Do Make a Beggar of Me

"I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Epistle to the Ephesians

Don't make me beg for your kisses,

Beg for your tender embrace,

I want your love, not your sympathy,

Please don't make a beggar of me.

"Don't Make a Beggar of Me," a Frank Sinatra song

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Dear Kate,

I pray (because frankly I couldn't see how else I can continue to hope) that you may have the power to comprehend--which is to say you might also finally lack that power or the will or wish to comprehend at all, and your incomprehension--and mine, will be our undoing, likely of each other, an implosion of our sainthood, tabernacle falling to lose all its dimensions, enough with love, enough with Christ, enough with anything at all, occasional loneliness shrivels, crystalizes into a permanent, totalizing state of being, full-filled with emptiness, estrangement our last word.

"Peter Heals a Lame Beggar."  This title, added as an afterthought to the Bible scripture I read last night, not even part of the original text, I stared at it for a long time, while Sinatra was singing about being a beggar.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," the beggars, the lame ones even more so, for they shall receive the kisses and tender embrace they long for.  I have a mountain of books, some very scholarly, to help me understand the Bible.  But take this from me: don't take anything too seriously from anyone who is not a beggar.

Of course we are all beggars.  Most of us most of time are very good at denying that.  Occasional loneliness crystalizing.

There's this song about an exile I've been listening to all my life, but it was not until one time I hopped on a bus I knew not where it was going that I finally got it.

Yours, Alex