Kids Playing Giddily

Kids Playing Giddily

(“Here there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.” Colossians 3:11)

The lenses I used to use only saw the unabused
and kept the battered in the dark. I could see them
if I wanted
but only to point out their obvious flaws.
Did hide them or did they shrink from my view?
I could not help but think their invisibility was their own failing;
my blindness was sanctified by voices from emperors and pulpits.

Then yesterday I was wondering where all the lonely people go
when I refuse to see them in their fully grown human glow. Then yesterday
the light broke in and shattered the mirror I had been primping in.
I looked again and saw the cracks and splinters that had hindered
my access to the truth.

I thought I might be pulled into the uncrafted classrooms
that taught
nothing but invented stories about the minds behind the
eyes of the people I never wanted to see. But yesterday I
sat down in the back of the room and heard languages I
did not understand.

But the cadence was familiar. The emphasis on the third syllable
of a sentence or the rising of a voice after a question. My pilgrimage
had led me here so I decided to stay. They gave me a name tag
for my shirt and I wrote as plainly as I could. I learned these were
all graduates from a school just down the road from the
block I grew up on. Now I heard their voices and they sounded
like my neighbor’s kids playing giddily in the yard. I had to admit
I missed the playfulness and changed my lenses to see

Everyone who was different from me. And I joined them,
learned their language, and sat in their circle learning the
inclusive invitations of the spirit’s voice.

Enfleshed

Enfleshed

(“For the full content of divine nature lives in Christ, in his humanity, and you have been given full life in union with him.” Colossians 2:9-10a)

I once thought you were so elusive that
I needed to deprive my body to find you.
I wished for hours filled with supernatural encounters
and only found silent noise. I heard so many stories
of weeks spent fasting to find epiphanic endings.
I only found
my hunger increasing opposite to my bold resolutions.

I collected invisible souvenirs; I deposited hours of
agony and fears. Why did I ever think you demanded
so much of me for so little return?
I ached for visions and enlightened dreaming, only to
wake from stops and starts that halted my sleeping.

Now I think I see you in every grain of sand;
I taste you in every sip of water. I remember you wore
skin just like I wear skin; your feet ached like mine do
at the end of a day.

I was afraid to be alone; the emptiness frightened me.
I bargained with begging chips and cried in ways so
hard to explain. I expected to hear voices in the dark,
and see angels singing with words I could understand.

I still hate loneliness, I still sting from too much solitary time.
But I am finding you wrapped around the scars that, if I
may say,
were entirely self-inflicted.

Embodied, you are. Human and fully. A habitation
wholly enfleshed. Sacred flesh and blood.

You were never obscure, were you? Though I thought you
demanded I catch up with you, you singled me out
and found me in the middle of my unanswered questions.
Filling me before I asked, embracing me though I thought
I was a myriad of miles away.

A Cup Poured Out

A Cup Poured Out

(“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Luke 22:42)

It looked like the wounding of a heart,
a cup poured out of grief and passion.
Are we your children that you could
hold us so tightly it hurt?

What would I say to you
watching your pain strewn across the
garden floor? How could I intrude
on a moment of intimacy and separation?
But how could any of us leave you deserted;
how could we be so close and you be so alone?

Every moment in time converged in fervent questions;
each self a smaller self than the one we had spent a lifetime
mastering?
You took the world’s weight upon your shoulders;
you loved us better than a brother. Yet we grew weary
and left you dangling with our desecrated punctuation.

We failed. We floundered. We sounded like worn-out children
thinking we understood it all. We thought we could capture
a place beside you on the heights.

And how did we overhear such a prayer that set us
to dozing? Still we slept uneasy while you emptied
your dignity to grab hold of nurture and boldness.
But you let loose of anything but love. You induced
a painful delivery. For who? For us?

We had come dressed like we were going to a party
while you donned the servant’s garments and
sweat like blood hit the ground. And then we woke
from our slumber to find them taking you away. And

We panicked.

We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered,
leaving the imprints of your pain still wed on the ground.
We could not wait for angels; we could not measure
the weakness that transforms human foibles and
finally found us afraid for our lives.

How could we ignore such a cry from
a friend who asked only that we stay awake?

Empty but Filled

Empty but Filled

(“I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” Philippians 4:12)

I am empty but being filled,
I am full but not slowing down.
I am flowing but not reckless.
I am thankful and that sits sweet upon my
tongue
like chocolate and mint in the afternoon.

There is a presence that inhabits it all,
a weight that does not burden,
a strong power that lays across my shoulders
like a yoke shared in joy.

Cancel my subscription to constant pleas
for more. I will dine in the dark, or I will
feast in the light, but I will be fed, nevertheless.

Disquiet my constant apprehensions, invade my
anxious silence. Fill it, oh Holy One who comes to recover
what was stolen, to redeem that which waits to be seen.
Take my shadows out of the caverns I’ve carved and
turn me around to face the light, to feel the warm and
nearness of the pleasant rays upon my body.

I have been without,
I have been within,
I have stolen moments,
I have them back again.
I picture the perfect from my
uncertain soul. But I find,
loose or windy, that the words of peace
can settle into the crevices between my shadowy self,
and bring me to him alit and gracious for all I lack,
for all I discover, for all I’m given, for all I return.

Just two hours before dawn on a late winter night
I felt the gravity quilt
enwrap me slowly.

I have learned, for now, that empty and full are
only words,
and that the Only One can inhabit it all.

We Are Here Now

We Are Here Now

(“But whatever things were assets to me, these I now consider a loss for the sake of the Messiah.” Philippians 3:7)

I never imagined that all my work might
go up in flames.
I never dreamed that it might be the beginning
of a renewed carelessness. I had not planned on
such an early exit. I had not pictured a retirement
so soon.
I never planned on setting aside the fire which
I thought had been my all.

I think more carefully now about what comes my way.
I consider anxious thoughts and wonder why they still
can find their way to my fingers, to my gut, to my freezing
stop-motion when I am in a crowd.

Nonetheless, I am setting aside the false I that I’ve know
so long.
I haunted me and I drug me across the dirty fields.
I left me shortly satisfied only to thirst again.
I festered like self-righteousness while we rode home
in the back of the deacon’s Cadillac.

We are we now. Christ is not out of my grasp,
He is not at the tipping point of the last day of my fast.
He is within, revealing my true self in beauty I
never anticipated. Don’t mistake me; I still want I
more often than we would like. We are each other now,
fully like ocean tides and sand. Like salt dissolve in
water, we are more we than I ever thought.

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the Company

Sometimes it’s the company you keep,
and sometimes it’s the weather beyond degree;
but mostly it’s the patterns in your brain engraved
over volumes of time. Like well-worn paths on
the way to a winter’s garden we reimagine
our backgrounds unintentionally.

I’ve visited the alcoves in the museums;
I’ve torn open old pages in the magazines
and I remember every imagination that never
found its wings. The hunt for daylight continues
around every tree that has lost its leaves.
I’ve lost my breath waiting for answers
to every aching circle I’ve prayed.

I have so few troubles, and I don’t mean to complain,
but sometimes not all is what it seems to be.
I feel like I’m mourning for a sliver of devotion
to the rules and gods I postdated. I feel like
its storming a silent squall inside my mind.
I lose my train of thought; I’ve lost touch with
certainty. My mind is not empty; it’s my thoughts
that have blocked mere enjoyment further out
of reach.

The dullness is harsher than the depression,
it reveals nothing but emptiness within.
Once I encounter the divine crossing my path
I stop to let it by and it fills me instead, even though
It still feels like emptiness inside.

Walk into the Warm

Walk into the Warm

(“For I am sure of this very thing, that the one who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6)

I saw the ways that sleep overtook you and
the moments you woke fresh-faced from your dreams.
I could remember the days that left you begging
like an unconscious tambourine. You tried every
escape you knew and yet
the discontent
only grew. You were sure there was a way
to scribble a new portrait that appeared more like
the appearance of the divine you had imagined.
You were so afraid of failing that you
masked your innocence with a succession of
prostrate prayers with your face to the carpet.
You learned to preserve the emotions that
collided against the walls of your heart.

Take a breath. Ease yourself into the day.
Lay aside the effigies you erected to present
yourself to the world. Even though it feels like
slow-motion
there is a trajectory within that moves you
to the wholeness you crave.

You can come into the light, you can exit the
cavernous unrest into the un-echoes of transformation.
You are far away from the starting line; overland
your journey is nearer than you imagined, sooner than
you knew. You can walk into the warm and feel your
icy nervous system melt like a baby being born.

You do not need to hide; you do not need to subscribe
to every anxious thought. You will finish this marathon
with life left over to smile as you survey the distance
you have come.