The Morning Broke Loudly

The Morning Broke Loudly

(“They are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:24)

I know the morning broke loudly across your consciousness,
I know the outcome pushed upon your chest like a trunk of pennies.
You expected better,
you hoped for something different than the same lines to the
same songs
over and over again.
I know you wanted to wake up this morning like summer.
I know you wanted to have a drink with your friends and celebrate.
You dreamed of so much better,
you yearned for the very thing that would give new words to the
same old songs
you enjoyed when you were young.

But the sun broke through the gray today,
the dogs chased each other and played in the field.
The promise felt like a fainting scarecrow,
I know,
I felt the fatigue too, sucking the last drop
of enthusiasm from the day.
But the sun still shone like summer,
the trees were letting go all around me
creating a carpet of seeds and leaves, heart-shaped leaves,
and the breaths we take are as full as they were
yesterday at this time.

I know the breezes are cooler this time of year,
I know the rain sometimes announces itself before the deluge.
You expected rainbows,
you hoped for the injustice in the world would never
consume the light you felt in your soul. So,
rainbow or no,
you knew the day would be hard. You knew the canyon
was narrow and shafts of light briefly played upon your brow.

I know you wanted to see this day brighter,
I know you wanted to dance like a playful fawn.
Instead you walked over the dew-drenched yard,
took the letters out of the mailbox
and went back indoors, sat on the couch and wondered
what would come of all of this.

Everybody Has a Mountain

Everybody Has a Mountain

(“Because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them.” Matthew 13:15)

What do you see, what do you notice?
Are they too q for you? Or too diminished, or too damaged,
or too sinful, or eat too loudly, or have parties with transgressors,
sharing food like family? What are you seeing? What makes you
keep your distance? Or make your insistence clear that repentance
is the only cure for the pain they carry from daylight to sundown?

Are you able, at a moment’s notice, to rid yourself of easy aphorisms
that say little and mean even less. Do you discount the doctors who only
“practice”, why only God “heals”. Or can you see the doctors as the
hands of God, a miracle in the flesh, a co-conspirator in the dawn of
divine healing? Don’t diss the doctors. I’ve met more angels in white coats
than I have in blue suits occupying a box made for worship.

Everybody has a mountain they wish would move,
Everybody has waters they must traverse,
Everybody has danger that stalks them from long ago,
Everybody has a wasteland where food and water and health and matter
disappeared like an oasis approached at dusk.

Did you see the transman wanting to worship? Did you, with all the
confidence religion gives you, declare “God does not make mistakes.”
Did you forget about congenital heart disease, spina bifida, or cleft palates?
Our world is full of mistakes, imperfection is the beauty of our mosaic.
Why tell a rugged tourmaline that it should be a nicely polished emerald?
You are right. God makes no mistakes. And the sister who know she’s a
brother, is not a mistake and never has been. The baby who needed a
heart transplant within 3 weeks of birth was not a mistake. She’s going
to college now. She’s a miracle of God’s partnership with medicine.

What do you see? What are you forcing them to keep inside because
they know you’ll lecture them without knowledge?

Let us learn to hear again; let’s unstop our ears, let’s open our eyes.
We are the ones who need healing. We, the ones who have boxed in
so many hurting souls, driving them further from the divine acceptance
they deserve.

Let’s turn. Let’s face Jesus. Let’s look at him touching lepers, healing the
blind who everyone else thought was a sinner. Let’s watch him bring life
where everyone else was talking about death. Let’s pull it together,
sew it masterfully, a net that hauls all species of fish. Let’s build a
mosaic of healing to decorate the beauties of the Lord.

Between Silence and Shine

Between Silence and Shine

(“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them.” Isaiah 11:6)

I answered the phone like I always do,
a little catch in my throat, a tiny cough of hello.
I know your voice even before I look at the number
(although I do appreciate caller id.)
There are tones, colors, shades that wrap your voice
like a quilt on a rainy day. When you ask if we can talk
I cannot wait for the next moment we do.
I answered the phone like I always do and
knowing it was you
that led me outside to see the doves and robins
sharing the same tree, gathering everything they needed
for the chicks to eat back at the nest.
Your voice sends my heart to more peaceful days,
hours I have imagined but seldom seem to appear.

My mood has been flat for several weeks. No deep lows,
no bubbling highs, just a midpoint between silence and
shine. It has limited my palette and the wavelengths of my spectrum
stay dead center between green and indigo.
I used to walk through ultra-violet and speak in infrared.
Now a sliver of visible light shuts me down. It’s not wrong,
I haven’t changed a thing, but I’d love to walk with you somewhere
away from the constraints that have walled my heart in too easily.

I am not the only one who longs for a place so safe that we can
feed lions from the palm of our hand. I am not the only one that
dreams of kisses instead of running from wildlife who cannot even
speak my name.

I answered the phone again; it was you. 2000 miles away and still
you have words and pauses that without understanding the causes,
leave me hopeful for a more peaceable day, a more repeatable way
to walk through the world where arrogance and freeze-dried opinions
answer the phone before a word is said.

But come, let us wander together. Let us leave the violence of
speech and trouble and find a spacious bubble filled with
children who have not learned how to be so vain. I’m curious,
can you see that day, if only in the distance? And does your heart
ache as much as mine for a day of peace, a week of solace,
a month of joy, and a year of new songs we once were afraid to sing?

And, today, would you discover it all with me?

His Walk Was Interrupted

His Walk Was Interrupted

(“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28)

 

His walk we interrupted, his thoughts diverted from
the increasing potency of pointed reflexes. He saw
his image in each drop of rain. He heard his name in
the wind that exposed the trees and stripped the leaves to
create autumn’s carpet.

He rarely wandered, but liked to explore.
He rarely spoke, but liked to ask questions.
He liked the wildlife that posed just beyond his
itinerant feet.
He liked the voice, sounding like a child, that
whispered truth so rare he had forgotten
that once upon a time he memorized the faces of
children. And now they had children and
grandchildren
of their own.

He used to walk to work. He used to stop and
visit with the widow who tended her roses and
fountain in her front yard across the street from
the courthouse. He didn’t know all their names,
but petted the dogs who lived on the edges of
downtown.

It did not take much these days to throw
him off balance,
his equilibrium was affected as much by
gravity as it was by sound. He spun
inside, he twisted everything around his heart
in vain attempts to forget the faces that
ghostly adults displayed. He knew there
was a place created,
an Eden orchestrated,
that invited his rest.

And sometimes he did. Rest.
And sometimes he didn’t. Rest.
And rest became his comfort. Quilt.
And rest became his prayer. Quilt.

And he was blanketed by the name that
gives all the world the definitions that,
if we are willing to hear,
describe a love that transcends the
misuse of letters sent ages ago. He
needed to hear from former days;
he needed to listen more slowly and
pick up his pace. He loved the moments
when he forgot the epithets appended
to his name.

Barefoot in Autumn

 Barefoot in Autumn

(“The prince of Yahweh’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place on which you stand is holy.’ Joshua did so.” Joshua 5:15)

Walking barefoot on the early autumn dew
and the ground gave slightly between his toes.
There was a place within that was as bare as the
fading grasses as the days shrunk a little each hour.
There was power, there were flexible moments,
there was thunder, there was cotton candy snow.
The sun was bright and never obscured, the stars
burned right where they had been appointed eons ago.
He wasn’t sure if angels attended his devotion,
or if God walked the same short path that day.
He just knew nothing should come between his unshod feet
and a few square yards of pure creation. Although he did cry
to think
of all the consumables that, tossed out of every home, now
in microscopic detail permeated each place he stepped.
He heard no voices, but did think a song would be appropriate.
He waited for the birds to begin, the robins and doves that
shared a tree just over his head. They were busy collecting berries
for their brood and paid him little attention. Some of the birds
hung upside down on the branches just to reach the diminutive berries.

He had fasted before, hoping the holy would fill the
empty places. He was not wrong. But the visions were drab,
dull green and gray. He prayed until his eyes stung; He knelt
and asked the same thing each time. His failures always were
the first order of business. The dissonance between what he believed
and what he could never control; he could write a book, but then
everyone would know he wasn’t who he hoped to be.

But that day, standing in the chilly autumn with his feet
naked and flush against the ground, he thought he heard
the silence speak. What was the language? What dialect?
Could the thoughts that came to his mind also be the thoughts
of god? Could his heart beat truer while the cold earth
seeped between his toes? He would go back inside,
pour a cup of tea, and finish reading about the climate crisis.
He would do all he could do and bottled the moment as an
elixir to fix his backlog of failures and his fresh open-mouthed
questions about sanity and sanctity.

The air was warm just inside his front door.

They Begged the Sky

They Begged the Sky

(“Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:13)

Hidden beneath the aftermath of tsunami spirituality
are humans caught underneath the rubble.
Some think they deserved it,
some only came to observe it,
But most made up epithets to throw
if they ever surfaced above the fray.
Every day I meet another victim with
bruises on their arms and contusions on their hearts.
All they needed was someone to talk tenderly
while the fire lashed like a hungry tiger.
All they wanted was someone like them,
or even someone pretending to like them,
or, so it seems, someone less dreamlike.

They saw the fires, they felt the missiles,
they were stung by needles, they were facing
the needless pain they never paid for.

They begged the sky, they dug into the earth,
they doubted their worth, they were left in the rain
to dry.

After a while they gave up talking at all.
They were hermits of necessity,
they were monks hiding in caves.
They used to speak like lullabies;
they used to sing like the summer.
But now they are out of practice,
they recite monologues to themselves.

Everyone thought they were fine,
no one ever thought it was a crime to
leave them solo for so long. But they
stood with their backs to the wall looking
for someone that sounded like home.

And they begged for mercy to rain
on their parched tongues, they hoped for
grace reminding them of sunrise. They
watched for someone to bring them news
of the day.

To Bake the Bread

To Bake the Bread

(“Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes—God takes pleasure in

your pleasure!” Ecclesiastes 9:7 [The Message])

I saw you come in from the fields,
covered with wheat dust and dirt.
I saw your face burnt from the relentless sun,
and saw your hands roughened by the twine on the
rows of bales thrown on the back of the truck.
I saw you come in.

The crop was late this year, a cold spell mid spring
slowed everything down. And now some may not take
the sunflowers off until February after they are frozen and
dry.

But today, late in the evening, we would break bread; we would
throw our stories around like fast pitches at a pick-up baseball game.
We would kid the children who sat in the cab with us. We would thank
the women and teens who brought our lunch to us. We would drink
deeply of water to clear the dust from our parching throats. And
(out of courtesy) we laid our over-hauls in the mud room. We would be
back at it in the morning.

So, with dirt scrubbed hands we passed around the meal. The bread
was there in abundance; hot rolls, banana bread, whole loaves that smelled
like they were still baking. We ate deep (the children ate quick), we ate but
stopped between one chew and the next to playfully thank our host and ask,
“Do you bake all day, so you don’t have to come to the fields?” It’s harmless.
Because mostly they do frequent the fields, pulling double duty: guide the
combines and back to bake the bread.

And tonight, though not the finest wine, the color came back to our cheeks
with each glass. Grandma sipped slowly but was the first one up from the table.
She had a plan, she had a spark, she had an itch to make our simple meal a party.
The crops were nearly in…except for the late sunflowers…and it was time
to celebrate.

She put on a record full of standards from the 40s. The kids and teens groaned,
and honestly, so did some of the adults. But granny knew what we did not,
there is no better dance music than big band music. “In the Mood”, “It Don’t
Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t God that Swing)” The toddlers took to twirling first.

They kept their socks on as they slid across the smooth hardwood floor
surrounded by couches, recliners, and side tables. They spun like dervishes,
and giggled like dolphins showing off.

First dad, then uncle, then cousins and teenage relatives, took one of the
skating toddlers and spun them round to the music. The giggles hit the rafters
and ricocheted back into the room.

Granny and Grandpa were the next up. He took her in his arms like a schoolboy
at prom. Their eyes gleamed. They had waited out the day to eat of the bounty,
and now wanted to celebrate free of restraint.

Everybody in between, after they stopped their complaints, found a way to keep time
to these tunes from another century. And then, just as every was losing their breath,
Grandpa pulled out his fiddle, and Mama pulled out her guitar, and they played
bluegrass, and reels, and jigs. The same songs they always played. Their
repertoire was short, but their execution was precise.

Good food, abundant wine, dancing like there would be tomorrow to do it all over again,
all seemed the most appropriate way to say

Thank You

For a harvest, a hard harvest, that was now nearly in. If they could, they would
have wiped the plates clean, depleted the wine, and danced all night laughing with
the children, some of whom had already fallen asleep on the floor and couches.