Prisoners of Hope

    The title above is a phrase from Zechariah 9:12. I have been pondering it ever since it came up in last week's Bible study. The words were too beautiful not to make into a poem (in Hebrew, it already is), but I needed to know what it meant first. After consulting several commentaries and praying for guidance, I found myself thinking about a Longfellow poem I have shared here before, "The Children's Hour," in which the author compared his daughters climbing onto his chair as an adorable assault on his castle. The last verses are so beautiful I memorized them, and I wondered if the Lord was bringing it to my mind to help me understand the phrase "prisoners of hope."

  

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

because you have scaled my wall,

such an old mustache as I am

is not a match for you all.

 

I have you fast in my fortress,

and will not let you depart,

but put you down into the dungeons

in the round tower of my heart.

 

And there I will keep you forever

yes, forever and a day,

till the walls shall crumble to ruin

and moulder in dust away!  

 

   Longfellow's fortress and dungeon symbolize the place he keeps precious memories of his daughters. Not all prisons are places of punishment, they can also be places of protection. Though I refer to prison in a negative sense earlier in the poem, in my final stanza, I decided to stay in the context of Zechariah 9 and relate prison to the fortress the Lord is urging his people to return to in verse 12. And I made hope reflect the coming king prophesied in verse 9.

 

Prisoners of Hope

 

Prisoners were we in Babylon

far from our home, our freedom gone. 

Seven long decades we have been

exiled there because of sin. 

 

Prisoners are we, though now returned

to Jerusalem's splendor--ravaged, burned,

 temple destroyed, and walls are gone,

our days spent barely holding on. 

 

Enemies mocked and wrote to bring,

libelous charges to our king,

as if those scoffers could not tell

we had no power to rebel.

 

Prisoners are we of our despair

yet in Jerusalem's disrepair,

a prophet proclaims Israel's coming

lowly, victorious, Savior King.

 

Our land is overrun with men

who mock our God and scorn his plan,

but our fortress is this prophecy.

Prisoners of glorious hope are we.

 

(Zech. 9:12) 

 

3/1/26 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Bridal Shower Barrage

 

    I was recently asked to speak at a bridal shower for a young woman from our church who is getting married next month. Which was a minor miracle in itself, I am not exactly an in demand speaker, but mostly I said yes because I feel like I know her pretty well, and also know a fair bit about her fiance. I am going to change their names in this blog, since they are the innocent victims of my brain's barrage. I decided to look through my 15 years of blogs to find something profound to share about marriage. Didn’t find anything--except this story about our first date, since our recent Valentine’s day marks 50 years since that event. 

   I had gone out with Reed once before, but that was a casual, “My church is having a taco night for college age tonight, wanna come? As a broke college student, I would go anywhere for free food. But a Bible college Valentine banquet is a really awkward first date. The speaker was addressing couples in love. The message was about not sacrificing the 99% of the things you like about your boyfriend/girlfriend for the 1% you don’t. I only knew about 1% of Reed at that point and I wasn’t sure how I felt about even that. As it turned out, Reed was the first of four guys that invited me to that same banquet. For an unpopular girl who never dated in high school (not that I wanted to, dating in my high school was synonymous with getting drunk), getting asked out by four guys was a Vatican worthy miracle. So I couldn’t help but wonder throughout the awkward evening in my borrowed dress, if I shouldn’t have taken one of the other offers.

  But there is something irresistible about someone who keeps on loving you in spite of your response, in spite of yourself. We got engaged June 25, 1976, despite a proposal about as romantic as the taco night invitation. We were in his apartment after dinner when he said,

    “I wanna marry you.”

     I said,”I wanna marry you, too.”

    “Will you?" (That was the trick question I was unprepared for!)

     Long pause . . . gulp . . . "Yes"?

  Not only did he not get down on one knee, he didn’t even get up off the couch. One year, to the day from that romantic milestone, we got married. But I don’t want to dim the enthusiasm for your upcoming wedding day with the story of everything that went wrong on ours. That is a fractured fairytale for another time.

  And since there was no profound marriage advice in my blog, I thought I would share with the bride to be some of the things I wish I’d known earlier in my marriage: 

My husband can’t read my mind.

   If Reed was capable of reading my mind, he would not have given me a cheese platter as the first Valentine’s gift of our married lives. I like cheese, but it felt more like an employee of the month reward than a romantic gesture. After we had children, I was a stay at home mom, so my main contribution to family finances was to save us money, not earn it. Part of that savings was by providing meals at home but—3 times a day, every day, even for someone like me who enjoys cooking, gets tiring. Sometimes I wanted to go out for dinner or for Reed to pick up a pizza or burgers on the way home. But I felt guilty about the expense, so I wanted him to suggest it. Somehow my brainwaves could not transmit that message 14 miles to the airport where he worked. Even when he called and asked “What’s for dinner?” and I said ,”I don’t know” he could not pick up on my thought transmissions. After hearing this advice several years into our marriage, at someone else’s bridal shower, I gave up the minding reading act and just told him when I wanted restaurant food. He was happy to do so, always had been, I just needed to say it. 

I am not my husband’s Holy Spirit.

   When our kids are little, we parents are the ones who help them apply Bible truth to their lives. Until they know the Lord and understand how to listen to the Spirit, we play the role as the spirit in their lives. But because of that, ans a desire to be helpful, and a sinful desire to tell people what to do, that can overflow into trying to be Holy Spirit Junior in our husband’s lives. I’m sure the day I learned in Bible study that that was not my role in Reed’s life was one of his happiest days in our marriage. Although I do need frequent reminders from the real Holy Spirit, that he knows how to guide my husband better than I do.

Embrace the differences.

   Men are different from women and those differences should be celebrated—especially by the women. One of those differences is spitting. You will not find a group of women standing around visiting and have one suddenly turn around and hawk a loogie on the ground. That is a guy thing. I spent some time contemplating why men spit. They produce more saliva than women but their bodies are equipped to handle the load. I concluded that the main reason men spit is because they can. But another thing that comes out of men’s mouths is words. They do  not have as many words to spit out of their system as women do. "Anna", I know enough about you and your fiance to know you have a different amount of words inside you that need to come out. That is something you’ll need to figure out together. Both words and silence can be too much of a good thing. And Anna, even after decades of marriage, you will sometimes turn to that person you know and love more than anyone on earth and say, “Why on earth did you even think that?” The answer, because he’s a man, that’s why. 

Timing is everything.

    If the Lord blesses you with children, you will find them to be the most angelic, adorable sinners you can imagine. There is a tendency, after a long day supervising small sinners, for a wife to want to hand at least one of them to her husband as he walks in the door and say “Take this child!” Whether he has had a great day at work or a terrible day, this is not an appropriate way to say, Welcome home! If you know you need to discuss something which may be difficult (for instance, putting that child up for adoption) just kidding. But seriously, save some discussions for after a good meal when he is relaxed and satisfied. You may have had all day to work out the perfect wording, but it will not matter if your husband is not ready to listen. To discuss something on which you are likely to disagree, save it for after "dessert" when hopefully both of you are relaxed and satisfied.

   You and "John" have gone into this relationship as God has directed and we, your church family, have great hopes for where He will lead you in the future. I would like to close with a poem I wrote for my Valentine a few years ago. May God bless you both with long years together holding hands.

 

  Holding Hands
 

 We still hold hands,
but they are old hands
with age spots, crepey skin,
yet warm enough.

Those early years
short on money
long on kids, holding jobs,
just holding on.

And later on
our children have grown
our savings too, leisure time,
enjoying life.

 Decades ago
I knew this day would come,
growing old, side by side,
still holding hands.

 

 2/10/16

 

 

The Connie Codes

    There are many famous codes in history:  The Code of Hammurabi, Morse code, that Navajo code like in the movie "Windtalkers", The DaVinci Code. Admittedly, that last one is a novel, but the one in Windtalker's was real. Then there are the household codes we use to keep our children and dogs from knowing what we're talking about. We spell things out or use alternate words like r-i-d-e or call it excursion to keep the dogs from going crazy with anticipation, i-c-e  c-r-e-a-m or frozen dairy product with children for the same reason. I could have used Spanish words so my children wouldn't understand, but then neither would my husband.

   However, having picky eaters forced me to create a visual code for food. Grilled cheese sandwiches became a Saturday lunch staple when the kids were home, but our daughter only liked Velveeta cheese, the boys and I liked cheddar, Reed preferred grilled peanut butter and jelly. The code went like this: the Velveeta sandwiches were cut in half diagonally, cheddar was sliced in half vertically, peanut butter horizontally. That way no one had to touch the sandwiches they didn't want, much less pull them apart to see what kind they were. 

   That brings me to the celery code. Before they discovered only little kids and uncool adults eat raisins, the preferred method of eating celery at our house was ants on a log style with peanut butter and raisins. But what kind of peanut butter? Reed was, and is, a Jif crunchy gourmand. The kids were fine with non-Jif, as long as it was creamy. I think of peanut butter more like a cooking ingredient than an actual food, so am content with most store brands as long as they are not natural (oily), or low sugar (disgusting). The celery code was all about the ants. Pieces with crunchy peanut butter had three raisins, creamy pieces had two. I have a special serving dish I use for this that keeps the celery at an angle so the ants can't swap logs with other ants. 

    Since Reed and I are not trying to be too cool to eat raisins, or too cool to do anything for that matter, we still use the celery code to this day. Although it will never be used in school cafeterias where fear of raisins is rampant (kids would rather eat ants), someday my system may become as well known as the "quantum cryptography" code no one has heard of. 

    Now that both our kids and ability to sleep well have long since left our home, we find it necessary to make a new code. Although my sleep is much improved since my shoulder replacement, it is normal for both of us to wake up multiple times during the night. Besides visiting the bathroom, we often let the dogs out for a mid-night potty break. The problem is, we do not wake up at the same time so there has been no way to know if the dogs need to go outside or have just come in from outside. We needed a code. Not a note that we would require glasses and light to read. And not where we would have to wake up enough to leave the bedroom to find it. The one sure stop on our late night wake up calls is the bathroom, so we needed a symbol we could leave in the bathroom to indicate we let the dogs out. We settled on the baby wipes we keep in the bathroom for makeup removal and . . . other things. If we let the dogs out, we move the baby wipes from the back of the toilet to between our sinks. That way we have wiped out the need to wake a sleeping spouse to ask them.

    We will probably need more codes in the future like--you need a toothpick, let someone else talk, turn on your hearing aid, etc. But I am confident that if the years to come hold more confusion, I can get cracking on another Connie code to clear it up.

      

 

Most Exalted Evil Master

    My favorite C.S. Lewis book is "The Screwtape Letters", in which the demon Screwtape is advising his nephew Wormwood in the art of tempting believers in Christ into sin or, at least, apathy. In that vein, though not with Lewis' talent, I have created a series of emails from a demon in charge of child sacrifice to his boss, Satan. 

Email:

From:  Mmolechson@satansrealm.gov/deptofinhumanservices 

To: Dragon@darkworld.gov                                                                                                     

 Most Exalted Evil Master,                                                                       312 A.D          

   Please forgive my use of the human designation of the year, I know you have plans to change it in the future to remove any acknowledgment of the life of Christ, but for now it is convenient. As the demon you have appointed in charge of child sacrifice I thought I should give a status report. Just as you planned, through many different religions, rulers, and mortal realms, child sacrifice numbers have remained steady. My current concern is that in Rome, where you have had so much freedom to further your agenda, Emperor Constantine appears to have converted to Christianity. Even in my department, I have heard reports that your deputies assigned to Rome believe he might make Christianity its official religion. Christian teachings always interfere with your master plan and this could have a detrimental effect on the number of babies sacrificed to idols. The timing is also a problem, because the Roman Empire itself is in decline. Is there a plan to assist my department in case of this contingency?

 

Malacious Molechson 

 

Reply:

 

   As you know well, I have prepared many alternate schemes. My agents infiltrated our enemy's church from the beginning, and will use the establishment of Christianity as Rome's official religion to further assert my influence. When the church becomes a path to political power and wealth, men allied with me will hold its highest offices. And, since our enemy plans to replace the Roman kingdom soon anyway, I will accept a decrease in your quota as long as you maintain human sacrifice levels in the less "civilized" cultures where I still hold sway.

 

MEEM

Most Exalted Evil Master,                                                                           1850 

 

   Your plan to replace child sacrifice with abortion is going very well. Mortal mothers are less willing to kill a baby after it is born than when the process is sight unseen. The delusion that the unborn child is not really alive until the mother can feel movement, what they call the "quickening," is well accepted. Besides, when contraception is not reliable, available, and in some jurisdictions even legal, abortion becomes by default not murder, but birth control. Up until this time, abortion has mostly been the purview of midwives and sellers of folk remedies, but doctors in the newly formed medical associations now feel they should control our business and have begun to spread the long suppressed truth that life begins at conception. Even worse, some do gooders, in the name of women's rights, claim it is abusive for husbands, lovers, pimps, etc. to make women abort babies against their will. Business has been very good, but I'm afraid there may be a downturn.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

   Do not doubt me, my simple servant, focus on the end game! In the context of my long term plan to separate mortals from their Maker, these setbacks to my agenda are temporary and unimportant. Humans are not wise enough to remember, much less learn from, their past. I do not even need to create new lies, I just reword and recycle my age old ones.

 

MEEM   

 

Most Exalted Evil Master                                                                       1973

 

   Congratulations on your great victory in the Roe vs. Wade decision! Your brilliant strategy of removing prayer, and every vestige of Christian values from public schools has paved the way for this success. I expect many years of exceeding our previous quotas. But I am concerned that improvements in medical technology may make it possible to see the development of their infants from shortly after conception. This may dispel the illusion that aborted babies are just blobs of tissue. If human mothers can view their unborn children, they may decide not to sacrifice them.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

    I have, of course, already anticipated this. Medical science cannot stand up to a simple human slogan. For now, my puppet, Planned Parenthood, is promoting the slogan, "Every child a wanted child."  When that one weakens because so many couples want to adopt those children, I will inspire them to make one about a woman's right to control her own body. After all, viewing other humans as property worked well to justify slavery for a long time. 

 

MEEM  

 

Most Exalted Evil Master                                                                            2022

 

    I am devastated at the news that Roe vs. Wade was overturned. I was sure you had enough operatives in the Supreme Court to continue the ruse that the U.S. Constitution upholds the right to abortion. Some states have already made abortion less accessible. Without support from upper management I cannot meet my expected death quotas.

 

MMolechson 

 

Reply:

 

    Do not underestimate me! My agenda is advancing as planned. During the years in which abortion was enshrined  as a right (their terminology reveals the success of my worship campaign, though I prefer they call it a rite), human life was so devalued that mass shootings of school children, coworkers, and random people in public venues are common occurrences. Many mortals are unable to tell the difference between my terrorists and their victims. And my "hate speech" propaganda campaign has convinced many that people who disagree with them deserve to die. My delusion that humans can determine for themselves what is right and wrong, true and false, has dominated man's thinking since Eden. I am not concerned about this small setback, many mortals still proclaim my abortion distortion propaganda as true. Where killing the most innocent of beings is considered acceptable, death reigns. I reign and remain-- 

 

Most Exalted Evil Master

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

    

Deceived Stupidity

    I admit the ongoing Anti-Ice protests tempt me to despair at the deceived stupidity of so many of my fellow citizens. But if I let that persuade me that God has lost control of his planet, my country, or even just Minneapolis, then I am part of the deceived stupidity.

 

The Company of Men

     This is the poem I had in mind before writing The Men of the Palace. I realized the reason I sacrifice so much of my Saturday to Tool Palace visits when I am not in the market for used tools is because I have always enjoyed the company and conversation of men. Since I am there with my husband and the other men's wives are not around to feel insecure, I can relax and be myself.

The Company of Men

I have always enjoyed the company of men--

tagging along as a little girl,

watching Roy Rogers, Sky King

and Saturday morning cartoons

at Dad's friend's house,

listening to the men visit.

 

Next came the school years

with boys aplenty and men too few.

At Bible college, where many girls

thought conversing with men

was solely to procure or poach a boyfriend,

I was considered a shameless flirt.

 

The churches I used to attend

treated talking much the same.

Though by then a happily married woman, 

at church social gatherings,

with their wives within easy earshot, 

speaking with men was still suspect. 

 

Fortunately, the world of 

aircraft mechanics is mostly male,

and by this time, from

decades in an aviation atmosphere,

I can contribute meaningfully

to most conversations. 

Though I am happy to visit

with a pilot or mechanic's wife,

I'm not intimidated if they don't come.

I am used to flying solo

through a cyclone of testosterone. 

I have always enjoyed the company of men. 

 

1/21/26 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Men of the Palace

     It has been weeks since I have had anything ready for my Saturday poetry swap with Fred, poet laureate of The Tool Palace. Saturday he made it clear that I needed to jack hammer my writer's block out of the way and bring him a poem. Since he wrote a poem about Tool Palace last week from his perspective, I decided to write one from mine.

 The Men of the Palace  

 

The Men of the Palace

                           are waiting there                           

on Saturdays at noon. 

And I, the only lady fair,

with escort, join them soon. 

 

Some are the wizards,

and some the wits, but 

jesters all can be.

They sit, for they are aged and tired, 

yet yield a chair to me.

 

There's wisdom 

to be gathered there 

if one can sift it out 

from the multitude of stories

they like to throw about.

 

They sit, as if 

to guard the door,

yet none could stop a thief.

Customers coming in the store 

must wonder who these could be. 

 

When the men of the Palace 

filled with tools 

make a place for me

among the stools, 

I feel like royalty.

 

1/20/26