Angels Can Appear

Angels Can Appear

(“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2)

Something seared my heart so severely it had
shut down. It caused me to never think twice about
closing the door. I’ve stopped the bleeding but
the pain remains. My heart is cramped and crammed with
uneasy expectations of strangers sojourning with me.

I listen to the same songs and watch the same channels on TV.
I’m enclosed in the circles of my routines. To ask me to share that
with anyone is to ask me uncomfortably. It’s hard to believe
that I once housed teenagers and grandmas with open arms.

I never cared about the consequences so long ago,
I rarely worried it would intrude upon my blessed habits
or peer inside my measured habitual humanity. I was too
spiritual for all of that.

I have always been broken but only shared it with a chosen few.
I have spoken of grace like it was pure medicine
and wondered about how many angels watched while I
unlocked the doors.

This time it’s harder. I thought I would receive a warm
commendation for taking the difficult road to peace.
I’ve locked my doors from the inside; I’ve canceled
my reservations in the hope that I could continue on my own.

I reserve the right to see angels show up like
the rising sun after the rain. I would watch for wings upon
the backs of those I welcomed to my home. My arid soul
longed for an apologetic that made the houseguest become
a messenger from forever and more.

Though I had grown used to my solitude I grudgingly agreed
to an attitude that disturbed my silence behind the closed windows
that suited me fine. I’ll roll the dice this time
once again
and consider the notion that angels can appear like
someone needing a home.

Laughed at the Dream

Laughed at the Dream

(“You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers.” Psalm 30:11 [The Message])

I couldn’t stand at the back; they had put me in charge
so I waited until all the singing was done to begin the
morning lecture. But I was muddled, I was muggy, I was
unprepared, I was disarrayed. I wished I had stayed home
to protect my unsteady hands.

It was five minutes before twelve and my time was almost
gone. I had not even begun. I wasted eons wrestling with
technology I had carefully tested twice and more. The microphone
went silent, the images swarmed the screen. The words would
not come. The room had been full, but some stood and
began to leave. Long-term friends were sitting in the
front row and they began to follow the exiting few.
But she, the wife, urged him to stay and I finished my
time merely a minute late. I do not remember what I said and
few of the faces that left me unrecognized.

But old friends I hadn’t seen in decades waited for me
in the lobby just to shake my hand. Most others were out
the door quickly to their appointed reservations for brunch.

I went home winded. I was surprised at my disabilities that day.
But I put on music by Dylan, then listened to some Cohen. I wished
I had more Stevie Ray Vaughn to play. But as the day counted down
to evening the drapes on my heart were hopefully opened.

It was only a dream, I said. It was nothing new. I did a quick
review and realized I was probably right. The smile I had misplaced
found my feet moving like raindrops on the sidewalk.

So, I stepped outside into the fading day and laughed
at the dream
that previously would have made me cry.

The Footsteps were Relentless

The Footsteps were Relentless

(“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23:6)

He awoke to the sounds of the city just beginning
and blinked the night from out of his eyes.
His sons had already left for the day and this
wife kissed him goodbye moments before his eyes were opened.

He felt like orbits had spun around him unchanging for
year after year. There was love enough for everyone in
his small house and family yet he felt unsettled, and
he was embarrassed to say, deeply lonely.

He knew the incongruity that left him well tanned on the outside,
and shuddering sad within. Face to face he had
little to say though he knew his words carried more meaning
than ages ago.

He barely remembered what it was like to shop for gifts
until the perfect one jumped off the shelf and came prewrapped.
He wished he could shop anonymously, but now he lived in
a rural village and no one was new. He felt guilty about that
too.
Why would anyone avoid the friendly glances of neighbors
and friends. He thought he had run out of things to say
and the rest got caught in his throat. He had been captured
by his words so often that he rationed them like rain.

He had to admit, in his quiet moments, that though he
was often misunderstood,
he also was asked for wisdom he was not sure he had.

He could not argue with mercy; he could not debate with goodness.
The tiniest footsteps crept up on him over time,
like a grandchild wanting to surprise Papa with their hands
over his eyes.
He could not deny the eternal home he had found;
he could not explain the melancholy that captured him
mid-sentence when he only wished he could sing better.

He got out of bed and, walking, listened for the footsteps
chasing him down, the footsteps he recognizes everywhere.
His mind clattered with unease and built fences to keep
his precious wounds out of sight. But the footsteps were
relentless, and he stopped to try half a conversation
in the late morning sun.

Like a Time Capsule

Like a Time Capsule

(“But can anyone know what they’ve accidentally done wrong? Clear me of any unknown sin.” Psalm 19:12)

I’ve been running around this oval for far too long.
I used to run it so well with nothing left to sell and
only crafted pages of unbalanced mistakes.
I can see them, front and center, all the cages
where I locked away the wilder passions that
troubled me in darkness and silence.

I should have learned it a dozen lives ago that
there is no hiding once the deeds are done. There is no
consent for a choice gone wrong. I lack the control to
turn the pages to the next story I’ve hoped for ages to write.

I faced the facts, but only one at a time. I could not carry
the weight of every kind of stone that tripped me up.
I should have seen it coming;
I should have leaped out of the way. I opened my
mouth
to clear my mind and nothing came out except for
a squeaky scream that frightened even me.

The way I sneaked around the edges of my consciousness,
the way I perceived failures and fatalities only served
to make coming home a delayed tragedy.

So, clear my anonymity, let the motion pass unanimously.
My legs are mud-like and my imagination keeps recording
every uncertainty from the first time someone decided to
pry a confession out of my quivering mouth.

I’ll carry the weight, I’ll set it down on the porch.
I’ll visit the forest just a mile from my front door.
I’ll speak your name although it is unpronounceable
and hope when you call mine it will be a foreword
the new day longs for. I’ll
discover what I buried like a time capsule half a
century ago. I’ll reach out my hands to either side
and round dance with all the tribes that once invited me.

And if someone shows me how I’ve missed my steps
I’ll follow them faithfully until I learn them right.

Word Upon Word

Word Upon Word

(“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.” Psalm 16:7)

I’ve been wondering what I should write because
sometimes it seems
I just pile word upon word like a jenga tumbler.
But I’m satisfied in what I’ve heard when lights
fade and the darkness brings the quietude I crave.
Stay and do not leave me here alone. We need no
sentences of nonsense to keep us awake. Sometimes we
can sit for hours and other times the seconds tick slowly
like the hum of locusts in the trees. The moments can
drone on in our faces like midnight apparitions.

I see the path behind me; hear the oceans I used to
visit and I long for years of yesterday when sunny days
inhabited my dreams. I listen for the familiar sound that
echoes like the laughter of friends. Along the way they
have seen my careless excursions and offered to accompany
me when the way was too steep to climb. This late in the
afternoon
they remind me that soon our rest will come, we will abide
asleep in the darkness that only shrouds us for the night.

I’ve listened as long as I could then I reset my alarm for
just one hour more. Words have accompanied me before
and they will carry me again. But theses streams of scenes
that show up in my dreams at night sometimes escort me
like a doula helping the morning give birth to unrehearsed
understandings. I’ll bend my ear to the blended affirmations
between the lines of night and day.

The Wine of Happy Vineyards

The Wine of Happy Vineyards

(“O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world! Your praise reaches up to the heavens.” Psalm 8:1)

The songs fall from the heavens like petals from a rose;
the scent is like rain after the sun goes down.
Day to day the sunsets sing with lyrics reconfirmed
by the moon and stars.

We are so dry here after years of drought; the fields
barely yield the fruit we were once accustomed to.
Slow to grow and barely to flourish, we have waited
for the minds of the miscreants to change.

We are looking for the Spring and rain;
we are waiting for the winds to repent their
arid canopies of sundried mornings. We are looking
for the grand rearrangement, for something recent
to replace our handheld testaments of disillusionment.

We have dreamed it; we have been undone.
We have cast our windows fully open and our
doors
ajar to welcome the habits of heaven.
I’d invite you in to await the choruses complete
from the hills and across the river and up the banks
of hope. We will know the melody the moment we
hear it.

Have we drunk the wine of the happy vineyards;
have we possessed the bread of a thousand possibilities?
Has the light finally reached us from the furthest stars
that started a million years ago to traverse the universe?

We have heard the refrain pushed forward like whitecaps
driven by the wind. We have not stopped listening.
We see the masterstroke of genius in the setting sun
and realize there is more to this all than we can fit
into a few lines of a poem.

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.