is there to lead…to be the example…to demonstrate proper technique, form and posture. He leads. We follow because he is wiser than us. We follow because he cares about our success. And we follow because he has earned our respect by being with us even though his sheer athleticism could have him competing with elite runners. Yet he remains with us…the slow, the awkward, the ones trying to become like him.

When it hurts and when there are still 8K left to go – most of it uphill – there is something profoundly comforting about looking towards the front of the pack of runners and seeing Michael – showing us by example what it means to endure and showing us the way home.

“The Word laced up a pair of Nikes and stepped onto the track to run laps with us.”

Lesson Two: Endurance is not instant.
When I started running my ego wanted to finish first every time. Sadly, my legs and lungs had other ideas. I quickly learned that cardio fitness is built over time. Each lap of the track, each series of tempo runs and each wind sprint contributes to an increased ability to perform at my body’s best. There is no single workout that will make me stronger, faster, or more agile. Instead, the benefits of each run build on the previous sweat-filled odessy that acclimatizes the body to working hard.

Getting strong is a process not an event.

This has been important as I consider faith in the early 21st century. We seek our instant gratification. We want good feelings, prosperity, acceptance and love instantly. We sometimes think that placing our faith in Jesus or joining a church will solve all the problems that ail us and that life will be blessed until the rapture.

That is until we encounter the next bump in the road.

The Bible has much to say about endurance and most of it is about enduring bad situations and hard things.

The power to endure does not materialize instantly. Rather, it is the byproduct of one workout at a time spread out over a lifetime. And of learning to trust that the training already accomplished will be enough to tackle the next incline.

Lesson Three: Slow and steady is better than fast and injured
Last night’s running clinic speaker is a kinesiologist and physiotherapist – very important functions for people who run. His point was simple – most people start out running too hard and too fast. And then they wonder why they get sidelined with injuries that not only damage their bodies, but often cripple the enthusiasm for running altogether.

I grew up in a faith tradition that stressed the radically transformed life. One minute you were a “poor, wretched and blind” sinner. But say a prayer and you were given the keys to the Kingdom, a robe of white and a crown of gold. There was little mention of the life or journey of faith. It was all about going out hard and fast - joining studies, choirs, worship teams, street theater troupes, and summer counselor programs. It was as though the life of faith became the life of frenzy. But people get tired when they go too hard too fast – and fatigue increases the chance of injury.

Frustration. Resentment. Bitterness. Pressure from within and without. Unrealistic expectations. Loss of confidence. Loss of vision. Loss of love. Depression. Walking away.

The antidote to injury is slow and steady. Always building, increasing, pushing…but in moderation and under the watch of a coach who is more interested in seeing us complete the race than flaming out too early.


Lesson Four: Running in a group produces better results than running alone.
Running can be a lonely thing. For a slower runner like me, the last 5K of a half-marathon often involve long stretches of only me, pavement, and the occasional roadside encourager who is packing up their lawn chair because the steady stream of runners has been reduced to a trickle of the weary.

Running alone is hard. There is nobody to pace against. There is nobody to motivate or encourage you. There is only the sound of heavy breaths, shoes scuffing on pavement, and U2 on the iPod trying to be convincing about it being a beautiful day.

But running with people is easier. There is a comradare shared among runners that involves recognizing the hard work of complete strangers – a wave of the hand, a tip of the running hat, an encouraging word. Running with others makes the road seem softer and the road home not so long. It makes the task less daunting as the self-talk focuses on “if they can do it…so can I.”

Running is like the life of faith in this way…although faith is a solitary thing, it is never meant to be done alone. Or as Jim Wallis (one of my favorite writers) summarizes – Faith is personal…but it is never private.

I wonder how many times the disciples wanted to give up. Step off the track, take off their shoes and head for the concession stand. I wonder if the times in between the mountaintops, the walking on water, and the mass feedings were punctuated by frustration, inadequacy, and fatigue. And if they were on their own odds are they might have drifted away back to their nets and flocks.

But experiencing things together – in a group – makes the impossible seem possible. It provides the motivation to see things through, the encouragement to endure through the hard times, and guarantees someone is there to share in the joy of hard fought accomplishments.

No wonder Jesus instituted the church. I think its because he knew the power of running clinics.

Daryl T

Coming Next...Lessons Five through Eight

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Skunk Hollow and Uncle Hugh's Fish Bowl

Norma Jean and I moved to the island and into grannies beach glass bungalow far away from the prairie and the foul temper of my father. There I met my first and truest friend, a dog named Dingo. Dingo was some kind of terrier, the kind that skips and skitters through it's life always managing to find a kitchen floor or vacant pavement to tap dance along. I can't say I cuddled Dingo or fell in love with him but, you could say he was plain and comforting . In a time of high surrealism, where all the colours were a little too bright, he was perfectly ordinary. It was my mother's fairytale family that carried all the richness and brilliance and even out dazzled the glass bungalow they were all like glass prisms and they all resembled movie stars .

My grandmother Lillian with her porcelain skin and flaming red hair was Tahlula Bankhead, her husband Art was definitely Humphry Bogart, uncle Bill was Ernest Hemmingway, Norma Jean was of course playing herself, Uncle Jim was a ballroom dancer and a collector of pistols and he was very Paul Newman. Uncle Bud was a 1950's comic book hero only he wasn't any Captain Marvel, he was more the quintessential Clark Kent - khaki pants and horned rimmed glasses a man of his generation and that left Uncle Hughey - the dark horse, Uncle Hugh's face bore the scars of an inner crucifiction and sorrow. Hughey was the drunk, he was Montgomery Clift without the big Hollywood break. Uncle Hugh got no respect because he was a lush. And his brother from the Captain Marvel magazine hoisted him out of the gutter on skid row and rushed him into rehab every decade or so. Uncle Bud thought that his brother drank because he had a love affair with the booze, he didn't understand that Uncle Hugh was isolated and lost or maybe he did . There is no halfway house for isolated and lost.

My mother's name sake Marilyn Munroe had made a film called the Misfits and in the movie more than anything a pathos emerged and despite their best efforts using all their celebrity my mother's family was hung with a veil of depression and there was no Clark Gable around to show them how to not give a damn. They were overc-ommers and had all risen out of the ashes, that is all but Uncle Hugh. They were survivors of an early childhood growing up in a very funky landscape called Skunk Hollow in East Vancouver. I asked my mother one day why they called it Skunk Hollow and she said because the only thing that would grow there were skunk cabbages. The air reeked of them in the steaming heat of the summers.

Bogey drank all the money he made from his machinist trade and the children seldom had enough food. The ironies were piled thick and high for they were hungry kids and got to smell the bog of inedible skunk cabbages cooking all summer long in the blistering heat. Tahlula sharpened her knives in their scabby kitchen because if she'd had a dollar she could make a marvellous meal out of it. She had fabulous culinary skills.

At some point Bogey put down the bottle and took a look around his family and noticed the scaring his lawless appetite for drink had done . Finally Tahlula went to the market for fresh meat and poultry and took to buying her vegetables from an old man in a very old truck who came right round to the door. Tahlula bought rhinestone cigarette holders to smoke her home made rollies in and made salmon loaf, and black bottom pudding, pork roasts and apple pies. There was Neapolitan ice cream and scalloped potatoes made with evaporated milk, and real Irish stew. The table was groaning everyday with cream pies, and salads of every description and in the end all the movie stars amazed each other with their conservative successes and their good lives, all except Uncle Hugh.

Uncle Hugh was a vagrant of the most romantic sort. All of my mother's family were good looking and they all resembled movie stars and Uncle Hugh was no exception. He had a lustrous head of auburn hair and a soulful silence that easily upstaged the boisterous performances of his siblings. They were all good dancers and moved around their individual dance floors with an easy grace in lush costumes of tweed and silk, cotton twill and organza. They became what they wanted to be, despite a father who drank all their innocence. My grandfather was the downtown equivalent of Humphrey Bogart riding the little ferry from North Van to East Hastings of a Saturday morning sipping a cocktail of methyl alcohol and milk on the ten minute ride, and by the time the tiny boat docked he was loaded. And on those occasions, those appalling Saturdays, my mother would bring along Clark Kent and Paul Newman. It was acting of the mannerist school and Uncle Hugh was not in the cast, but rather it seemed he got to be the boom boy or sound engineer. He had no role to play, Uncle Hughey never got in front of the camera.

My mother a small girl herself held the plump hands of her movie star brothers tiny bit part players though they were and followed their teetering dad through the scariest part of downtown Vancouver at week's end each and every week. Norma Jean never let on that any of them ever met with foul play left as they were to hang around the back door of whatever drinking hole Bogey staggered out of. She said they were always safe.

Eventually all the little stars made good, Clark Kent got a degree from Oregon State University, Paul Newman got one from UBC and Ernest Hemmingway developed a love for cats and took over the family business. Norma Jean took very good care with her appearance and married my father a real scene stealer. He was a man's man he had a part in all the best clichés and he was brilliant and finally Norma Jean had deserted him to his petty genius.

On that faithful day it was Ernest Hemmingway who came to gather us from my curious father and his up and coming lifestyle. Uncle Bill loaded up his green station wagon that day and we left while my father was at work and none the wiser. I was a little girl and an accomplished stealer of ice cream and was violently scooping the stuff out of the bucket when Hemmingway bound in the kitchen that day in the early morning causing me to drop my spoon and tip over the stool. As we drove my mother let me sit in the front seat with her brother and I was afraid to look at him for the shame I carried at being discovered at stealing the strawberry ripple. Marilyn had no shame and she never looked back.

Uncle Hughey married no one and realized no ambition. Instead he was the disenfranchised, the rejected, and the embarrassment. Where the others grew character Uncle Hugh grew a sponge to sop up the rivers of cheap wine he drank to take the edge off.

Midway through life Humphrey Bogart discovered the secret to real happiness and began to build a credit rating. His aim was to buy a family bungalow to welcome in his children and grandchildren - it was a tour de force in denial. The beach glass bungalow came with one bedroom and my grandfather built a second one in the form of an extension off the back of the little home. He liked to fly by the seat of his pants and used ingenuity to build the new section as opposed to a silly old foundation any common builder might start with. After some time the second bedroom began to sag a bit and moisture crept in. It was meant for guests and it was the room that Norma Jean and I stayed in when we escaped the heavy restrictions of my father. I would lay awake at night in that room black as pitch and smelling like freshly mowed green grass, the lawn teasing it's way up through the floor joists, waiting for my mother to come home. First came the acrid aroma of her cigarette and then I could see the pilot light on the end of her smoke signalling that Marilyn Munroe was coming in for a landing. It was there when the moment hung and I would lose time and space and fly to the end of that cigarette like Tinker Bell and make myself like nothingness, and pray for fairytale tomorrows.

Bogey built a guest house in the back yard for Hughey, it was only big enough for a single bed and no bigger. It was a tiny building with a big picture window and a flower box and granddad had added some ornamentation that made the whole thing look like a ginger bread house come fish bowl. Uncle Hugh would navigate his minimal quarters in full view of the good actors in the family, that way he could be watched as though he were on television. Here Uncle Hugh was kept until like a lemming he responded to a mysterious call and hurried away to the skid row of Vancouver to live out his father's legacy.

The summer I arrived at Tahlula's and Bogeys' bungalow seemed like the hottest and brightest of my lifetime. When the sun hit the house the effect was dazzling and hypnotic, the multicoloured shards of broken glass mixed into the mortar became rubies, sapphires diamonds and peridot. The yard was full of hybrid fruit trees, 2 cherries, 2 plums, a winter king apple, 2 pear trees, blackberries and raspberries, all tangled up and rubbing up against each other in the back yard. Tahlulah had a clothesline darting across the backyard one end off the beguiling cottage the other attached to Montgomery Clift's fish bowl cabana in the back yard. My grandmother seldom went outside, she was too pale and cool and didn't like the warmth of the sun on her skin and would teeter precariously on the end of the imaginary back porch and gingerly string her delicates out on the clothesline, the ash from her home made smoke free-falling off the end of her cigarette holder. The front yard of the house was overwhelming, roses and rhodos, giant daisys, and willow trees. Granddad had a double lot and had also bought the house next door with it's big lot and huge willow tree. No one trimmed the willows and their graceful limbs would woo little children in under a dreamy canopy of cinnabar green. There we'd lay on our backs and let our imaginations fly up through the ladders of branches up, up in to the great blue beyond. The roots of the great willow had bumped their way up through the green grass making cradles in the earth. And in that wholesome way children have of ransacking their environment we'd tear the slim branches off that swept the ground and make blankets and costumes out of them and so there we would lie wrapped in the arms of the giant willow and laying in the cradle she'd provided, and we'd dream in safety. I grew to love the music the tree made as the winds would shift, parts of the tree sounded a melody as the leaves moved in the breeze. On occasion in the summer a very windy day came around and I would run away to my secret place under the willow cocooned in a blanket of gentle arms and listen to a full orchestra of the green kind.

It was always me who went to the freezer with Montgomery Clift for the Neapolitan ice cream and on occasion I would walk with him along the railway tracks not far from our house. On these meandering silent trudges both of us sharing his blanket of sorrow, I felt a peculiar initiation taking place. It was my first introduction to the long silences where despondency lives, the catatonia of despair. This was the road in that Uncle Hughey had made and so this is how I first experienced that dreamy landscape, a lost soul at home. It was all in the eyes of Monty Clift the look of a ravaged spirit.

And then one day Uncle Hugh would just disappear and then he'd come around when he was short of cash. Soon his visits were non existent as the booze ate him up. Many years went by before any mention was made of my dark horse uncle. Finally, I'd gone to see Uncle Hugh because Clark Kent and Ernest Hemmingway said he was not long for this world and I felt relief for my Uncle Hughey and went to the halfway house to see him off. My mother and her celebrity brothers wore their yoke of tragedy like a lovely waltz when they got together branded as they were with that soulful kind of grace.

Uncle Hugh wore his grace like it belonged to someone else, it seemed to me everything he had always belonged to someone else, or what he had got taken away from him. He was teased mercilessly and the little movie stars liked to push him around. Then Hughey turned inward and so my mother Norma Jean says. Tahlula was a bit of a sorceress in her way and liked to air her bitterness and rage out by telling terrifying truisms to small children. Hughey sopped up the mess without complaining. Tahlula always took the call when Uncle Hugh phoned in from skid row with one of his stories and she'd quietly go to the drawer where the guilty money was kept to send Hughey off more cash.

One thing I know for sure that hearts broke for Uncle Hugh in the end and he'd said his good byes in the quiet way.

Norma Jean has only Paul Newman's hand to hold now, as the curtain came down some time ago for Montgomery Clift, Ernest Hemmingway, Clark Kent, Tahlula Bankhead, and Humphry Bogart. Heaven is a cool cool place called Skunk Hollow, where Tahlula has real gems in her cigarette holder and the cabbages grow tasty and big and there are beach glass bungalows for everyone.

Rhonda S

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My “Place” Persons tribute parody song

(sung to the tune of “Hey there Delilah” by ‘plain white “t’s”)

We all know a girl
Who lives in Victoria city,
She says our prayers and leads communion
And always looks so pretty
yes it’s true,
She sees right through to you
There are so few

She does ballet, jumps around and she likes cheese,
She loves everyone she knows
And is so good at saying please
When the time arise(s)
She wears her soul inside her eyes
It’s no surprise…

OHHHHH it’s Janet Doherty, OHHHH it’s Janet Doherty…
OOHHHHH it’s Janet Doherty, OOhhhh it’s Janet Doherty
She looks so pretty…….

We all know a guy
Who lives in Saanich city
He talks a lot and says big words
And often is quite witty
When it’s due
He thinks he might be smarter than you
It’s prob’bly true

He loves his wife and kids
God, lacrosse and hockey
It might not be in that same order
‘cause it’d make his life too rocky
Be his demise
He is a little disorganized
It’s no surprise

OOOOHHHHH it’s Pastor Randy, OHHHH it’s pastor Randy,
OOOOHHHH he loves Philosophy, Ohhhhh it’s Pastor Randy
He loves Theology…….

Bridge:
There are so many who work so well
At keeping us from going to hell
Every Sunday they give all their heart and soul….
They lead worship, teach and pray
Watch our kids without any pay
Good community is their only goal…..
They go to meetings without any fuss
Organizing stuff to include all of us
Even though it takes a lot of their time
They hardly get a dime……

OHHHHHHHH it’s Dr. James Prette
OOHHHHH it’s Jason Nassi
OHHHHH it’s either a Kingsley
OOHHH it’s Simon Prittie
It’s Penny or Kristy
It’s Janet Doherty
It’s anyone who ends with “ee”…
Anyone who ends with “ee”…

OHH , OH OH oh oh OOOOOOOoh oh OH OHHH, OH OH….
OHH , OH OH oh oh OOOOOOOoh oh OH OHHH, OH OH….

OHHH It’s Pastor Randy
he loves orthodoxy……

Launa Kremler

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Hear My Reply

Song fills the air:
A new melodious song,
An attempt to quench.
Your deep soft voice
Whispers to my soul,
  “Come and be baptized.
  Hear a new song,
  Leave the sea behind;
  I am the jungle.”

Chaos! Hear my reply.

The jungle cannot still
This melody of mine;
Instead, united as one,
We can joyfully sing
From nature’s awesome song.
My spirit soul sings
The song of the
Sea; the elapsing waves
Create my song’s melody.

Miles P

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Medusame

I could see him out of the corner of my eye. he was impossibly tall, grey ash all in a big sheet, like yesterdays news. moody. The breeze would kick his hips out when a hot burst of air gathered and stirred a tropical heat around the room. He smelled smoky and sweet, faint hot breath of jasmine. It was an old smell, something lost. I sensed he could see me and see me for what I was, and in the condition I'd been left.

The pythons shifted their weight.

I'd seen the snakes in my hair for the first time when I was five, and I pretended not to see.

The house was lurching and decrepit. The one my granny Viola shared with her brood of strange sons, it was a house of wax oddities. There was no light in the house and granny liked to keep the whole thing wrapped in plastic. My mother left me there while she worked, she'd married one of the sons.

Viola was a women who wore nothing but shades of purple, fully costumed everyday to accentuate her name and the creepy light of the wax house with its' blue TV screen light, illuminating two generations of frightening men.

Viola, in her mauve house dress with matching pinny intricately embroidered and immaculately ironed, Viola with her woolly mauve cardigans and the long braids done everyday and wrapped across the top of her head, one two and three times. It was a latticework of hair, shades of white and grey forming a steely crown, she was the queen of the stardust ballroom. It was a dance floor where no one ever shook a leg. Viola worked like a man in her wax museum of a house, her boys good for nothing, she had a favourite, though and by comparison unobtrusive and harmless even kind.

Uncle Mike, had a gardening shed where the sharps were kept sharp and artfully displayed along with two varieties of garden hose. Uncle mikes' garden was a Louisiana swamp, a copse of buggered fruit trees dripping with caterpillars . The floor of the garden nothing but deep furrows like the wrinkles on his face, my grandmother's face. The yard was Swiss chard, scarlet runner beans, potatoes and it was raining caterpillars. The ground was soaked with tobacco spit. I asked him for a pinch one day and he gave it to me, I was five. Uncle Mike also had homemade wine brewing in the basement and liked to give me some in a juice glass mornings to start my day, and then out into the dark garden we'd go. It was on one of those mornings I first noticed the snake. I could feel delicate lips kissing my brow the hiss of a wicked smile and I cocked my head a little and out of the corner of my eye the snake winked. Uncle Mike and I went to the shed for the tool he'd use to claw the stones and rocks back from the chard, dead bodies of naughty caterpillars heads smashed in, guts ripped out. It was on a morning in the swamp this hellish garden I shouted, "Hey Uncle Mike, there's a snake in my hair!". I gave it a yank, nope wouldn't budge, the snake liked it's new home and liked it fine. I could see the python the knowing smile, perfect ease - it was a dancer. Uncle Mike blushed the colour of cabernet and pretended not to see the snake - ignored me when I spoke. I'd said a bad thing. And then I could feel it, heart sinking shame rising, the snake coiled tighter around my skull. When I looked in the mirror I didn't see the angelic child with white blond hair, I saw hair out of place - a funny film of a girl. A life passing in celluloid. It was an act to be endured living this little girl's life, the dark secret circling around my head setting the knots in my hair.

That first summer, was the season of the caterpillar harvest, and the snake in my hair, a tiny white python to match the platinum curls of my head. And there I was this glowing creation standing in the deep furrows of the black soil where nothing would grow, because it was too dark and there was no sunlight allowed in. This was Medusa's garden.

Viola understood my desperation to rescue the dying caterpillars. Underneath the suffering fruit trees they would rain cats and dogs. The caterpillars decked out in their best faux fur would squirm in panic awaiting their fate in the form of a gardening tool, a claw raked over their backs, heads ripped mercilessly from their bodies and squashed unceremoniously under the clod hoppers of my Uncle Mike. It was a tragedy and a disaster of certain proportions to the girl with snakes in her hair and granny Viola gave her glass jars to put the caterpillars in to save them from their cruel fate. And forgot to tell her to poke holes in the lids. Soon all the caterpillars were loaded into the glass jars and displayed along the rail of the old back porch. After two days they had formed a stew in the oasis of calm I'd created in their glass houses the sun glinting off the torrid display of dead bodies. Undeterred a fresh generation of caterpillars was already snacking on the fugitive green of viola's dank garden plot - this time i poked the holes.

The snake smiled impishly as I worked, it knew something i didn't.

The others, the unviolated and safe would let their eyes land on the girl long enough to count to ten and then they had to look away, convinced she had the devil. That dirty secret. No one touched the girl, careful not to get within an arms length in case they would brush up against her. They wanted to ward off her advances , soon more snakes came and they grew there in the crown of her white blond hair, feeding on her shy smile.

She knew as she grew older the fairytales weren't real, no Santa Claus no Cinderella, no yellow brick road and no snakes in her hair. Her eyes were her enemies - she couldn't trust them.

This was an alternate reality and one she did not choose. The little girl had a hand mirror from Viola and she used to sit on the red vinyl chair in the kitchen dangle her feet and tilt the mirror in such a way as to take away the ground beneath her. A trick she learned while her legs dangled and her head swam.

It was the hydra, it was the black heart of Davey Jones locker. Medusa dove to the depths and took the pythons. They loved to swim. They craved the lack of oxygen and the hiss of strangled emotions.

Then the girl grew into a woman one day, carefully trained as no one’s lover, no one’s mother. She smiled and waved anyway, heart as sweet as a moon pie, large as the wooden roller coaster at the P.N.E. Her boyfriend took her on the ride 7 times, trying to give her emotion: crying, screaming, laughing, swearing. Her composure was in tact and the snakes were comfortable, content. She felt dizzy, a detached mysterious lost feeling of alarm somewhere in her gut, way down low. Medusa still kept her garden, dank and crawling. Medusa laughed lightly, she was beautiful and she new it and yet hideous, par boiled in solitude. Time meant nothing, she knew she would live forever that was her promise - an eternity with an itchy scalp.

Then came a day past the bloom of youth the Medusa looked in the mirror and saw the snakes, by this time she new she was crazy, they'd told her so. She felt alive now, rejection was the drug, an ugly obsession - she laughed out loud. Where'd those damn snakes come from, they were kind of pretty the way they would kiss her brow and hiss in her ear, ‘you got what you deserved', and she smiled at the revelation. This must be the truth and felt relief.

As she was looking at the reflection of herself in a plate glass window, admiring how the snakes could make themselves look like curls and coil in delightful shapes around the crown of her head she noticed the shape of a man. He looked like a spirit and he smelled of musk and oranges. She could feel him in the air and it grew heavy and a mist fell -the whiff of jasmine. Then he saw her, saw her hair with the snakes. The woman blushed and stammered, and he laughed a low laugh, like he'd seen this kind of thing before, like it didn't matter to him. When he spoke she heard every word and tried to understand what he said, his voice was like music and his words laid across her soul like myrrh poured from an alabaster flask. The snakes, grew intoxicated, the jasmine perfume loosened them up. Their eyes lolled up in their heads and they fell to the women's feet coiled like Uncle Mike's gardening hose.

Rhonda S

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The Beautiful Broken

Nonetheless,
         Emerging
From
The

   Brea- king

                To

The
Beautiful



             Bro- ken

Miles P

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Unconditional Love

Note: This piece spun out of Galatians and the Love Nest.

Unconditional love makes me think of angels, and not the mystical kind. Not the invisible ones who watch over us somehow through the bars of Orion. No these are tall and muscular, mighty, with gold or silver tipped wings. Wings with very fluffy feathers, and their robes are full and rich and yet light as air like chiffon or silk. They have beatific smiles with faces that remind us of our grannies or sweethearts.

The angels I think of when dreaming about unconditional love are also the plump Cherubim and Putti with creamy skin and silly smiles and yes some have tiny fiddles and little harps. They wear nothing but an unmade nappy that floats inexplicably over the angels' private parts, and they lit you pick them up and cuddle them like little children. These are the angels I imagine when I think of unconditional love.

Then I like to think of divine beings at a party. And all the angels are there: Cherubim, Seraphim and Putti are crowded together on the same fat cloud, milling around in confusion and mayhem. It's the Putti who are the mischief makers - they get emotional and the Cherubim are followers not leaders. Seraphim are naturally aloof and a bit vain. No rain, no wind, no biting cold, just a nip in the air, the aurora borealis not making much sense either, just sitting on the horizon, big blocks of light and colour, great walls of it, winking and fading on and off like fancy hotels. And the aurora makes noise too, like flute music and the angels pay no attention. They prefer their games - ping pong, and volley ball, and twister. The angels pay no attention to the music. They all gather up there like it was some kind of holiday and moved as they are by the breath of God they don't really know what holiday it is - why they are celebrating.

After they've gathered and teased each other a while someone gets the barbeque going and God sends over a platter of manna to do up, the kind that tastes good with sauce on it. Oh yes, God has a party when the sweet smelling incense of unconditional love wafts across His desk, makes Him set his pen down and close the book a moment on prayers that need to be answered. He gets philosophical, just a little, God that is. The angels know how to party and don't really care what the occasion is, and after the meal - God's sacrament and special communion meal with the Seraphim, Cherubim and Putti - they dance.

God and the angels dance around up there in the clouds to the music of the aurora borealis when one of the saints or sinners gripped by gravity puts out without expecting to get it back.

Rhonda S

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The Concession of beauty

If there was a moment in our brief conception we call life, that eclipses all other revelations its this, that beauty is the most revelant of all things humanity appreciates. I have found such beauty in things beyond the average scope of thought. Most would contend that beauty in itself is a man made creation, from the clothes we wear, to the bobbles which hang so perfectly from our extremeties. But there is a scope byond, a God given, Devine manufactured beautiful immaculate moving beauty. I once with a friend took an expedition to a waterfall which fed a stream, the snow had fallen, a blanket of purity to cover the scars of the earth. It must have taken more then a few millenia to carve its way through the rock face which it fell from, the spray from the water acting like a catalyst, a motion of molecules and atoms. I looked up and realized, that there werent many things that could compare to its ireverant perfection, water flowing in between the borrowed rubber boots i wore, to me the stream represented life, and the waterfall God. Forgotten, but always there, the Nourishment to sustain us through the unending pattern of exsistance. Beautifull and powerfull. We are taught in this society that things such as this fail in comparison to the life of greed we are equipped for in our young lives, that monetary gains and momentary pleasure that assist us in going through a colourless wilderness, full of envy and oasis's of deceit are more enthralling. We forget that christ was concieved in a moment of beauty, his life represented the extraordinary, a message which would change the world, and sometimes stain a beautifull painting with pitifull adaptation. There reaches a moment for all when beauty becomes relevant, because without it, where is passion or love, or compassion, or God... Some of the most beautfill creation was born of an imperfect canvas, Scars on a rockface carved to an imperfect Beauty.

Matthew J

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