"Rock of Ages"
With a deep sense of intrigue and admiration for the bible's Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse of John), tear down with temperance and build again with love...
My eye. My eye is waxed over by a caul of opaque white. A familiar voice over my right shoulder instructs, "Light a fire and get high on the incense and ether of Grace." She speaks without flesh. The veil is cut away by The Grand Mother's wit, a double edge blade with a silver point. It pierces and sears yet there are still trickles of blood lining the triangle left where my hair meets my face. I apply pressure to its center with three fingers...my fore, middle, and ring. In her rapture is a place where peace does not move. Darkness comes and time crumbles and folds.
I am awake. I am awake and find my right hand touching the apple of my cheek, my palm washed by morning tears. My heart admits that the ending of the age is bitter and will only later reveal itself to be sweet. I love her. I love them too. But I temper my minds longing to sit on Grey's pew next to Lot's wife. An old habit takes time to break and fall. My heart breaks. His love falls to its knees and is bludgeoned to death by each down beat...rum-a-tum-tum-tum and the underside of the Reverend's sole steps over its heave-less breast. In the stands...a multitude of bee-stung lips underneath blond wigs with hats of thorn.
I am smiling. I am smiling and humming "chariot, coming for to carry me home" while swinging my legs from an amber square. I think of her...I think of her...I think of her. I am a child with muffle jaws seated on her lap. The Grand Mother blows a cool breeze into the rams horn and below the pendulum the temple is former and has been laid to waste. My hands are clean and glow as obsidian flecked with ten cloaks of gold. Her cool breath rises, carries on up-a-yonder to kiss The Great Black in the sky. He misses her as a groom waiting at the threshold. But for now he is contented as my angel and with a crook in his voice he pulls then lifts, "Hear me and receive...within the break, the fall, the waste lays the rejected rock. Accept it and with it you begin life built anew. Kum ba yah, kum ba re!"
I am heir. I am heir and a royal priestess with a peculiar capstone balanced upon my collar bone...loosed and raised from the mire and expanse of dust. I walk and hold my own mind as chief. Rum-a-tum-tum-tum...cadence and incantation. The choir's chant, a refrain and trill of "pull pit pull"...confounded and brought to a flat E. They grasped my heel, attempting to swindle me out of my birthright but I have an angel who does not apologize for his machete...a pile of hands at his feet. He speaks in all authority, "You will not cast your crown to pay the ransom of fear. The blood on my iron is your currency." Upon the ninth tier of severed palms, I am upright with my left leg readied on the next. Born again...Grace's wit held firmly in my fellowship hand. I was blind...I was blind...I was blind but now I stand watching God transmute bitter to sweet. The Grand Mother's train billows as a flag in the midst, "This place shall now be called Shabakshu, Praise the Wind and the Breath. The Sun rides victoriously over the underworld." A new day is here. The New Age shines and clefts for me.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say,
“His steadfast love endures forever.”
Let the house of Aaron say,
“His steadfast love endures forever.”
Let those who fear the Lord say,
“His steadfast love endures forever.”
Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me free.
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
The Lord is on my side as my helper;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
All nations surrounded me;
in the name of the Lord I cut them off!
They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side;
in the name of the Lord I cut them off!
They surrounded me like bees;
they went out like a fire among thorns;
in the name of the Lord I cut them off!
I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
but the Lord helped me.
The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
Glad songs of salvation
are in the tents of the righteous:
“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly,
the right hand of the Lord exalts,
the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!”
I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the Lord.
The Lord has disciplined me severely,
but he has not given me over to death.
Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord;
the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is the Lord's doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
~Psalm 118: 1-24
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So
he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both
sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and
overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
~John 2: 13-22
