Poem - How Can It Be That My Mighty One Has Died?

How Can It Be That My Mighty One Has Died?

Lesson #1 in Lamenting for the Loved.

By King David ben Jesse, of Bethlehem: Instructor

By royal order: everyone must memorize this lament

For use when someone or anyone, (like my dear friend Jonathan),

who was much beloved, dies.

2 Samuel 19-27

Poetic Paraphrase Adapted for Any Grief in Death

 by O. Kris Widmer

September 19, 2016 – For Tauni Pigott and Family

My glorious one is dead.

Take notice! Please?

Stop the world, for just a little while!

Come, and mourn with me!

My world is turned upside down for the time being.

How is it possible that this one…

my mighty one has died!?

Keep it out of social media.

Don’t print it in the papers.

Lest those very few that held grudge against them

Should say “Ha!  Good riddance! 

We’re better off without them!”

I curse what caused their death!

I curse where and why they died!

My beloved one –

My pet, my Grammie, my Papa,

My classmate, my mentor, my teacher,

My auntie, my uncle, my sister, my brother,

My boss, my neighbor, my colleague, my partner,

My parent, my child, my cousin, my grandchild,

My best friend,

My spouse and lover [1]–

is gone.

How is it possible that this one…

my mighty one

my precious one

my beloved one

has died!?

They were so greatly loved and admired in life.

Now in death, I can’t let go of my affection for them!

I will never let go of that!

It’s a good thing I don’t have to either!

They were the best!

Oh, how I loved them!

Oh, how they loved me!

Their laugh.

Their smile.

Their twinkling eyes.

Their personality.

Their friendship.

Their talents.

Their skills

They were wonderful!

Life was wonderful…because they were here!

Now they are gone!

How is it possible that this one…

my mighty one has died!?

They are simply not replaceable!

They were unique.

One of a kind.

Special and Spectacular!

So everyone –

         all who loved them;

         and all whom they loved;

         (You know who you are!)

Stop…and weep.

They are gone now!

I saw them breathe their last.

I saw the mortician take away their body.

I saw them in the casket.

I saw an urn with their name on it.

I was at the interment, the inurnment.

I saw their headstone, their plaque.

I grieve for you…my glorious one!

You were very, very, very, very dear to me.

Your love for me was wonderful.

My love for you was wonderful too.

I’m so glad I had you for as long as I did.

But it was much too short.

And now…you are not here.

There will be no more

         trips to the store together.

         cookie baking together

         ballgames together.

         prayers together.

         phone chats together

         kisses together.

         hugs together.

         making love together

        

There will be no more together.

At least for now.

I am here.

You are not.

You are gone.

How is it possible that this one…

my mighty one,

my glorious one,

my wonderful one,

has died!?

What am I going to do now?

---

[1] I wrote this list a possible order of grief experiences in life.  The first funeral I planned was for a gold fish.  The next I attended was for a grandparent. Etc.

Poem - The Good Swineherd

The Good Swineherd

O. Kris Widmer

Idea:  August 15, 2016  6:25         Posted: August 15, 2016 6:45

Based on passages in Matthew 8, Mark 5 and Luke 8

Three Word Wednesday #492:  Required Words:  Painstaking, Queasy, Radiant

It was very odd.

Nothing like this had happened

in all the Gentile generations

around Lake Gennesaret

that raised the multi-colored,

snouty beasts

for the bacon of their backs,

the hams of their haunches.

He had seen it all happen from afar.

The Nazarite and his entourage

Spoke briefly to the crazy man.

The town had tried, really they had –

 confining him more than once in the tombs.

Then…without warning

every last one of the sows had charged down the slop filled slope,

Then, over the edge into the lake.

“When pig’s fly” is a saying, true.

But “When pigs swim.” is just as much an impossibility apparently.

All that remained

was the painstaking chore

of sailing in circles,

collecting corpses.

Perhaps, if the town butchered them quickly,

some of their flesh was salvageable.

(For whatever reason, it wasn’t.  It looked fine, but tasted wretched.)

He was left with his questions about not being kosher himself

and the queasy anticipation of relating these events

to those that care about hog belly futures in town.

The only thing that made him swallow his bile

was the newly calmed crazy man

clothed, radiant, humming a happy tune.

Reflection: A Vision of the Resurrection of the Just

A Vision of The Resurrection of the Just

Elder O. Kris Widmer

Based on Ezekiel 37 1-14

Foundational beginning:  The Message Bible

With modifications into the context of Second Coming by the Author

July 15, 2016

Inspired while working on a card with my mother’s parents wedding picture on it as well as preparing to preach from the above passage.

God grabbed this Pastor the other day, on a Friday (as I was reading Ezekiel 37), and whisked me away.  The Divine One – the One with the unspeakable name, the One who was and is and is to come - set me down in the middle of a cemetery.  It was no particular cemetery, for if you’ve seen one field of bones and ashes, you’ve seen them all.  And believe me, this preacher has stood in his share of cemeteries by open and closed graves. The Evergreen Cemeteries of Riverside, California and Vancouver, Washington (each containing my four grandparents) or Ukiah, Hayfork, Lakeport, Upper Lake, St. Helena.  Or Redding.   Or Antioch.  Or Igo - or the ones near you…or far from you.

God led me in and around the graves.  I knew what was six feet under my feet.  Bones.   Many, many bones.   The bones of my father, my grandparents, your mother, your uncle, your brother or sister, the baby you buried or didn’t bury, but released to the morgue.  They are all somewhere “’a listening for their name.”

He said to me, “Preacher, do you think these bones can live?”  I said, “Holy God, Creator and Resurrector, only You know if that can happen.  You said they would in the 66 books I consider to be Your revelation.  But…”

He said to me, “When the Son of Man comes again, approaching the earth…this is what it will happen!   I’ll show you.  Speak over these tombs – these graves, these crypts, these niches, these ashes – in urns or scattered on land, sea or air.  Speak to  these bones.  Say:

‘Dead Dust and Dry bones – listen to the voice of God.  I will bring the breath of life to you and you WILL come to life.  I will take the dust and make of it new bones.  I will take the bones – new and old - and create new sinews and tendons and cartilage.   I will put new meat, new muscles on your bones, and cover you with skin.   I will reform your organs, fill up your tubes with vital fluids, (5.5 liters of blood) and set your heart beating once again.   I will fill your new lungs with new breath - my breath of life.   I will cause your thoughts and memories to resume in a new brain, with billions of new neurons and I will cause your eyes to open.”

I paused…not knowing if I should. “Go on…say it!” God urged.  So I did.  Word for Word.

As I started speaking…I heard a rattling and a rumbling underneath my feet and within the mausoleum over yonder. 

Scattered cremains and common dirt flew into the shape of skeletons.  Niche covers flew off and crypts were broken open.  Sod was peeled back.  Dirt flew out into neat cubic piles, liner lids and coffin tops flew into the sky, disappearing.  Bones flew out of graves and joined together that had been disconnected.  Skulls with holes were now whole.  And above ponds, lakes, rivers and streams appeared bones too, hovering, as it were, just above the waters.   The seas also had thousands and thousands of skeletal remains, levitated just above the surface of the deep.

Then, tendons and tongues and tonsils appeared.  Muscles materialized!  Skin stretched over these bodies. Hair erupted from their scalps and faces.  Hey…nice goatee!

They lay there, each one naked as the day they were born and yet clothed in the brightest heaven-sent light.   But as yet…there was no breath in them.  So no life in them.  Just like Adam and Eve at creation.  Body perfectly formed…but lifeless without God’s breath.

Then God spoke to me again.  “Preacher, now I will show you what will happen when the Son of Man shall come even closer to the earth…when He speak from the clouds.   He shall say ‘Awake, Awake.  You who have returned to the dust from which you came…ARISE!  David, Arise!  Johanne, Arise!  Reinhold, Arise!  Josephine, Arise! (My grandparents)   Elmer, Arise! (My father).   Elaine, Maureen, Ron, Greg, Barry, Thad, Waldo, Stu, Cindi, Derek, Danica, Lilia, Jose, Shamus, Benjamin, Adeline, Nadine, Neville, Harry, Harley, Tabitha, Olympia, Fritz, Modell, Thelah and Lowell – ARISE![1]

“Preacher…so now... speak to the air.   All the air shall be My breath of life.   Inhale.  Exhale.  Speak to the air.  ‘Come air!   Come from the four directions: Up, Down and Side to Side.  North, South, East, West.  Come breath!  Come Oxygen.  Fill these bodies.   Breath life!’”

I knew not to question Him this time.   “Come air!”  I continued.

And it was amazing.  Wind blew around me.  It came from all the directions at once…and I saw chests rise and fall.  Breath entered them.  Like a divine C-PAP machine!  They all took one collective gasp – the gasp heard ‘round the world. They came alive!   They stood to their feet!   A numberless multitude of humanity…long dead, now alive!   The mortal had at last put on immortality.  And then I saw them rise off the earth…higher and higher…into the air…into the clouds.  

Then God said to me, “ Preacher, the bones your saw here in this place are but a small fraction of those persons who have lived on the earth – from Adam and Eve…to today.  Humanity sighs -  “We are dried up.  Our bodies are dead.  Our corpses have rotted.  Our bones are crumbled.  Our ashes are scattered.   There is nothing left of us.  There is no hope!”

So, Preacher, be sure to speak over every body you stand beside.  “The God of Heaven, the Lord of Creation and Resurrection ….  The Resurrection and the Life says…..  “I WILL dig up your grave and bring you out alive.   You are my people.   When you live again, I will take you straight to the holy city – the New Jerusalem.  When I have dug up your grave and put you back together and given you life….then you will know that I am God.  I will give you a new body.   I will give you new breath.  My breath, my life – back into you…and you will live.    I have said it.   I will do it.   This is the decree and promise of the most high God.”

And then I found myself sitting once again at my computer keyboard.

---

[1] This is but a small portion of the list of names of dead family or friends, as well as funerals I have done in Gospel ministry.

Poem - Nain

Nain

O. Kris Widmer

July 8, 2016

On Luke 7:11-17…for Stephanie Haddad

Three Word Wednesday:  Required Words: taboo, taut, tattered.

The gauze held his gaze.

Of course it was taboo for Him to touch it!

Still He did, and still they gasped.

His hands moved down the taut linen wrappings,

The only thing between his living fingers and the dead flesh.

He feels the coolness of the corpse, room temperature

forehead, neck, shoulders, waist, hips, thighs, shins, toes.

He speaks first to the mother:  “Do not weep!”

He speaks next to the stiff:  “Young man, I say to you: Arise!”,

with his fingers still surrounding the toes.

toes twitched!

lungs inhale!

heart beats!

thoughts resume!

eyes open!

lips smile!

Unseen,

the grim reaper falls backwards,

in an even more tattered black shroud.