Religion/Spirituality

DRUNKS

for my father, and the people who almost saved his life

We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms
where they found us three days later
when somebody complained about the smell
we died against bridge abutments
and nobody knew if it was suicide
and we probably didn't know either
except in the sense that it was always suicide
we died in hospitals
our stomachs huge, distended
and there was nothing they could do
we died in cells
never knowing whether we were guilty or not.

We went to priests
they gave us pledges
they told us to pray
they told us to go and sin no more, but go
we tried and we died

we died of overdoses
we died in bed (but usually not the Big Bed)
we died in straitjackets
in the DTs seeing God knows what
creeping skittering slithering

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Mardi Gras also known as Fat Tuesday is to millions of humans as a celebration with revelry, dancing, lusting, intoxication and merry making. It is also a religious celebration, as the last day before the season of lent which is 40 days of suffering in the flesh with fasting and prayer.

The Mardi Gras is also known as carnival which is CARNE VALE . Carne meaning the FLESH or meat and Vale which means leaving. Leaving the flesh.

Flesh in a religious term has to do with SIN. living in the flesh in the christian meaning is to live in SIN.

Every human being is born into sin because of the time in which the first human MAN and WO'MAN committed sin in the garden of Eden, by disobeying God, after being deceived by the serpent also known as the devil and Satan.

It didn’t take so long for me to fall from grace, to spend most of my life trying to escape my misery.

And in my blindness I couldn’t see the part of my life I wanted to be.

Where do you find peace for your soul when you closed that door so long ago?

Set adrift upon a sea inside my mind, while life carried on outside just fine.

Time after time we look who we are

Sometimes or not we follow a guiding star

Be it up or down or side to side

We travel our road and hope we get by

With little tears in our eyes

With little fear in our stride

In 1984 Servant of God, John Paul II wrote an Apostolic Letter about the redemptive nature of suffering, Salvifici Doloris. He did not speak from a position of ignorance; in his own body, the words and thoughts he shared with the Faithful were to find courageous expression.

JPII (as we lovingly refer to him) believed that any education as to the nature of the human condition that proposes only lives spent free of suffering were worthy lives is a false teaching. He saw that suffering provokes three human responses: compassion, admiration and fear.

Just as the first human and original sin can be seen as a 'happy fault' because it brought about the loving and merciful plan of salvation, JP II taught that suffering, for all its evil and awful aspects, can be seen as an experience from which good can be achieved.

So this is life

This is how its suppose to be

From the bombs exploding in our streets

To the parents who cry out in misery

And this is hope

That tragedy won’t come to me