Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                       Three Cigarette Lighters


                        And in what landscape of disaster
                        Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

                        -Thomas Merton, “For my Brother”


I was strolling along for my digestion and health
Inspecting the refreshing October winds
Counting the summer-tired leaves floating to earth
And noting the brightness of autumn’s yellow flowers

Off in the weeds a cigarette lighter presented itself
It didn’t work. A second cigarette lighter did
A useful souvenir of my evening walk
And then a third – three cheap lighters, all in a row

A ******* trail of disposable dreams
Disposable lighters, disposable lives

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                “Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve”


                    “…for whom war was a fresh terror and the corpses
                        of real people…”

            -Matti Friedman, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai


A little child ripped from her dead mother’s arms
          Is not a petition for border adjustments
A grandfather murdered while waiting for the bus
          Is not a parliamentary point of order
Teenagers stripped, *****, beaten, tortured, and shot
          Are not cool chants in a university quad
A rotting fragment of a beheaded baby
          Is not someone’s tee-shirt slogan
An elderly woman still marked from Buchenwald
          Is a child of God, not a bargaining chip

No deflections
No whatabouts
No evasions
No excuses

No

Choose you this day whom you will serve

Must Anne Frank be murdered again and again? I cannot write anything meaningful today; I can only sputter in anger and futility.

                    “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping,
                     and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children,
                     refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

                                       -St. Matthew 2:18

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                  The Synod on Synodality

  “There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day…”

                    - C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, p. 36

                    One reads the words of the committees:

The grammar of synodality our times the time journeying together breaking molds inclusion experts facilitators process delegation the people totality sense of the faithful organize discussion opening remarks challenges continental stage novelties dynamic legitimize interrelation common discernment modules instrumentum laboris synthesis report road map response paradigm preparation planning natural vision human planning expectations narrative of radical change shifting models of synodality conciliarity emblematic expression methodology dubia divine discourse adjudicate delineating areas of consensus specific situational analyses media framing reinterpreting confidentiality requirements module serenity of the discernment in common implementation phase inclusive ecclesial process participatory ways of exercising responsibility social dialogue regenerating relationships initiate the processes practicing synodality a double dynamic of conversion articulations of synodality ten thematic nuclei to be explored synodal dialogue the potential of synodal engagement national synthesis document consultative sessions what it means to be church social media template an operative notion national synthesis of the people of God contextualize diocesan phase of the synodal process enduring wounds needs-friendly steps for discerning ongoing formation for mission…

                    Brushing aside this choking fog of words
                    The reader ceases to read, for he sees
                    A silent, sandal-shod saint in a raggedy cloak
                    Having fed the chickens now telling his beads

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                             Southern Belle Antiques ‘N’ Stuff

(Slow sibilant bathroom-slipper-shuffle)

“Oh, don’t close the door, honey, oh no
If the door is closed no one will know I’m open
English Romantics? Here’s an Edgar Allan Poe
I read lots of books myself; do you like westerns?”

(Dark narrow paths tunnel through dark moldy heaps)

“I paid fifty dollars for that bolt cutter
It’s almost new; I bought it for my daddy
My brother locked him out of his own house
You can have it for twenty; I live upstairs”

(The shambling slippers follow me to the door)

“It’s a shame that girls don’t play with dolls anymore
Come back anytime; I’m mostly open”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                              A Carrier of Bodies

                                   My stretcher is one scarlet stain

                         -Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”

In illo tempore:

I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”
Like in the movies; I was already up
There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh
Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun

Later:

Carrying bodies of literature was impossible
But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day
Holes in the patients and in sterile drapes
Red fragments of flesh in the E. R. at night

Now:

In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside
And my older self, to a chair at dusk

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                      Are You an Old Soul?

                                   “…but lay thy sword aside
                           And lean upon a peasant’s staff”

                                             -Wordsworth

We have it on the highest Authority
That we are souls on lengthy pilgrimage
But I don’t know if we are old or not
And did you bring along something to read?

Sometimes we march in step along the route
At other times we seem to fly in pairs
Or sometimes trudge a lonely path in the night
And hear the music of a thousand spheres

Sometimes I’m old, but then you smile just so
And I am young – there’s magic in your soul