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Yet [*/+/^] : 27.225 MHz, Some Final Measures; A Barefoot Walk
. . . put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest . . .
---Exodus 3:5
". . . from the wilderness of stars . . .
They were those who have wept to step barefoot into reality . . ."
---Wallace Stevens, "Large Red Man Reading"
1
In those days just before I was due to receive
a means of escape from this exile, a temporary reprieve
for the time of summer, the season of profusion and flowering.
Then came they to tell me that, upon a merchant's table,
awaited a cross on delicate chain, and on that cross
(despite the tendency of the world to swerve from this),
a chalice, the sacramental symbol of our Savior's shed blood,
and the covenant of Salvation that it established on His cross.
Thus informed, I hurried to the site of sale; I was clad in
a pastel lavender polo shirt and baggy white painter's pants,
flipflops in hand, to proceed through the day barefoot,
hoping to stand someday on holy ground, holier than there.
2
And the purchase price was less than I had expected to pay
for such a skillfully crafted indicator of saving Faith
(thought I did not know then, being too immaturely naive,
that I had not yet entered the plane or dimension of saving Faith
(which is to acknowledge, at all times, my need for a Savior---
given the multitude of falls, failure, stalls and stumbles
that indicate how much and how dire was my need for a Savior;
and Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Regnant Christ,
the Word of God, the Cosmos Maker, in whom all things coalesce,
Who loved me and dying to break my death He gave Himself for me,
moving leisurely, flipflops in hand, to transverse the day barefoot
hoping to stand someday on holy ground, holier than there.
3
The merchant, the maker, was himself a visitor once resident in the East;
the East, the place of the DayStar's rising, the East wherein Starwatchers
observed the rising of the messenger star, the clock from which they
took their timing to proceed through the days of their pilgrimage,
assured that they would stand on holy ground at the end of their journey;
from the East, also, after the DayStar's rising, the fellowship of the mystery
should be revealed to those for Whom the DayStar's rising, upon the Paschal Day
established and sealed the hope of Life eternal and its joy everlasting.
Upon Patmos, in the place of his exile, holy and theologic Apostle John
revealed the grandeur of worship in Heaven, according to Christ's own liturgy;
and I, pathetically and immaturely unaware of that privilege, still walked barefoot
toward local east, not holy ground, but somewhere must be holier than there.
4
Westward was the realm and restrictions of the clutch and clench of Empire;
the carefully organized, highly efficient, process of proprietary acquisition
into which Augustus required the whole world to be enrolled;
from which should be redeemed all those who loved and sought Salvation,
all those who proclaimed, "The Lord be magnified," in jubiltation,
celebratory and exclamatory, the song of the saved in the great congregation,
eastward toward the DayStar's rising, ascendant to the sky and the throne of Grace,
from which we shall---we who believe, who depend upon the Joy of assured Salvation---
receive help in the time, the day, the hour and very moment of need,
with this assurance that where the Gospel goes with us within our souls
shall sanctify the spiritual path upon which we walk, metaphorically barefoot,
toward our rising unto the Daystar, into His East, received by Him, the Holy One, there.
________________________________________________________________________________-
1,7 Luke 22:20
1,8 Colossians 1:20
1,11-12 Exodus 3:5; the last two lines of each subsequent stanza allude also to this verse.
2,9 Colossians 1:16
2,10 Galatians 2:20
3,2 2 Peter 1:19, Matthew 2:2
3.6 Ephesians 2:9
3,8 Isaiah 51:11
3,9-10 Revelation, passim
4,3 Luke 2:102
4,5 Psalm 70:5
4,6 Psalm 35:18
4,7 Hebrews 4:16
4,8 Psalm 51:12
4,9 Hebrews 4:16
4,12 1 John 2:20
Starward
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