long haul..

(Roe, Paul)*

---

The greatest pilgrimage, reserved for each

who’s ever had the chance to live on Earth

(that’s under heavens, over land or sea),

should occupy some time and thought.. since birth…

At least we model it, as Jesus spoke

of having naps or sleep (like ev’ry night).

A portion of each day*, we find each bloke

or sheila loses consciousness, all right?

Then, we are not “in charge”... not “calling shots”;

or if we do, most sane folk will ignore

the words we say. What acts we do are lots

less able to be blessing others, for

we’re not attending well to things around,

not able to participate down here.

That's not to say that no story has found 

us, will not carry us, till we appear

- back here, on waking up again; or else,

as we might learn from this symbol each day, 

- in bigger, smaller, dream-time. Better health’s

an oft repeated blessing either way.

For even this small symbol helps itself

(not meaning on its own, to take away,

but though this life’s a given thing), our health

will often turn within our sleep. We pray

for symbol to be quite fulfilled at last..

To die within a restful sleep seems best

to many folk - that’s even who live fast

and furious. I’m curious to rest.

And I think Paul the row-er ’cross that stream,

(not on his own no more, but) spirit’ed

within the Dreamtime Jesus said had beamed

into this world, will not be really “dead”.

Except to this “ol’ way” where we adore

the spirit of compet’iveness, & “seize”

on what’s not melody; but something for

the sporting field, the game - with boundaries.

Remains - the rest of peace, in hands well proved,

who sides with keeping one’s own word, & trusts

the word of that creative love which rooved

this “home”, protecting little ones of dust.

But not to stop adventures! Not at all!

- to snip that mortal coil - umbillical,

and learn to live quite partnered, standing tall,

and seeing God (which is quite biblical)..

..and knowing him who is, Pa Excellence - 

the biggest Dad-Joker around the place,

this won’t be just an inconvenience*,

but what his life’s equipping him to face.

---

Notes underfoot

)*- another subtitle possibility is "like father, like son"

y* - An eighth (3hrs) to a third (8hrs) of most days, most humans “fall asleep” into unconsciousness. Many have learned to look forward to it, as a time of refreshment.

e* - recalling G. K. Chesterton’s quip that went something like “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” [1]

his life - obviously means “all his life up to (& including) now”; but with Paul there is another metaphorical (& metanarratival) meaning as well; as when his namesake, Jesus Christ’s Apostle (=Ambassador), Paul wrote in the First Century, to a motley crew (including slaves) of new Jesus followers in the provincial Roman town of Colossae: “When Christ, who is your life, appears…” (Col 3:4)

---

1st Draft Audio recording of a reading of the text above.

---

… the Man!

---

Hmm mate... How are things? 

Your boy is suffering some sort of weird “spiritual” attack… please pray… 

Ok, until we get to talk...

---

Oh God, we're asking you to be the God,

and we will be your people on your Earth.

Please do protect this boy from evil's odd

and pow'r-less ways, since he is yours from birth

into the fam'ly of his father who

has given his allegiance to your son.

And so this boy is holy unto you

since he is covered until he's begun

to choose himself, as young man, on your earth.

I think the sooner he takes this on too,

the sooner he is partnered, with new birth

as son himself, well loved, the son of you..

with your eternal life - immortal stuff,

that swallows up our old self that's a prick.

Please grow us up, we can't do it enough

un-partnered on our own. We are too sick.

But healing, by your own design is good;

self-healing bodies, what a lurk to have.

And so we thank you God (just as we should)

and ask you to help us see how to nav-

-i-gate through all these weird things round about. 

Please give the wisdom of creative love

to us to learn to serve, and not to pout

just because we aren't quite wise enough..

Since if we’re partnered with the very one

who keeps the universe existent and

is glad to have a child join in the fun,

there’s heaps we don’t yet need to understand!

---

Dear Robyn.

---

God, help this lady, who is your small child,

to cry as is the right emotion to

express the kind of sadness, grief as styled

by you our God, & Jesus son of you.

And same for Paul, her husband; may they smile

as Jesus did to people whom he met, 

as well as crying loudly in the style 

of prophets of the God we've not seen yet

we love him, 'coz he sources all OUR love, 

and answers all requests as he thinks good.

We trust his wisdom as from far above

our own, which is just sense. And so we should.

And thanks for blessing them together with

the offspring that you gave them, so to more

bring blessing from the heavens to the ear-th

to help embody what we’re put here for.

They never thought they’d live eternally

in mortal bodies, any more than those 

of ante-natal foetuses which be

fed, breathing and excreting through that hose -

the cord that is um-bill-i-cal that goes

to the placenta, inside womb of Mum,

but after birth the after-birth, and hose

are well, discarded - “bigger” life has come.

But also all the after-birth may well

be buried with some honour & some grace,

because it served, sustaining life; and tell

the story of its work in that small space.

---

A day like today

---

They say that ev’ry day is much the same

as ev’ry other day that comes along.

At times it seems to be true, since each name

of days within a week may start off strong,

Like Mon-, or Choose-, or When’s-, or Thirst-, or Fry-

(or even when you’ve Sat- in Sun- they say),

all of them end the same, that is in my..

my lingo (English), where each ends in “-day”.

Though this is not so strong an argument, 

there is the fact that feelings worlds can be 

discounted by the fact-y part that’s lent 

more power by our culture. Let me see.

Today is When’s-day, though I don’t spell well,

I slept last night in Dubbo town on mat-

ress on the floor, and then I saw my gal

for breaky, just before I walked and sat

in driver’s seat, of our car, and came back

to Orange, where I had a school-day which 

a lot might say is just another day

but we got through a lot of stuff and learned 

a bit in different areas of life,

and gave some “yindyamarra” as folk say 

around here, that lets people who’ve been burned

move forward, even though there’s still some strife.

---

My th eos

---

Oh God, we thank you for your presence with 

us any where we go, and how we feel.

It's better for us than the best-est myth

about old Zeus with Hermes on his heel.

---

a tension

to “negative space”..

---

Be ready any time to “drop and turn” -

not physic’lly to drop what will just break,

but let my super focus torch “unburn”,

and lift my head up, look around, and take

what time it takes to see the world around,

so turning from the habit of recluse

(the loss of tending to acts, sights, and sounds

around about). An act that is incluse-

ive of the other actors here on earth

(& maybe those in heaven too as well),

and with that spirit of helping a birth

of someone, to someone; can’t always tell

who’ll live, or die, or ’s worthy to go on.

I'm acting as a mid-wife here myself.

I don’t know what’s been happ’ning in someone

else, at least I need to check the health

of people round about, or of the group -

the spirit of the classroom that I'm in

and is there some way I can really stoop

down, pick up stuff that should be in the bin..

and put it there, or prop’ly clean it out.

To keep the classroom healthy. I’ve done this

before, and it did not mean I must pout,

just act, and then keep positive. Don’t hiss!

But also do not miss the chance to see

and act in helpful ways to benefit

the people round about, not my glory

(short-sightedly considered). Nail’s been hit!

---

cloud of forgeting

(...helps in growing love…)

---

(First day of Spring) 

We were not now fighting, just feeling like love was dying.. old wounds had been opened, and not healed, just reminding us of diff’rences that feel to be an abyss between us, across which no warmth can be conducted, no convection currents could carry any excitement. We needed the kind of radiant heat that can travel across vacuums.

My wife was being cordial, and said that she was riding to work, and “Good-bye.” & took off on her bicycle - around 8:10am.  I had just enough time, if I used it well, before I needed to be at work. As I was collecting my bits and pieces together before driving directly to work in the car… I found her phone sitting on the loungeroom coffee table …

Different to me, she rarely leaves things behind by mistake. So, I thought, “It’s possible that she left it home on purpose (say to minimise interruptions at work etc)..” I thought I should ring her to check … (then realised what I was considering)... So I just had to make my “own” judgement (I addressed myself to creative love, “Please give me some of your wisdom here!”)...

On my way to work, I made the 5 or 10 minute detour to her work, to give it to her.

When I walked into her office it looked like she was trying to log into an account that required receiving a phone text as verification, and later she said she was on to trying other options. She beamed when she saw it, got out of her computer chair, smiled, took steps to receive the phone, full-heartedly said “Thank you!”, and hugged me.  She said “I really needed that.”

What a gift from God to help our difficulties in expressing love in tangible ways to  creatures from other planets.

I think God used that cloud of forgeting to help love grow, as we looked past our needs to the other... and let love connect us…

As I drove on to work, I looked up again.. “Thank you”.

---

larva

(dependent on creative love’s gift of A PLACE..*)

---

Oh Lord! I’m not at all in charge down here.

Remembering the picture which that man*

found helpful, in his mind, to live with fear 

of all that could go wrong, since life began..

a picture of just tentatively grow-

ing one’s own trust, as one finds underneath

the surface of the ground of all our know-

ing is depths of a dark heat, un-belief,

abyss, that crushes human life complete-

ly, it’s so empty, OR so monstrously

full of an anti-life stuff that we meet

occasion-ly, upheaving stressfully.

It feels volcanic, or like seismic waves,

where all we thought so solid melts away.

Reality as it seems, no “behaves”

(and as we learn, it’s right here it will stay),

is not at all conducive to hist’ry.

We’re visiting - just like a Goldilocks.

Those bears will soon hunt us out till we flee.

The “just right”s all forgotten at their knocks.

But I see now a lovely, wondrous thing;

a sandbox made to teach us partnership,

not just as equals - One is Fathering

the others - teaching, training not to slip,

but to have def’nate, actual  habits that

grow trust in who made all this world - by words.

Our biggest need is to depend, as F.A.T.*...

true children, who have listened, once they heard.

So, then I think his plan for us was more

than best parts of the Greek and Roman guess-

-es of what gods are like - not how they war,

but strong, immortal; not their cause of mess-

-es, nor their lack of love and wisdom too.

For these ones are re-sourced con-tin-u’lly

from the creative love that’s “you know who”-

the one who IS (that’s is, was, & will be).

So “self-existece” brings heavens & Earth

to being, in a Universe that’s held

within the mind, then spoken, so ’s to birth

it as participant whom GOD “lets” weld,

or move, or shine, or grow, or part, or rise…

to make this place so solid that it's “good”

enough for love, creative, strong, & wise

to see it as “just right” for what it could

be good for, with large insights (as we learn)

into a wondrous pow-er far above, 

and underneath us. Let us not now spearn

this chance to partner with creative love.

**

---

Footnotes

..* - a place .. to belong, a place in this whole she-bang to be existent (no, to be living, even to be thriving), and a place to (as we long to), be leading well)

n* - Henri Nouwen in his depression reported in The inner voice of Love - A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom1, 2, 3.… an experience of standing as though in a place of turf, with a great hole in the middle looking into an abyss. The way forward was to grow the grass until it slowly covered over the abyss, and then he could still live his life in that place over that abyss: "There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.".

This, it turns out, is not much different to the actual facts of all the Earth’s crust being afloat on the molten larva of its mantle.

T.* - F.A.T. stands for Faithful, Available,Teachable

**  - A realisation, as pieces of the jig-saw puzzle fit together, from PSYCHOLOGY (in overcoming  existential angst), and  EARTH-SCIENCE (the Earth as we experience it is very much like some ancients saw it - a "flat plate (we'd say plates)" floating or somehow held up over a sea (it's just that it's a sea of molten swirling larva) etc.[https://appallinglife.blogspot.com/2026/09/larva.html]

---

🤔

  

🤔confused, 

wondering, unsure, trying-to-see-a-way-forward, confused,  lost-in-thought, thoughtful, know-something-but not everything, learning a new way of seeing things

---

The Walkerian Sonnet: iambic pentameter, 14 lines, an organization & rhyme scheme: opening- ABBA, playing around with it - CDDC, other options - EFFE, a decision - GG.

---

I’m not so sure, but I’ll give it some thought.

It’s difficult sometimes to put in words.

But I’ll give it a go. See if you’ve heard

something like it, or seen one someone bought.

Sometimes I am left wondering myself,

I feel a bit confused, at least unsure.

But in that space, I learn to not need more, 

& yet some things appear, as though an elf

or Muse was playing with me, ope’ning up

to more dimensions round me, my mind here.

Sometimes it’s just the words, though it appears

at other times forgetfulness erupts!

I’ll settle for the cloud ’v “unknowingness”;

that might let new dimensions through - less stress!

---

do life

(to gether!)

---

And OMG! I’m sharing life  with you.

I don’t have to be capable at all.

I started as one tiny cell. A few.

Then hundreds, & now trillions* - not so small!

And you’ve been trying to help me grow up,

to learn to care for this big lump of cells. 

That's even when I “act up”, interrupt.

There are folk who give me their life. It smells

like perfume when they just absorb my shite,

and give to me more goods than I give out.

They’re acting then in line with what I might

call plain ol’ goodness, and it’s good, no doubt!

That view of what’s responsible (not shame)

which I agree with, ’coz it has more faith-

-full-ness than just a rule applied the same:

“we’re more responsible, the more we take”.

So then, the more I've done - of life with you,

the more chance I will have to grow and thrive.

& I am then responsible to do

more with, the more I'm gi'en. Not just survive-

al strategy, to not have expecta-

-tions placed on me by ev’ry one around.

It might sound good, but doesn’t leave a space

responsible for knowledge that we've found.

And this is not a rule placed on the world, 

so much as just a statement of what’s true,

like times-tables, as our minds are unfurled

to them, their insight helps know what to do.

And OMG! I now feel more response-

-ible, the only way to th’ dignity

causality and choice give humans once

we take on board our chanc to be more free

to learn to love, to keep our word, and act

in line with something that can not be seen,

but still affects this world like any fact.

And helps us speak in ways that really mean..

mean something in the world. Words correspond

to ways the world is as we pass through it.

While this approach to life is many pronged,

good “rules” express a good way to do it!

---

Footnotes

s* I am presently probably ~38 trillion human cells (x2=~76 trillion human and bacterial cells) since I am ~ 85kg; since on average an adult male at 70kg is ~36 Trillion cells (& about half are small cells like blood cells, about half bigger cells like muscle cells) and about the same number (~38 trillion) of bacterial and other cells that live in or on the body. ~28trillion for average adult woman, and ~24-28trillion for 14 yr old teenager, ~17 trillion cells in an average 10 yr old at ~ 32 kg.

---

a walk through last week

(Slow & curious)

---

The week that I was “gone” to Brisbane town,

to say “Goodbye” to my wife’s mother there,

who passed from this life here on Earth that’s down

below the metaphorical  we shared.

We used the trip to see fam. - on the way.

Da stay with some, and to recall some tales,

to clean up rooms in house we used to stay

in with her. So my memory  “inhales”.

I thank her for her mothering of my

own wife, who is the best gift I've received,

since I was given what is called my “life”.

We hadn’t always quite seen or believed

the same about the most important things,

yet she was growing kinder - her last days

she got to be more grateful. Each one brings

us goodness wrapped in very diff’rent ways.

And I want to grow as that lady did,

to notice goodness, and express in words

somehow appreciation that gets hid

unless we speak it - so some  folk 'll have heard

something that helps them look through, to its birth,

and see the ways that mediators worked

to make more goodness come to live on Earth.

This is a job I'll do, and not have shirked!

And then there was the time with Dad & Mum, 

(li’ll brother, as we travelled) to share lunch.

A mate surviving cancer, under some …

some pressure still, but rising from that punch.

Some stories that we heard as we drove on,

have also brought us ways to live more life.

I choose to hear from folk  before they’re gone.

To let them tell me their own fun and strife.

And some-times friends can grow where we’d not dream,

and enemies can seem to grow from friends.

At times we know they’ve changed, others just seem

so diff’rent ev’ry time… ’till journey ends.

And now I’m back at school in New South Wales,

in Orange, where I teach the Fearnley class

some subjects till Ms. Huggett’s back. We trail

sometimes, but then at others we “kick ass”.

---

Dear Paul…

[to an older Paul (Roe), from a younger Paul (Walker), in the wake of the Paul (of Tarsus) who was Messiah's Ambassador to the Nations ...]

---

Dear God, we heard the news not long ago,

of brother Paul and how his health has gone.

It seems like it just failed, but  you must know

much more, you aren’t surprised by what’s come on

the news to us, his hairs are numbered* to

your heart of love, just as his days on earth*.

Your plans and schemes go past this life, and do

not stop at death of bodies got at birth*.

And as our Lord and Master modelled well*:

(they’d started mourning young “Talitha”’s life

cut short, but) he said “sleep” was where she fell,

then helped her walk to Jairus and his wife,

and then reminded them to give her food.

Your partnership with her, was strong, not rude.

And I think that you knew the needs of who’d

been ushered out, and in*. Your Paul is glued 

to your will bring done on Earth, as in

the heavens* where your purpose means much good

is done on Earth, down here amongst the “sin”

(the falling short of all best hopes as would

be hoped for as we act to seek unfurled,

the honour, immortality, glory)

Then God gives life that was before this world*,

a process started off in Paul (& me)!

And I am glad for each day shared with Paul

upon God’s earth, below the heavens here,

for his determination so to call

for help to one who loves and calls him “dear”*.

---

Footnotes:

ad*  “Why even the hairs of your head are numbered”

arth*  “Teach me oh Lord to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom”

irth* “...just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.”(1 Corinthians 15:42-57) 

l* with Jairus’s daughter, and Martha’s and Mary’s brother Lazarus.

n* see Mark 5

s* see The Lord’s prayer: “May your will be done on Earth, as it is in the heavens”

ld* “some people by persevering in doing good, seek honour, glory and immortality. To them God will give the Life of all ages…” (Romans 2:7, cf John 3:18-21, as below).

r”* “God so loved the world…”(John3:16-21); God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…”(2 Corinthians 5:19); “you are my dearly loved son, with you I am well pleased”(Mark 1:11); “this is my dearly loved son, listen to him!” (Mark 9:7-8); “as God’s children, holy and dearly loved…etc” (Col 3:12, Acts17:27-29) 

---

a camp-fire tonight

---

YaHWeH! Tonight we lit a fire and cooked

up food, as well as warming ourselves in

the coolness of the eve’ning air, and looked 

at what the fire showed of what's surroundin’.

We used up energy that was sequest-

ered over many years gone by, by trees

as they just did their job (where birds have nest-

ed) in those solar-panels we call leaves -

combining CO² with water to

make wood that keeps the sunlight en-er-gy

held in its substance - there-by “you know who” 

has helped us to keep warm by “chemistry”.

And we are beneficiaries of that..

..that prior work done, and left as a gift.

So thank you to creative love which sat

down - planning such a goodness that might lift

up spirits in his children, whom he knew

might like to see light, feel the fire’s warmth,

and have a chance to talk about things too,

this is the kind of thing that just might form

the hearth of households right across the world

except I s’pose, wherever we have cut 

the line of this causality and hurled

the pieces far apart, so they might not

be understood and “seen” as one whole thing.

We separate the bits with lengths of wire.

But though we are not birds and don’t have wings,

you saw our true selves  nested round that fire.

---

Fam’ly get-together

---

Oh, spirit of love, please bless all these folk

as they meet, and they greet, and they listen

to what you've to say, & smile at each joke

that their Dad has with them, as gold glistens. 

---