Before Pope Francis there was another and I wrote this poem for him…and Bella.  Benedetto XVI once wrote, "In the end, even the "yes" of Love is a source of suffering--love always requires that I allow myself to be wounded otherwise it ceases to be love."  Those are hard words for me to embrace right now, except for grace.

Sedia Vacante
Papa Vecchio
E Bella

#1. The Agony in the Garden

Benedetto tallies his rosary alone as
Fall shadows the single window
Where light escapes over the Leonine walls
Shoe-less Sisters have left tea and schnapps
Beside a phone that no longer rings

#2. The Scourging at the Pillar

Flushed Cardinals once bobbed their beaks
In and out of feeders near his cell
But the old man no longer chases away
The black crows who rob their seed and
Steal their chicks

#3. The Crowning with Thorns

Once there was a young woman in Schulstraße
Who tormented him with night-sweats and doubt
But she did not survive the war and his
Cloistered loins never burned for another though
Her body was never found

#4. The Carrying of the Cross

Mozart has finished his quintet but
the old priest is so deep in prayer with
The Virgin Mother
Just a single eye cracks when
Purring Bella claws into his lap

#5. The Crucifixion and Death

Only the boisterous cheers and applause
Carried by the wind from
The far side of Vatican hill
Cause his fingers to forget their place
Among the five sorrowful mysteries

Outside my  studio/shed

Klediments:

"The world is divided between capitalism and fundamentalism – in other words, between those who believe too little and those who believe too much." (Zizek).

“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in." (Toni Morrison)

* I am making a list of all my beliefs that I would be willing to spend 5 days in jail for as my staunch sister Kim Davis in Kentucky did.  So far its a very short list.

* Not that anybody in the debates asked for his birth certificate, but I believe that #2 Presidential candidate Ben Carson was born in Detroit to Seventh-Day Adventist parents. (wiki)

*I'm so over self-validating, closed-circuit systems of mutually reinforcing assumptions and their apologetics that ever more deeply beg the question, and the mental/emotional knots they tie folks up in."  (David Fetcho)

* Roman Catholic politicians of all kinds may disagree, but I'm not sure that Pope Francis is entirely on board with the historical religious project of converting or killing all heretics, infidels, and unbelievers.  Interestingly, it seem that others are willing to take up the challenge?  Well, God never closes a door without opening……

* ''Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.'' (J)

*  “Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation. It makes history possible.” (Jacques Ellul )

*Sometimes, no matter how often or loudly or how much apparent love, grace, and forgiveness, I proclaim, my own prayers still seem boil down to, "Lord, smite my enemies."  Fortunately, I am my own worst enemy.

*  “When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.”  (Raymond Carver)

*  “Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.” (Marilynne Robinson)

*We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This did not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."  (Walter Benjamin)

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” (Wendell Berry)

* "And that work of liberation is not *glorification* of the self, but rather a kind of social freedom for the continual and persistent resistance against other lords." (prof. Ry Siggelkow)

**  “What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”  (George R.R. Martin)

*  Forgiveness loves the past with hope—rather than with desire—that it will not in the end have been simply what it was." (prof. Craig Keen)

I have seen enough death to know that dying isn’t just dying. There are a million ways to die and live.   Jesus has the one. We have our million."  (prof. Anne Michelle Carpenter).

*  "So awestruck were we, by the falling stars, that we never noticed that the world was burning.  And as the smoke filled our throats, our final words — we spoke without knowing we would forever after be silent — were ‘thank you’.   Then we too were burning.  With the plants, with the oceans, with the animals,we were all of us burning.  Our lungs blossoming into flowers; the fire in our bones at last released to join the fire in the earth, in the air, on the water."  (Dan MzacKenzie)

"Light has come into the world, and the darkness will never overcome it." (J)

Blessings, and very much obliged.