On Insomnia

On Insomnia

(“I lie down, sleep, and wake up because the Lord helps me.” Psalm 3:5)

 

There was a time that sleep eluded me. Head on the pillow late
at night and there were locust raises buzzing through my head.
I tried to quiet them, prayed the Name, confessed my bowlful
of sinning, and hoped that was enough to unwind my untidy mind.
Or, nights when I fell asleep nicely, I might wake with a start when
the occupants of my dreams made sure to embarrass me. They
would call me out in front of everyone; they would mock me for
being less tidy than them. Early on it was my parents, the ones
I thought had raised me like love. But I constantly dreamed I had
done something entirely unforgiveable. I locked myself in my room
of that dream and woke up crying.
Sometimes I dreamed I was to lead worship at a large function,
using my keyboard, the instrument that draws forth praise from
my fingers. Five minutes before it was to start, I realized I have
zero music, and the singers have none either. I streak to my office
and look through the files. But they are no longer in alphabetical order
and my face is red with embarrassment. I grab what I can and the
singing is flat and lackluster. I had that dream more time than I
like to recite.

Anxiety haunted me. The hissing in my head never went away.
I carried it during the day with hunched shoulders and hope that
no one thought I was home, or in the office. Men were ready to
argue the least likely doctrines they had read from the latest writer
who claimed he knew it all. There were a handful of kind men,
but they had no power. No one ever asked them to be on the
board of directors or become an elder. Sometimes I think
people gaged them as weak in the faith. Some even tried
to force me to admit sins I never committed (although I had
sinned so much more).

It is no wonder that sleep eluded me. But then I took a huge
step back and outward. I retired and no longer stand in front of
people to try to convince them what God has said. Well, a couple
of times a year to small gatherings of people who know me.

It is the relief of the ages that sleep is now my therapy. I no
longer expect to be woken in the night and driven to the couch
to kneel with my face in the cushions acting like a first-class penitent.
Last night I slept from 11 until 8. My daily headache still ate through
my silent barriers. But I walk, I take an hour, and I see children who say
hi to me first;
I see dogs who want to meet me and lick my face.
I see a family of deer deciding if there is enough to eat in this
new small development. I see a friend drive by who smiles
and waves at me. My bucket is slowly filling for the day
and that leads me to whisper praying and quiet reading.

And I slide into bed, my wife beside me, our dog
between us, and fall asleep with no anxiety leftover
from the days when it felt for sure that my head had been
vised and then told it was all my fault. I repented fairly well,
not enough for some people, but that is for another day.
I just know the nights no longer frighten me, and the mornings
greet me with moments of contemplation. I can say I awake
because the Lord helps me.

Remedy for Shame

Remedy for Shame

(“So let us boldly approach God’s throne of grace. Then we will receive mercy. We will find grace to help us when we need it.” Hebrews 4:16)

Shall we bow in grateful devotion;
shall we never take it all for granted?
Stubbing our toes or shooting our foes,
we used to feel like we had to beg for
exoneration. We would make it all up,
we would make it good if only we could.

It used to be debatable and I would cry like
I had caused the next apocalypse. I would hide
for fear
I had caused the end of the world. My missteps
still sting, they are mottled needles filled with
regrets and dull anticipation. I walk miles treading
the ground everyone else has covered.

But now, at the end of the day or the beginning of
rain, I can find a balm that calms the breezes that
used to freeze my soul. My resolutions are seldom
solid, my promises sincere but weak as decaying wood.
I have discovered…no, it has landed upon me like a
remedy I never dreamed. There is a hand that, firm
as fire,
reconnects me to the might of mercy and grace’s
brightness that subdues the dark of the night.

The remedy for shame, the medicine for shivering regret,
we find a throne occupied by fiery love. We do not
shrink back for the flame bids us come closer and
learn that the burning that once consumed us whole
is now a glow larger than a super nova. We are infused
with grace, a blaze that ignites us to discover we have
been family all along.

Nearer than Forever

Nearer than Forever

(“Jesus told them, ‘Truly, I tell all of you emphatically, before there was an Abraham, I AM!’” John 8:58)

Nearer than forever, closer than eternal,
behind the distance beyond creation,
surrounding every moment of time and engulfing
every shard of energy and silence of matter
You Are.
I find you in each leaf of grass,
I feel you in the cool morning breeze,
I miss you when my mind wanders, I
sometimes wonder how You can be
All Things.
Do my thoughts mean anything;
Do my fingers fidget on the shelves of nothing?
Does my brain lie dormant like sleep like a listless
boat on a windless lake? Do I know
Any Thing?
Do I own anything; do I owe past due rent?
Does the light outside my window come from
the same flame that ignited the sun eons ago?
Will I learn that every single breath breathes because
Of You.

But I am numb sometimes even with you so near.
I am short-sighted though you have always been
located in each quantum wave and particle.
If you inhabit all of space and time, the I bow before all
You Are.

Once and Now

Once and Now

(“But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Hebrews 2:9)

Once and now sometimes, hollow is my
experience of daily rain and fog. Then and
here sometimes, empty is the word that
flies in and out of my mind.
Like underneath the rocks and mud there
are moments that disconnect me from golden sayings
I want to know.

But your love filled the fellow passengers who
glide rotating on sacred places. Every step we take
is an Edenic memory. Every day another awakening;
a rising sun to replace the dirge of dragging night.

Some days feel like decades, some hours like slow
motion riders. Feeling the mainlines through the years,
casting cares across the centuries, waiting became my
posture. I struggled for clarity, a calendar with appointments
full of destinations I would never visit. Come to think of it,
most of my travels were time-bound, turned around placements
of carousel dreams.

But in a single point of time, you met me stripped of
your glory
and walk the dirt I walk, weeded the ground I weeded,
breathed the late afternoons that had me catching my breath.
You capture me with a glance; you showed me your humanity
that carried your divinity and I was amazed. Your hands, like
my hands,
You are a king in peasant garb, a royal in old denim jeans.
I am astonished with a meteor bursting through the atmosphere,
and I release my doubts, realize my jump-starts, and restore
the opening sentences that tell your story broad.

From Slave to Free

From Slave to Free

(“So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.” Philemon 1:17)

It matters like the dust from stars falling into themselves,
it matters like the dust that comes from those final implosions,
from those super Novas spraying elements of carbon, helium, and hydrogen
into open space.

Surrounded by uncountable machinations and
propelled by undeniable afterthoughts we should not
hesitate
to call each other partners in a world full of unexplainable
light.
We kept accounts and hoped our tempos would synch up
before the end of the day.

We sang the same songs when we were together, and now
apart
let us sing them again, listening for the straight beats and
the syncopation. I am sending you back the one who could
only talk out of tune until I taught him the hymns you and I
both knew intimately. He was glad to learn, the runaway child,
and anxious to know if he could sing them with you.

So we set the tempo and worked on the temperament;
he has been found to be quite useful to me.
Shall I send him back to you with the song, he has
the lyrics fully internalized but he does take some liberties
with the tune. He is freer than I am, I think, in this regard.
And perhaps freer than you expected. But he is overjoyed and
ready to pay back anything he owes you. And what he cannot
I will cover. Imagine with me, this miscreant, this fugitive,
returning to you with a heart full of the same delight you heard
from you at night. Laying on his bunk he ached to learn the
songs of the spirit he heard from your house.

Having them now in his innermost being, he longs to join the
chorus as a son to you. Receive him, if you will, as a member
of the chorale. You won’t be disappointed, his tone is rich,
his tempo heavenly, and his visage is changed from slave to free.

The Instant that Shifted

The Instant that Shifted

(“I smiled at them when they did not believe, And they did not look at my kindness ungraciously.” Job 29:24)

It was an instant that shifted nearly everything.
He glanced the moment the mouth and eyes sparkled
and never forgot the embrace. It felt like water that
seeped through the silt and sand, purified by
seconds of time. It was a glint like diamonds,
a simple flash and he wondered if anyone else
had seen it. Was it simply and only for him,
and if so, what would the day bring if he tucked it
away like gold coins saved like time.

It was a sideways look, brief and accurate as a
laser pulse. It was barely a grin, that would be to
determined. This was more reflex, the way a baby
nearly laughs at funny faces over and over again.
It was pinpoint, entering his soul, pore to pore,
and saturated his tethered heart. It had not been broken,
but was too connected to mishaps of the past.

He wished he could capture the moment and turn it
around and around in his mind like a recipe for
cake he had eaten as a child. But the moment was enough,
the instant began to fill something deep just because
she had smiled.

I’ll Greet the Dogs

I’ll Greet the Dogs

(“To people who are pure, everything is pure.” Titus 1:15a)

The old black dog sat motionless on the grass still
wet from yesterday’s rains.
He did not move to meet me. He merely lifted his
head and eyed my silently, too weary to move.
The air smelled like honey.

Sometimes my mind hurts, sometimes my vision is too narrow.
Often I remember the stabs of yesterday. Or hurts a decade
old intrude into my silent strolls.

I’ve spoken to the dogs along my route,
to the ones who bark like I am their enemy. After time,
as I call them aside, they bark once and then follow me
from behind their fences. They do not know my name
and I don’t know most of theirs. There is one
fierce chihuahua though that insists on biting
the seam of my jeans. I should bring treats for that
tiny adversary.

I have rounded the corner a dozen times every year;
I have sounded out the consonants of pain. But my
dreams are less fearful these days, my thoughts turning
to unconstrained moments in the sun.

A deer and her fawn ambled by my front window
a week ago. I think they were heading to my roses
for a midday snack. My flowers lack their blooms from
Spring to Summer and I think I should protect them from
those gentle creatures.

The quiet days sometimes tax me, I want to hear a human
voice, even a stuttering expression, even a conversation
filled with question marks and compliments. About half
the time, though, the solitude soothes me. The loudest arrows
are a thousand years behind me; they have died down across the
prairies and no longer find me faltering. My body carries
pain apart from the static harm that ebbs and flows. It does
not befit me to grab yesterday’s hurt. I’ll greet the dogs
and maybe a deer on my next venture around the town.