What in the world is a blue-eyed snake? A sign that things are surely changing, that what is old is sloughing off, not yet replaced by something new. It’s hard to know just where you’re going when you can’t see just where you are. Snakes shed their skin. It’s how things are. It must be hard to be a snake: about the time you get things going your eyes grow dim and things start changing. You have no choice: you face the new blind as a bat. The first thing off is eyelid skin — before it’s off it turns opaque, and your eyes are useless and blue. It’s nothing new, unless you don’t know you’re a snake, can’t understand why things are changing, can’t see which way the way the world is going. I can’t help wondering if what’s going on with us is not far off from snakes whose skin is always changing. How vulnerable it seems we are to fear of change. Like a snake reflexively we hiss at new threats perceived though unseen, new phantoms in the fog, going past in … [Read more...]

1. How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? (Jeremiah 8:8) Yellowed and torn, covered in scribblings, I place the parchment into my mouth. Some words are full of bones that choke and stick in my throat. Others are ripe with pulp and tender flesh, but beneath are seeds, bitter and hard. These I spit on the ground, they will bear no fruit. The sweetest of words dissolve, turn metallic — the taste of sword and scythe cuts my tongue. I can speak only violence and death. This sour scrawling stings and foams at my lips that long for some deliverance. 2. Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart. (Jeremiah 15:16) The little scroll, tightly bound must be consumed all of a piece. I place it wholly on my tongue. It is a thousand bees fanning their wings — honeycomb that sticks to my teeth, drips down … [Read more...]