Carrying

“Four of those who came were carrying a man who could not walk.” Mark 2:3

Dale was my best friend throughout High School. We met our freshman year and both went to First Christian Church in Concord, CA. We were not at all alike. I was an artsy hippy, involved in drama and music. He loved tech work and cars. But, what bound us together initially was a girl. We both had crushes on Sheri. Also our same age, she attended another are High School and went to the same church we did. We both had huge crushes on her.

And That is All

And That is All

(“Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” Psalm 95:6)

My legs are weak from standing, my mind curled from
hashing out each argument to magnify my own codes of conduct.
I hand out glances at the first action that does not glitter in
angelic gold.

My arms of tired from directing the traffic from darkness to
manufactured tanning stations, pointing out the misdirection,
handing out the reserved exceptions to the better dressed who
avoided every beat of music with stains of mud the silent modifier.

My voice is harsh, is rough, is scraped like a knee on the pavement;
I would speak more kindly if the street corner had received my instructions
more readily. As it is, with all the shouting, I am certain I got through to all
who were doubting the sanity of the speaker.

My ears are plugged, are burst, are filled like garbage bags stuffed with
every castaway vegetable and cutaway insurance bill. Crammed,
the sound waves do not even stop to know, but turn away seeing the
door to my listen is far too full to allow another thought a place to
bunk upon the floor.

I have heard of knees stronger for the kneeling, voices sweeter for their song;
I have seen silence that repented scratch into melody. I have held a camping
mug hot with coffee, the fire off the beaten path, the brown liquid left steaming
from early evening and yet, sweeter than summer wine, it tasted of hand
to
hand

And commanded a second look at unhooking my agonizing attempts at
controlling the earth’s rotation. I look into the fire, back at the golden face
of my benefactor, and, life sometimes sends saints unobserved, unconsciously
we kneel, we bow,

And that is all.

You Have Been our Home

You Have Been our Home

"Our Lord, in all generations you have been our home.” Psalm 90:1

During my late elementary school years, and into junior high, my family lived in Alhambra, CA, part of the East Los Angeles suburbs. In a lower middle class neighborhood, clapboard houses were the books and apartment buildings the bookends of each block. It was a great place to grow up, with a peculiar mix of Caucasian and Latino families. Our school was just up the block with its asphalt playground and covered lunch area. Around the block we spent our dimes and quarters on candy at the drug store and sodas at the little hamburger shack.

Opposite the Tomb

Opposite the Tomb

(“Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.” Matthew 27:61)

The chair was vacant, the air was heavy and still,
the hills groaned as afternoon lumbered toward darkness,
the last words they heard tumbling from above the crowd;

They heard them.
They rehearsed them.
They sat with nothing to occupy their hands.

“It is finished”, it is done, it’s all over, we tried our best,
no more can be done, no more to offer, and the quest-
ions

They thought had been answered landed like geese all at once
upon a distant marsh.

The tomb was sealed, the body cold and rigid,
without torches to meet the night they could not stay
seated across the entrance for long. Their hearts were peeled
like summer fruit, their eyes veiled the hope that disappeared as
quickly as the last breath and word they heard.

One cannot interpret, one should not expect, sunrise only moments
after the dimming of the day.

Their fingers, cold as the moon, twisted, hand to hand, the human
consolation when god has dropped the final word on the subject and
is no longer available for follow-up questions.

And so, late on Friday, their eyes fastened on the massive stone,
they slowly rose for the silent walk home; Sabbath, so quiet,
each heartbeat carried its own conversation.

With little else to say, nothing else to do, the rose early
(they knew the tomb, the place and the way), and would love
their Jesus kindly with burial spices;

Some days are like that…quiet recall on a dewy morning,
an errand of love, and intimate conversation when “It is

Finished”

Is not a dying whimper at all.

Across from their seat, still vacant from Friday,
the stone was moved, the air was linen, and, with angelic reasoning

They knew they were mistaken to seek the

Living among the dead.

Continuing in Grace

“Paul and Barnabas…urged them in long conversations to stick with what they’d started, this living in and by God’s grace.” Acts 13:43 (The Message)

Why is this so hard? This may come off as a rant, so I should apologize right up front. But I am actually as frustrated with myself as I am with the rest of Christianity. Paul and Barnabas had seen people respond to the Best News Possible, that sins are forgiven because of Jesus’ death on the cross. They watched as people received the message with great joy and observed their lives being changed.

Accept us Again

“God, accept us again. Smile down on us and save us!” Psalm 80:3

Even the most optimistic positive-thinkers have to admit that life often doesn’t work out the way we expect. I know that is not a very radical statement, nor a great insight. But I think it goes to the heart of a very common spiritual dilemma: we are, on the one hand, accepted by God by faith in Jesus’ work on the cross, yet often find ourselves well outside the circle of His expectations. We are His children, yet can easily discover a rebel heart still beating proudly.

Only Borrowed

Only Borrowed

(“When you harvest your land’s produce, you must not harvest all the way to the edge of your field; and don’t gather every remaining bit of your harvest. Leave these items for the poor and the immigrant; I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 23:22)

If you find your place on the planet, clear the land,
plant the seed, amplify the harvest, use what you need,
only what you need. Do not waste your time or edges,
do not consume the fringes, cut back the hedges you built to
protect your investment.

Less hinges on your insurance; more on the emptied closet,
the inches trimmed to feed the rest. More depends on your
radical placement,
responsible payment of debt

For the ground that warmed your seed,
for the seed that raised the value,
for the harvest that graced the avenue
with a golden invitation that nothing
is owned

But only borrowed. Plant your feet,
take a breath,
exhale slowly,
let the lowly come to mind with
the next mouthful of gifted air.

Let your hands be rough from volunteered labor,
your words soft like the evening star,
your face warm as sun-warmed loam,
your eyes jammed full like goose-down pillows;

A new delight, an expansive embrace, the response of
a grace learned from constantly tripping on the roots of trees

That hugged the spot, the suburban plot,
generations before you thought
it was your own.

The Oeuvre

The Oeuvre

(“Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens, you who have done great things. Who is like you, God?” Psalm 71:19)

What lies behind the sky, and behind that, what shines
to light the fires of prying men and women, short on bread,
but long on invention?

What hums below atomic structure, and inside that, what twirls
like wind within each bit of matter that momentary men and women,
short on time, wish to rewind to see it all again?

The days are gray only until the clouds pass away
and reveal
the open pastels of the polished sky.

Overhead, underfoot, we can shake, we can look
and never see or always sense the genius intentions
of a world beyond imagination…If only it would behave
one long minute.

You, Oh Lord, are not deus ex machine, arriving with fanfare
before the paint has dried and we are cornered. I would happily
drop a coin and another to quench my thirst with a soda
and buy an invisibility cloak the next time I am about to blush
from shame or guilt or memories of the same.

You, Oh Lord, surround our idiot currencies, double-siding
our front-side only presentations. You pass through the
spaces between atoms and pass over our aspirations that
never quite get off the ground.

You, Oh Lord, are our delight. You are the not the final act,
but the entire body of work, the oeuvre, corpus Christi annotated
on every unaltered space of time. We will recite, not rote
memorization, but the ineffable lyric unbound by our
nearly rhymed effort to join words to worthy expressions
of joy.

Trusting in the Shadow

Trusting in the Shadow

“But I keep praying to you, Lord, hoping this time you will show me favor. In your unfailing love, O God, answer my prayer with your sure salvation.” Psalm 69:13

A university student was seen with a large "K" printed on his T- shirt. When someone asked him what the "K" stood for, he said, "Confused." "But," the questioner replied, "you don't spell "confused" with a "K." The student answered, "You don't know how confused I am."

So Familiar

So Familiar

(“Come and see what God has done. See what wonderful things he has done for his people!” Psalm 66:5)

Come and hear what the jazz is saying behind
the new café outside in the alley where tables have been set
and customers sip light wine in waiting for the late rays
to withdraw from their al fresco experiment. Chain-link
separates
the alley from the sidewalk; but the sweet saxophone
slides between alley and street without the slightest interruption.

Come and watch the way lazy snowflakes take their time
from heaven to winter’s soft landing. Focus on the trunks of
of the sub-alpine firs; evidence the storm sifted in from the north. A
broadbrush
stripe of white runs up the trunk to meet the branches
demarked in high contrast in overcast afternoon light.

Come and listen to the old man’s song, the words altered and
the tune so familiar you swear it is someone’s birthday. The
cracks at the edges of his mouth and the chasms between notes
in his voice salute the truth of a life well-lived; he sings and
smiles and tears up because you have smiled at his life and
all he wanted out of every day from the moment the magic happened
(the moment youth becomes adult despite the customary age)
was to live on this borrowed mud and dome, pay his rent proudly
and have enough awe and numbered days stashed away to
fill the air one more time

With the stories of good and better, how the God who hid
had been nearer, most of the time, than he had expected.

You Did Well

“The master answered, ‘You did well. You are a good and loyal servant. Because you were loyal with small things, I will let you care for much greater things. Come and share my joy with me.’” Matthew 25:23

It is good to set our sights high, to have lofty dreams and hope to achieve great things in our lives. In fact, Scripture often encourages us with phrases like “Set your mind on things above” and refers to believers as priests and kings. The difficulty lies in the leap we make from the effort needed to accomplish those dreams and the big payoff we are hoping for.

New

“The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the lobe of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.” Leviticus 14:14

In our most honest moments I think most of us would desire one thing; to know we are completely free from all the contaminations of living an imperfect life in an imperfect world. We would love to take back the cross words, the flirtatious looks at another man’s wife, the small lie to enhance a business deal. We would wipe out the black marks on our children because we stayed too long at work and left birthday parties too early. We would erase the tears on our wife’s cheek brought on by a sharp-tongued reply. In short, we would love to be able to begin again.

Never in Shadow

Never in Shadow

“For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Matthew 24:7)

Never in the shadows, never shrouded by raucous trombones;
He will not arrive in secret this time, nor hidden beneath the
world’s auto-phonic songs.

The silence will be smashed, the humming shattered by the
blast that disrupts each foolish pursuit; begun, newly ended
 or in-between. The Son of Man will not wait for each
bank account to be depleted and each investment,
replete with final bell percentages. The Master
returns on His own terms, without searching the
critics’ reviews.

Ready; He has published His arrival this time.
Prepared; He will not knock faintly.
Look up; He will flash, will thunder.
Awake; the sleeping will be startled,

The observant, with faces shining like the silver mirror,
the silky river reflecting the sun, will not know

Whether to stand and cheer,
fall and weep,
kneel and pray their name is inscribed
(reason and faith, the cross and grace are the
preface to the Book the Lamb authored of life).

In the twinkling of an eye all history will flash,
an orb embracing an orb; and time will meet
head to tail…when the Son of Man

Wipes the dark-storm wonder from the panorama
of human falter and the Divine Again.

Bike Path

Bike Path

(“You are to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.” Leviticus 10:10)

In the background, gnats stirred the heavy molecules of summer air;

dragonflies darted and parted the thin walls of warmth rising from the pavement,

the deer were in the shadows, bullfrogs greeted the ear with throaty baritone and

blue jays argued over a corner of sandwich crust left on the picnic table.

The bike ride listed from left of the forest to the bottom hollow out of the sun.

Midmorning sun traced the letters silkscreened on the back of the rider’s t-shirt

while he found the rhythm, feet like pistons on the pedals, and breathing between

each well-timed downthrust. Exercise, prayer and meditation aligned as

Breath and mind paid attention to the cycloramic portrait

and loved the new words found to describe the Artist of it all..