The Company of Middling Folk

The Company of Middling Folk

(“Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” Ecclesiastes 7:16)

Did they remember your name those days after
you told of all your conquests and had knocked out those
demons and unclean spirits with merely a word?
Did they pay attention to you when you outlined the
hours of prayer you spent over the weekend and all the
food you refused to eat while everyone else was dining?
Did you think you were dying to exhibit that your best pal was god,
and that everyone knew you to be one righteous brother?
Did you run a popup prayer room where your power petitions
buried everyone’s nose in your pious practices? Did you think
that would raise your esteem among the ladies and gentlemen who
never encountered someone of your holy fame?

And those sayings of yours, those pithy sentences that sounded
convoluted but you said were so simple a child could understand them.
You told parables, but they wound around themselves like condiments
hid in the back of the refrigerator. You pronounced stories you insisted
were heavenly blue, heavenly true. Only a few wondered about their
origin, and among them one or two who considered they were lifted from
someone else’s anthology of folk wisdom.

I’d prefer the company of middling folk who know a joke and tell it
knowing we have heard it before. I prefer the camaraderie of men and women
who carry food so quietly that no one in the neighborhood hears them
ring the bell at the old widow’s door. And they don’t stay for long,
just enough to make sure she doesn’t need anything more. I prefer
the company of people who never outline their acts for the big wigs
to hear. They may go to coffee after their excursions but never brag
about their respectability.

When we boasted to each other of our exploits, we found our appetite
for goodness had taken a dive. When we pontificated about words of
wisdom
loudly in the ruckus room, they turned their backs to us and left us
standing alone. We learned the lesson quickly. We learned the ways of
kindness without announcing it to the world. And we were far more
satisfied, our righteousness and wisdom, quietly showing up the next
time someone needed them. And quietly we would respond, do what
we could do, and apologize there was not more.

I Let My Hands Hang

 

I Let My Hands Hang

(“But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. But whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.” Matthew 5:39)

The long dark night gave way to the
floating sun and the light of day.
And I remembered why my sleep was so restless,
why my breakfast was so careless
and the memories of a singular slap to the face
replaced the peaceful dreams I could not recall.

I woke restless but the perpetrators were long gone
and all I had was a bruise below my eye.
I was proud (is that the word) that my hands
stayed at my side, that I did not answer back nor
threaten with stinging reprimands. I was not a
wholesaler who bought my offenses at bargain
prices to sell and release my hold on them.

The bruises quickly fade; the memory reaches
so far back it is ingrained like a limestone cave.
I should have counted to ten more slowly and then
back to one again. But the picture is finally floating
down the shallow rivulet toward the deeper water where
it falls below the waves whipped by the wind.

I cannot control my dreams. I have sometimes allowed them
to control me. Some I have dismissed with hasty fear,
others I wish had come true throughout the soundless breeze
of the day.

I would learn a better silence in the face of mistrusted words
that flew toward my mind. I let my hands hang.

The Canceled Acclaim

The Canceled Acclaim

(“Pride lands you flat on your face; humility prepares you for honors.” Proverbs 29:23 [The Message]

The days were stitched together like fibers
on a loom. It was daylight too often, it was
late in the afternoon. I couldn’t predict what the
day would become; I only envisioned a few moments
when the light would favor my imagination.
I longed for something created to ease my mind,
something I could point to that broke the rules I
already patterned to sit me closer to the
heights of power.

Wishing I could live more lowly and still be
acknowledged for my unseen character,
I reminded myself of the notes I could play while
ignoring the fingers that slipped across the black
and white keys.

My patience was tested, my longings more congested
than a winter’s cold or a summer’s scorn. I only
desired something beyond the corners of
hand-me-down
notions that I hid behind the closet doors of
my mind.

I took comfort in numbers; in the crowds I thought
shadowed my measured words. I wondered if
I could pacify the spaciousness that my depression
deserved. I confessed it all, this addiction to
connection, and wondered which way I could turn.

Above or below, I could not decipher what the
final judgement would mean. I had lifted more
weight
than my peers had attempted. And yet I was
still questioned my mental health. It was
daylight I craved, and a handful of accolades I thought
would restore my attention to legal details
that never let go of my mind.

A Silver Set

A Silver Set

(“Good words that hide an evil heart are like silver paint over a cheap, clay pot.” Proverbs 26:23)

I know you hoped that we would see you shine;
I know you wanted to be redesigned by bowing and
scraping and ordering every word around the perfect
incantations that sounded like speaking in tongues.

We had a silver set when I was growing up, sterling
silver I believe. We brought it out on holidays and scoured it
with the cream we kept hidden for just this purpose.
We burnished and polished until they reflected the sun
back to our open eyes again.

But we are all just silver plated, thinly wrapped around a common
lump of clay. I watched how you would get discouraged and then
call it depression and exit to watch it run its course like runoff after
the deluge. You agonized over hoping to reach another level but
your humanity seemed to be to blame.

I’ve laminated my own life scores of years over. I’ve wanted
to find
someone who didn’t care that all they saw was much. But
the crowds I ran in demanded prayer and perfection. They
expected a performance that looked like a faith-healer trashing
crutches and wheelchairs. But I always saw the healed person
limping around the same echoes again.

Touch me and you touch dirt, dust to dust, and ashes to ashes.
Hold me and your fingernails will get smudged with mud.
Talk to me, bring the wine, and I will open myself up
one last time. I am slow to show the slivers in the silver
that protects my ego. But for you I will try it one more time.

And perhaps we will find a better connection than thinly
disguised silver can ever deliver.

Strengthening

Strengthening

(“He went from place to place…strengthening all the disciples.” Acts 18:23b)

I just dropped by to say I heard the clouds
talking this morning in a colloquy with the sun. They agreed
gladly
to break by noon and flood the day with glass-blue
rays on the afternoon. I
only mention this because I know how much you
have longed for the beginning of wakefulness
to rouse you from the doldrums. You once knew
the lift of renewed songs and friendships grounded
in conversations that lasted past the sunsets of summer.
I came to remind you that the stars can be seen
from this side of the world as well.
I came to remember, right next to you,
the way the air felt holy when we first heard the story
that the conclave of heaven with earth foretold.
And we decided, this time, that time, to believe it
like every other story that invaded our disquieted minds.
Do you remember? Will you remind me while I
walk beside you on this late sunshine afternoon?

My Basic Intentions

My Basic Intentions

(“Whoever loves pure thoughts and kind words will have even the king as a friend.” Proverbs 22:11)

I fashioned the words I needed to
cash in the debts I was owed. I would never
ask for repayment directly but hint at
the mindless muddle it left me in.

Should we meet up to discuss it;
will you repay me when you can?
Or should I write it off, call it grace,
leave it alone transformed like mud into gold?

I’ve got words inside me I have rarely spoken,
fortunes I have not spent. I don’t need the cash,
I didn’t mean to bring it up again.
Rivers sometimes overflow their banks.

I would rewrite the note I sent if that would help.
I should not have raised the subject at all.
I am afraid that trees sometimes fall without warning
and unpredictably finish the day on the forest floor.

My intentions were pure, or so I hoped;
it was the wording that got in the way.
I did not know how to bring it up and
now I wish I never had.

So now I’ll say it all out loud; I’ll recite
what were my basic intentions. I’ve erased
the moment from my mind and left it behind
to feed my roses that have just begun to bloom.

That Pinpoint of Time

That Pinpoint of Time

(“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13)

Did your time feel like it was funneled down a
vortex slide into a single pinpoint of everything?
All the past and future convened to meet in a super mass
of holy magnitude and whirlwinds of exceptional mass.
It seemed as if the air had solidified and the ground turned
like a twirling toddler getting himself dizzy and falling
on the floor.
I was going to hold the door open for you to walk out
into the sunshine. But you were lost in your encounter
with all of time meeting in the single space you occupied.
Your yesterday caught up with you,
your tomorrow greeted you on the back end. There was no
escaping the way that time began to unravel your straight-line
existence. You could do nothing but smile and test the
air to be sure it was still breathable.

We had met years ago when time still ran a straight line.
We knew where we had been and hoped we would enjoy
where we were going. We never thought that we would
encounter the fullness of the mystery of the tornados of time.

While everything moved horizontally toward the edge of your existence
you could count the days by moons and suns. But here was all creation
swirling around you, day and night meeting each other from
front to back with future and past sharing places under your
gaze.

We did not expect to find the Spirit moving in such a way that
we could find her no matter which direction we faced. It was not
simply our past and future, but the rule seemed to be that whatever
direction we looked the divine had been there first. It was only
a hint, but it seemed the crucial mass of time reminded us
of the Spirit that occupies everything. Yesterday and tomorrow
were now full of the light that shines without the sun. Frightened
at first
now we twirled ourselves at the invitation of the Spirit that
filled all things front to back, top to bottom, horizontal and
vertical, we knew the diagonal was fully filled in that
pinpoint of time.