the bridegroom

I [God] will seek the lost,
trace the strayed,
bind the scathed,
strengthen the scarred,
waken the weak,
break bonds of wrong,
snap hard chains,
undo thrall thongs,
burst bronze doors,
bend iron bars,
cut free the captives,
upraise the oppressed,
dry the tears,
warm the mourner,
comfort the crushed,
mend the rent,
heal the hurt,
kindle kindness
and kinlove in kind,
spur the spouse,
hallow the harlot,
father the orphan,
ward the widow,
lift the low,
save the forsaken,
spare a torn leaf,
bear up your branch,
graft on my vine,
canopy a wick,
fan a flicker to flame,
nurse a suckling,
fondle a foal,
chase in the chicks,
herd the scattered,
enfold the fled,
swaddle the babe,
stoop to feed,
pour to quench,
tie you secure,
take you in my tent,
clothe you in my cloak,
wrap you in my wings,
hem you in my hand,
lull you at dusk,
cheer you at morn,
delight you midday,
walk in your thought,
see your secrets,
beware your worth,
dight you in dignity,
unveil my face,
open my eyes,
smoulder in love,
revive you in fire,
foil your fears,
cancel your debts,
unwrite your wrongs,
warrant your gain,
void your loss,
suspend your pain,
weigh you in glory,
load you in life.

-Nathan Paul Hillman
{a lyrical summary of psalms, prophets, and godspell}

Woolies and Conifers

Conversation with Steve-O Pet-r-O
on the Fifth of December, 2006
(at the time, Mr O was a sheep-keeper and shite-sweeper in Maine)

16:47 Stephen: gnarlsome natty sasquatchity gnome-like nate of the north!
16:48 me: not nobody but the gnomishest he!
is furry sheepfell feeling good at night?
16:50 how are you keeping?
16:51 Stephen: apologies for the latest maintenance mail
16:52 me: no worries at all woodromping Mainemeandering woolfarmer!
Stephen: i heard some wolves while watching the sun set this eave!
16:53 i hope they aren't too frisky with the pigs
me: wowser. i am jealous. for reasons that will become clearer if you look at my recent dream about a wolf
16:54 I certainly would be frisky with a pig!
your plants ply their growing trade with pious pleasure
16:55 Stephen: great to hear. what say they?
16:56 me: stickety stackety stem i'm green around my hem!
lippety loppety leaf, we miss our farmin steeeeeeeve!
16:58 did lovely conifer class in arboretum on sun-day
17:00 Stephen: what see ye of the aroborvitae?
me: the tree of life gives me life!
17:01 i never realised the name or nature of this most common plant till the course
like spruce needles, the green has vitamin C
17:02 Stephen: did not know that. what was said about pines?
or my favorite, the tamarack (aka european larch)
17:03 me: an algonkian term for an american larch type, i'm told. larch

17:03 me: an algonkian term for an american larch type, i'm told. larch (

hackmatack in Algonkian!

17:04 what learned I?

a cedar is a type of Juniperus (juniper)

17:05 jack pines keep their old resiny cones for years and years until a fire cracks them open to seed

their needles grow spirally

17:06 wind makes diff noise when whishing through 5-needled white pines (feathery) than through the more brittle red pines (2-needled)

juniper 'berries' are built much like cones with a scaley covering around seeds

17:07 firs have upright (not pendulous like pines) cones which fall apart before they fall off tree

17:08 firs have upward curving needles, smooth twigs (spruces have bumpy noduled twigs), and a fruitier taste than spruces

17:09 hemlocks have needles green above and whitish beneath and a hair-like stem attached to each needle

yews are yellowish beneath and dark green above.

17:10 Stephen: yews?
me: not your wives, steve!
those EWES are also yellow beneath but for other reasons!
17:12 yew trees look much like hemlocks or even some firs, but they are darker green, have an orange red berry with seed (turribly toxic)
17:13 arborvitae have flower-shaped cones, small
17:15 sorry for burying you so much in my typing - i get carried away!
and EB is looking on - so i'm entertaining more than usual even
17:17 black spruce are beautiful and fascinating - in WI they only grow in boggy areas, mainly east and north.
17:19 Stephen: and blue spruce?
17:22 me: och yes. i realise now i had misunderstood them. they are the Colorado Spruce, and seem to be tough and hardy and have been bred into many cultivars

Memories of a homeless man sleeping in ICH boiler room

24 February 2009
17:03 me: what plies below Petro's skies?
17:04 Stephen [Petro]: the eve before travel--the sun is calm as it begins to rest
17:05 me: whither farest thou then?
17:06 Stephen: the land of bluffs and the mighty mississippi
17:09 me: a holy-day, or holy work-a-day?
17:10 what fine news on the Mississip. Sip its supful streams
17:11 Stephen: it will sip with hands that have touched the land, aye hands that know the ground well and what it can do if you treat it well
17:12 me: your landwise hands shall reap handfuls of life
17:13 Stephen: i can only hope--and that they may harbor and encourage it as well
17:17 me: are you uptaken tonight at new wine? i'm not sure, but i considered a visit
how long will you be away as well?
17:18 Stephen: i plan on dining with the dana tonight. and i will be gone until saturday.
17:19 me: dana-dining, dana-charming,
fain aromping
love's alarming
!
17:20 Stephen: p)
:p
17:21 feet a-stomping
who's a-knocking
17:22 the nate a-boxing
the gnomes a-poxing
but who, pray tell
will be a mopping?
me: a pox on the elf
who came for health
17:23 i gave him ludgins
in boiler dungeons
but up he got
tit tat TOT
ahop to my door
17:24 acryin for more
sleepy-head Natty,
so sore and alone,
wanted to bless
17:25 also box the Gnome!
17:26 Stephen: and lay him to rest
in the bubble boiler room
17:27 me: but up from that tomb
the Revenant walks and stalks
through winter gloom
spying me out
with squeaky shouts
aHOO from one corner
17:28 aBOO from the street
he follows and haunts me
- the ninny Gnomic scout!

17:40 Stephen: stout with a pout
each whisker a treat

2 March 2009
17:02 Me: What did you nip on the mighty Misses-Sip?
17:10 Stephen: the smell of cow manure
a light snow
the bluffs and lots of beer

My dear Wormwood, this is funny (to *us*)

Conversation between two Demons

"My Dear Wormwood,

Everything is clearly going very well. .... You speak of their being great laughers [these humans]. I trust this does not mean that you are under the impression that laughter as such is always in our favour. This point is worth some attention.

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like occurs in Heaven - a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

Fun is closely related to Joy - a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy [God] would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

....

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the modern generation who take their "sense of humour" so seriouisly that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is "mean"; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and kids his friends with having been taken - he is no longer "mean" but a comic. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful - unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that modern seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as "Puritanical" or as betraying a "lack of humour."

But Flippany is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people that Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from Joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it."

-from Chapter XI of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters