Draughts are laughs pitcher-after-pitcher wrought

Flows of abundance, sadly, dehydrate our tomorrows

Until the laughs have all been laughed away, never to return

:terra tomorrow

Droughts are doubts that have run out of answers

The moist explanations have evaporated away

Until what is left are parched silicates too stuck onto a hungover world

:terra bleary

Thoughts unthought through, though,

Ought fraught with hardfought naught

Drought handwrought in onslaught, bought

:terra regretta

Eat, drink, and be merry,

For tomorrow the Earth dies

:terror draught-drought-fraught

The casual tourist can "do" Venice in about a day and a half. The artistic tourist can take months. One of the best-kept secrets about Venice is one of its cemeteries, the island of San Michele.

Just a boat ride away, it is a sequestered, quiet refuge from Venice, if not the rest of Europe. Automobiles, as in Venice proper, are completely absent. It has a wall, but I couldn't tell if it was to keep the living out or the dead in.

It has a church, Cappella Emiliana, built by Guglielmo de’ Grigi d’Alzano between 1528 and 1543. The interior has 37 types of colored marble. It also has a stunning collection of sculpted reliefs by Giovanni Battista Carona, in perpetual maintenance.

It is a burial place of honor, with many artists, scientists, and military heroes having tombstones there. One in particular is an Austrian mathemetician named Christian Doppler (1803–1853), who died in Venice at the age of 49 of a pulmonary illness. Christian Doppler is the very Doppler of "Doppler effect" fame.

Perhaps it's always like this, but when I visited, my small party of two were the only visitors there. We went into the church and were met by a silent monk who only watched my wife and me with suspicion. We pressed on, regardless.

What struck me was the overwhelming silence of the entire small island. You can turn around 360 degrees and see all of its shored perimeter, including its wall. You are there--just you and the dead. And the monk.

Quiet usually means the absence of noise. It is a negative. On San Michele, quiet is a positive experience. It is a thing. It is part of the island as much as the dew or breezes or the saltwater olfactory ambiance from the Adriatic, wafting over the walls.

It is what holy sounds like. Silence is beautiful. It is beatified.

Back to Christian Doppler: he demonstrated how an observed frequency of sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector. Approaching sirens are higher-pitched coming and lower-pitched going, when they spread out away from you instead of bunching up on approach. For light waves, it gives astronomers their redshifts and blueshifts, distinguishing between objects moving away or toward Earth, respectively; or the speed of their moving away according to the measurement of redshift.

The irony of Dr. Doppler's grave being on San Michele Island is that sound waves don't spread out there. They simply don't exist. If you speak out loud, it's as if you're shushed cosmically and immediately. It seems a violation. A desecration of the dead. Christian Doppler must have been ready to watch waves of light and sound drop to the still ground, instead of their persistent spreading out over our lives.

If you go to Isola di San Michele, you'll get it. You'll bask in the silence that comforts like sanctifying grace.

There are those who say

He was just a man

He never rose

He never existed

There are those who say

He was just a bum

He was just a criminal

He was just a rebel

There are those who say

Miracles are bullshit

I argue by asking

What was in it for him?

And I answer

Nothing

Pain

Betrayal

Death

Why would a man choose

Suffering, betrayal, death?

Why would a man who taught

Love

Forgiveness

Tolerance

Even to the point of loving enemies

Why would he

Matter?

He mattered because of these very things

These ideas

That rose from the dead

In times where love and forgiveness and tolerance were dead

Listen to the message and those who say are right--

It doesn't matter:

The way was better than the man

Because the way was God

And there are those who say

He was both

Shattered crystal heart,

Reassembled with veins of gold.

Turning pain to art,

Revisiting stories already told.

As it beats on a sad, forgotten tune,

Something that has been so old but feels so new

As I clutch this wounded heart,

I don't know where to start

Sitting on a throne I rather not own

Which chips away at my heart as I suffer alone

The shattered crystal heart of golden veins

Beats out one saying again and again,

"I am the king of nowhere,

Of the lands no one cares.

Of the people who were forced to come

Or else they wouldn't dare"

My crystal heart bleeds gold as it beats out like a melancholy drum

There is a way that seems right to a man,

but in the end is a door to death.

- Proverbs 14:12

The Phillips head screw is both harder to strip

and an easier fit in the screwdriver tip

So no one now seeks a superior fit

(Though I once saw a carpenter use a star bit)

The ubiquitous winners we no longer name

That are sure as the ground is, and leaned on the same

Oh, the best uncontested, the things we ignore

They lower the ceiling in raising the floor

Lo, beyond nest, it is Jesus, the Christ Nazareth, that hath compassion in Us. Behind bars, there is see, that Christ is the power of everlasting hand. You, who fought nest, Christ abhor, that there are nations afar to Thee, whom We can let assure, that kneel before, Christ is the very one old to see in heaven core.

At Easter I like to share my testimony for those who want to know how I became a Christian.

Sometime in 1970, I stole a Bible. Perhaps “stole” is too strong a word. Let's just say I borrowed it and never gave it back. The theft wasn't intentional. It happened at the Naval Air Station in Atsugi, Japan. One evening, while on duty, I was in a room where someone left a Bible. I picked it up and began to read.

Though brought up in church, I'd questioned the existence of God, so His Word had become irrelevant to me. Fortunately, I had not become irrelevant to Him.

When my duty watch was over, I took the Bible back to my barracks, thinking, “I’ll return it when I'm done.” While flipping through pages, I found Psalm 40, and read the verse “I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”

The words touched me.

The year before, I'd been under investigation because of drugs. A dishonorable discharge loomed. But because I'd just become a father, I was given leniency. Perhaps fatherhood would straighten me out. Afterward, I was sent overseas.

As I traveled to various naval bases (Japan, Guam, Vietnam, and the Philippines) I fell deeper into my own “horrible pit.” To deaden the despair, I turned to drinking. (I stayed away from drugs because I feared the Navy would throw the book at me—and it wouldn't be a Bible.)

In June 1971, my first wife wrote me a “Dear John” letter, launching a deep personal crisis that came just months before my discharge from the service.

The following Sunday, I attended an evening Chapel service. That night, instead of a sermon, a film was featured. It told the story of three men trapped after a coal-mine collapse. One man was a churchgoer whose faith was not real. The second was an avowed atheist. The third was a believer. It was obvious that only the believer was prepared to deal with the crisis. I wanted to be like the third man.

After the film, the chaplain gave an invitation. I was the second person who went forward. Later, a counselor had me read Roman 10:13, “For whosever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." When I read the word "saved,” I realized the promise of Psalm 40 was fulfilled: I'd been pulled out of the pit and placed upon a “Rock.” My life hasn't been the same since.

Thank God for that . . .

Help me rise with you

from the depths of death’s darkness,

from the fiery pits of hell,

past the dirt and mud,

the cold solid stone,

the fog, the clouds, the rain.

Help me rise with you

past the anger, hurt and pain,

past the lust and greed and sorrow,

past the conflict, blood, and razor wire,

the faces kindling hate

through television screens,

Help me rise with you

past depression and anguish,

past loneliness and heartache,

the shadows of the unlit night,

the broken bones and slashed sides,

the crowns of thorns we all hide.

Help me rise with you

into the morning sky,

past the atmosphere,

through the vacuum of space

like a rocket or a comet

hurtling towards the sun.

Help me shine with you

like the sun’s luminous rays

through trees and leaves and windows

with the light that feeds flowers,

gives life to living things,

love to the loveless

and hope to the hopeless.

Happy Easter

4/9/23