Dramatic irony, it was taught to me,
is when the audience, we,
have intelligence unavailable
to the characters at play.

The author knows more.

You do not know the day,
says the Word, nor can you create it
out of war, out of loathing, out of thin, cold air,
however close you think it comes to heaven.

Yet the hour is now here, the Word has spoken,
who speaks it into being with a breath;
the hour of spirit and truth.

The trouble is that we still do not see it:
the Spirit that moves where it will,
the truth that whispers beneath its breath,
that Love is God, waiting in plain sight
beside the well, and all else irony.

I find myself drawn to the contrast between reports this week that some military commanders are framing the war against Iran as an effort to bring about the end times, as though we may decide these things for God, in our wisdom; the contrast between that and Jesus’ words to the woman that the hour is already come, quietly, unnoticed over a cup of water, when reconciliation happens, and the truth of God’s love for the world, in all of its invented factions and fractions, has been revealed.