s l o w . . . .

to speak*…

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If I am to be slow to spruik, to speak, 

to say a word to others, in this world,

it’s prob’ly gunna be ’coz I’m too weak

to come across “on top” of all I’m told.

Then I won’t feel so confident myself

in knowing what to say that makes folk think

that I am truly knowing, wise & health-

-y. No jokes with a surreptitious wink!

‘Coz my own ego will feel bruised and warn,

not fresh - to battle up the hill, like goats.

Oh give me love’s own impulses, reborn

as crucified “with Christ” must then denote.

So here I hear his call once more to track

him through rejection by this world, and then

some unjust suffering & death, then back - 

for forty days to hang about with friends.

And all this while I’m learning privately, 

to keep an intimate “romantic”* life

quite flourishing, through which I’m re-viv-ed-

-ly nourished ‘coz love isn’t killed by strife!

So in this interchange, not built on words,

but giving rise to many “in their place”,

with bridge between the beings formed unheard

‘cept for the groanings love works into space.

And this gives rise (in ya’ way, YaHWeH God),

to new and living ways to walk on Earth,

not trying to be bolstered by this lot

I’m sent to show your love* to, since my birth.

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Foot notes

k* - as seen throughout human history, taken as a whole, the Creator God very rarely speaks audibly from heaven. And as James recalls his “big brother” Yeshua, and dote-ingly passes on to his other “brothers”: “My dear brothers, everyone of you must be quick to listen, and slow to speak…” (James 1:19)

c* & e* - it turns out that instead of love for the creative spirit (behind the creation of the whole of the heavens and the Earth) being somewhat romantic/ sexual in nature, it is more like romance/ sex has been invented to give us a humanly experience-able metaphor for that creative spirit’s commitment for the highest and best, most pleasing, kind of love, KHESED (covenantal, family-kind love, based on “keeping one’s own word”, and thus allowing a real option to the coercive, manipulative control kind of “power” this world only “knows”, because this world is like a human brain’s left hemisphere trying to play the role of both hemispheres simultaneously) to build a family which will share and expand the KHESED work on Earth.

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