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.

Of Feasting and Wine

Of Feasting and Wine

(“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to Me will never be hungry. He who puts his trust in Me will never be thirsty.’” John 6:35)

Nourish my soul again like an apéro in France to enhance
my waiting for the later feast that would fill us until deeply
slumbering.
Brighten my eyes with refreshment like waters from the
mountain spring that set my mind to waking refreshed.
I feel hollowed out, not listless, but unsure of where the
next step should go. I feel ready to meet a dozen questioners
who laugh between bites and sometimes sing when the
meal is over.
I never wanted to take my meals solitary, but avoided
the call to ordered
groups
that met over stir fry and casseroles to revisit their
latest protestations about everything they thought was their
proper use of their locked up Spirit of God.

Their meals made me blush, my face, sometimes red
with hurt and anger held back, wishing I had not joined
their buffet. I found their sustenance wanting,
I found their repasts repeating words that had already found
their targets with arrows sharper that truth. I arrived
late
to avoid as many of their scattered incantations as I could.

If only I could find some, even merely two or three,
who would share a meal in joyful reverence, in laughter
that is
invitational,
in stories told about stones overturned while preparing
their flower gardens.
We knew their roses were the most fragrant in town.

Even the rain outside my window cannot muffle
the water being poured out over our wounds. Even the
clouds could not cover the waiting in our hearts for your
eternal food. I can taste it on my tongue, this new dish
served that never runs out. I can feel it running down my
throat, this new wine that revives the weariness that weighed
heavy in the air.

Full, complete, revived and ready to meet the
path I will walk today. The new energy caught up with
me and pointed me to the next banquet of joy.
I’ll show up early and hopefully hear another
traveler’s tale
of feasting and wine.

Unexplained Lunches

Unexplained Lunches

(“So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.” John 4:26)

We wondered and pondered our way around the fields;
nothing escaped our pierced view. Cannily we knew that
just a few moments ago there were unexplained lunches
on the lawn.
We walked the aisles between children and easily
saw the sun in their eyes, never going down too early.
We were unprepared to serve the crowds sitting on the lawn.
Voluntarily we moved among them,
we had read the books before, memorized the scripts
and repeated them like expanding ideas etched on the sand.

Some were meager, some were scarce, some were simply
the median expression of daily hunger. But all showed up
to hear something like an invitation to the biggest dayclub
ever known. We sat like sundials measuring the time across
eventual horizons. We recognized our names in the
phasing of everything we remembered and some of what
we should have forgotten.
We thought of antique monuments erected while we
waited for the closing prayer. We wrote poetry in the mud.

Every basket was filled; every mouth was smiling.
We noticed the atmosphere had changed and so
midair
we promised we would gather without waste;
we would serve without fainting and would remember the
stories that fully adorned the day.