theology in the subarctic

Truck Lights

Wintertime and very cold,
early afternoon but already dark.

I'm driving from Sombak'e (Yellowknife)
to Beuchoko (Rae)
in my fifteen-year-old pickup truck,
and a Dene elder askes me for a ride.

The land has taught the Dene
to live in a world of silence.

After ten kilometeres, Kolchia relects:
"Driving the truck is like having faith in God."

I'm trying to figure out what he means,
but after two kilometres I give up:
"Grandpa, you talked about driving and faith in God.
I'm not sure what you meant."

Kolchia turned slightly towards me:
"You started the engine and you put the lights on.
We could have said, 'We see only one hundred metres ahead.
Farther on, it's one hundred kilometres of darkness,
so we cannot go to Beuchoko.'
But you got the truck into gear,
we started to move,
and the lights kept showing ahead of us.

Must be the way with God, too,
who shows us only a bit into the future,
just enough for our next move.
If we are afraid and if we stand still,
we'll never see farther ahead.
But if we go with the little light we have,
the light keeps showing us the way on and on."

a poem by Fr. Rene Fumoleau
an Oblate of Mary Immaculate
in the far north

tattered epistasis

being bruised and battered is a way of being
it happens in accidents
it happens in going about life quite naturally
suddenly you are wounded
weaker than when you first arrived
and the wound gives rise to other pain
and thus one interprets the work in terms of pain

comfort is not absent
but it is hard to come by

i know i sit in a little basement cell
typing out words on a screen that i will preserve
in a micro chip or a series of them somewhere

but i also know that my physical body is contending with
significant pain
and to be able to manage that is a sort of daily trick

morphine would take care of the general discomfort
but it would do nothing to assist healing
so i am today on the path of my healing
today i begin the task of notifying
the hands-on healers who will
give themselves over to
the little project of helping br john's shoulder heal

this injury has a slight effect on the way i hold my guitar
and i sing sad contry ballads with more affectation of real pain
so that's always good
i mean
we need more of that

and alleluias abound in the monastery still
like the invisible sonic ripples off a bell when it has been rung
which go on forever like ripples on a the surface of the water
we are aripple with life
sometimes it seems
triplerippled

and when all is said and done
i agree with the metis legend
of the buffalo all going into a large hole in the ground
but they will be back
the buffalo will be back

most all the damages of winter are covered over
by the flood of spring green

and thus i know i know what i know when i know it
said the ripple bored bard of ripplington

kora is in her moist musty cave
and crickets applaud her