Hidden

Hidden

(“Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.” Psalm 19:12)

Some are imbedded for so long, it seems like they’ve been there from day one;
we recognized them well at first, in front; but time covered them with sand,
and ash and soot.

I spent six years in Texas before I knew you there existed
strange worlds where
you need not drive and hour to reach the nearest town. Six blocks
north of my new East L.A. neighborhood I crossed the street
and stood in San Gabriel with Alhambra behind me.

In second grade there, (it might have been third) I asked a
schoolmate if I still had an accent. (I think I wanted one, to
be distinct, to stand out. Not a deep Southern drawl, just enough
to be cool and from somewhere else, somewhere where no one
had ever been.) She crinkled her nose, looked up to the sky and said
“I think so, maybe a little.” (I avoid “ya’ll”, if you all were interested.)

But intonation has left its mark, without my knowing it well. “Uffda”,
from my Norwegian friends, and “ennit” from my Native brothers.

“Uffda, that’s a huge bowl of tripe soup, ennit?”

But, unless you recorded my speech with my knowing, and made me
listen through the hour that traced my talking (tied to a chair, I
would never
volunteer), I am certain there are expressions my kids laugh about
when they have their “adult” lunches and giggle about moms and dads.

I’ll be honest, my dad insisted “cassette” had a long “a” and so sounded
like a girl name Kay. He had many old Gospel Quartet Kay-settes.
He had a double tacks: one was to deny he ever spoke that way, and two,
to say he knew for certain it was pronounced his way.

So, Heavenly Father, You don’t have to tell me twice; if the
words I use every day
can trip me up without a single moment of awareness,
I am certain I need You to dig deep where my sins are
hidden better, and with more resolve, than
my inattention to the certain silence of my
latent drawl.

See the Words

See the Words

(“Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I lay it all out before you.  Then I wait expectantly.” Psalm 5:3)

What if we could see the words, the syllables come rushing
like pellets from an air gun. What if their velocity measured
the force, the love, the grace, the clear-throated and the hoarse.
And, what if their colors measured a story’s truth, like halo’s
shine, like glory’s arc of purity. And false words fell under
the weight of colors so dark there remained little brightness
to measure at all.

Imagine each syllable of every word, each syllable’s letter
flying above a crowd of mouths intersecting and reflecting until
all we have seen is as much joy as a flock of monarchs spiraling
in joyful colors and buzz. Or, depending on what you had heard,
what you observed,
the flight is as annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes in high-pitched
drone?

We would see no better than we hear, even though the words appear
color-coded and hover eye-level. We might still dissect the syllables
in our insistence that each hue has an exact correlation and my
reaction
equals (without fraction)
the speaker’s meaning, as if a caption was written
in italics and English and definitions’ shades remain
unchanged over the arch of the sun, over the length of
the days.

But to You, Yahweh, I come with naked sounds in
the morning. By later I may have adorned my words better,
but waking is black and white first copy, my heart’s first
grunt and sometimes song. It is so unrehearsed, but You-
the-
Word
know the first sound from my mouth; tone and emotion,
shorter and longer, that I do not wonder if you mistook
my colors
for someone else’s better requests.

God Understands (thoughts on Ferguson and Christmas)

God Understands

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.” Luke 1:31,32a

You may think it strange to begin a Christmas newsletter and devotion by referring to the recent tragedies in Ferguson, Mo. But, hopefully, if you bear with me, we can together understand one of the primary reasons that Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth.

Eyes on their Wings

Eyes on their Wings

(“You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created.” Revelation 4:11)

Can moths with eyes on their wings, or
the color of fallen leaves, stop my traverse from
breakfast to work like a giraffe out of place
at the University commons? Life is not a rebound
from fractured intentions, but a constant awakening
of boundless moments; a necklace adorning
the middle as the end.

Can a doodle inscribed outside the warmed eggshell
hook my glance to stare much longer than my schedule
allows? Etched from within, there is no timeclock
to measure the naked chick’s pointed beginning
to its shivering first sundried, outside, front-born
day.

What can take me away from me, from my,
from I;
what can capture my eye, steal my breath,
start the tear unbidden--
unless I look first for

The invisible, the eternal, ineffable
that dwells as surely in sand fleas
as with the marquee displays of
of wild and foreign universe of space;

Speaks daily with intent of the Maker’s
(as recent this, as forever as then) words
and breath which have scribed a world of
new pages leaping like flames above all time.

A Door in Front

A Door in Front

(“I know that you have a little power; you have followed my teaching and have been faithful to me. I have opened a door in front of you, which no one can close.” Revelation 3:8)

As the quicksand pulls upon your waking and
the ache of another day plainly drains your greater strength
before starting out the door;
once more
you remember the days limber and pliant
when a change in plans was as good
as
a change of scenery on the nth day of rain.

But the pain has laid down pathways,
dog trails in the backyard, from doghouse to
neighbor fence to
food dish and
back again;
her needs are habit and predictable.

So the pain has kept you within its leashed radius,
a few blocks perhaps, a few miles on the better days,
and few visits with friends, no dinner dates (even
laughter wears you down faster than shotgun rounds
piercing the fog in autumn). From the bed to
the couch to
the office and
back again;
your strength has all been borrowed before
you’ve had time to devise more elegant plans.

Believe me, I know the dark silence and how it
screams loudly. I’ve worn the guilty collar that
won’t let you off the hook. So much more you could
do,
so little done before another round of uneasy sleep
and treading the careless circle again.

But friend, there is another standard, an embrace
more certain that first place or captain of frontrunners
who win the race hands down question from any short-sighted
eye in the stands. There is another standard,
another measure of the love you feel has leaked and spilled
and ignited and frightened its capacity away. There is
the open door,
the wonder of One who does not care you cannot stay
for more than an hour. He will make up the rest of
the day
you long to complete. There is One Standard,
who endured and knows the tears you’ve hidden.
Hears the anguish unbidden, and exchanges them
(it is more than true) for prayer and answers more
than when, healthy as a bear, you thought you would
set the pace longer, much longer, than you have.

The open door is Father and He enters your pain,
your disdain of the half-life you feel has devalued your soul.
You, my sufferer and friend, are whole even while
you lay unmovable in shallow breaths and sacred pleas.

You Only Look at Me

“I cry out to you, but you do not answer me; I stand up, and you only look at me.” Job 30:20

Recently a good friend of my passed away unexpectedly. He had heart problems, but no one had pronounced an end date. As far as he and his family knew, he had a few, maybe many, good years ahead of him. Alan was the director of a drama ministry and we had invited him to bring a Christmas-themed production to our little church here in Southwest Washington.

When You Speak

When You Speak

(“To Him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Revelation 1:5b, 6a)

I.

If you come up my walk on an afternoon,
winter when the shadows are low upon ground,
my dogs will greet you (or warn me) and will not stand down
until they have finished their security check and wagged you
in on hind legs hopping. Dogs are hopeless. Mine always
seems to be smiling the grin of a Husky ready to do the work
of a hundred men and do it again after a nap on the snow. Mine
always sounds angry when she barks at the sounds nature never
intended:
door knocks, car latches, rumbling engines and plates dropped
on the kitchen floor. When she sniffs a deer wandering between
the house and fruit trees the growl is guttural; deer and humans
alike
cannot hide the frightening image of ancient predator and prey.

But, give her sway, open the door, and she is ready to play,
though every auditory cue suggested dinner was upon the
canine menu.

II.

I have aged longer, a decade in five, as pain has depleted
the cistern of joy. Each day alive takes longer as the
knives in my head slash each thought from origin to
completion; from truth to unreasoned hallucinations.
I hear nothing but noise (though my best songs have
hibernated long enough to voice my first recollection.)
My best friend’s words (they are comfort, always and first)
are grit and dirt to ears sandpapered clear of resistance.

III.

Oh my God, and my Good. You have not change,
you have not moved.
You have loved and are the Healing Pool in which
I drift, I sleep and I wake. And yet

When You speak
I hear the pain cringe, I feel the clinch in
my shoulders, the drain of emotions
and my default is zero when once
Your words
were infinite joy to the hearer.

Speak to me though I startle, for,
Your words, mistranslated by my pain,
are the reason I still speak of my God,
my Good, then, now, and again.

The Used-Up Troubadour

The Used-Up Troubadour

(“They sing to the music of tambourines and harps, and the sound of the flute makes them happy. Evil people enjoy successful lives and then go peacefully to the grave.” Job 21:12, 13)

Music never disturbs me, never blurs my travel from
opening sentence to thesis to end. I never turn it off
(except when I’m writing) the soundtrack of my life;
Donovan and the Mamas and the Papas; Iron Butterfly and
the Carpenters; Dave Brubeck, Count Basie. Led Zeppelin and
Keaggy; all played the ages of my unstaged history.

But, tenting alone with cold autumn sod as my bed,
barely a single hope drops from the night dew into my head
afraid to nod off and dream. Most times, in my fright,
they woke me screaming at a time when forsaken was not
the word; a man must have friend to find himself forsaken by them.

Other times, in my singular hope, sunlight in a sliver brightens
the slowed connections between the ever-tiring synapses. Nearly
waking
my heart believes the reverie to be my reality, and
waking
my eyes are shattered like the last note sharpened far out of tune.

Those times the merry songs are taunt and mock; their
perfection bears little introspection, and their joy only as deep
as the next round of beers. Those times the rhythm, like gypsies
round wagons in the night, despite the tambourine scheme of things,
I’ll crawl behind the third or fourth layer of trees in the grove.
The crackling of fish on the camp stove is a better tempo for
my addled brain.

Too many have watched me jump the hurdles mid-chorus;
song and fun and joy and spun, I’ll still dance (less often)
without a reason. But, the days when I was left bleeding on the sidewalk, I mean bleeding,
not bruised; I mean leaking, not misused; but that time people danced and sang while I
hoped I would still breathe tomorrow and my children would know their daddy was
going to be ok
because

For a time, he never sang the songs he once danced anew.

There is None

There is None

(“Dearly loved friends, don’t always believe everything you hear just because someone says it is a message from God: test it first to see if it really is. For there are many false teachers around.” 1 John 4:1)

They are political, they are hidden wind,
They are hypocritical, they are only half sinned.
They are magic words, eyeball readers, mercy cheaters,
They are meaning clippers, double dippers dropping friends.

I once listened, cried, wept at their altars. I shivered, shook,
waited for the catered message to walk me home out of the hardship,
carry me quickly from hell to His Lordship. “You have a Christmas gift
coming, my son” he said. (I love Christmas, always have. I would love
something wrapped and tied with a bow on top from God.)

“Where are you looking for churches,” he said, “I do some inquiring
for you,” he said. He did inquire and, along with my name, told them,
if it’s all the same to them, perhaps they might select another name.
(I was to blame, they dug my grave of shame even deeper). I was
waiting for a good report. Mysterious messages appeared, voice mail
(I hate answering voice mail), “something has come up, and we are going
a different direction”, right after he inquired for me, my hopes expired for he
had not told us but a quarter of his plan.

They are righteous (in their own eyes), they speak truth (in their own ears),
they do good (to those who will not embarrass), they preach grace (except to
those who need it).

The false are righteous, the false are correct, the false drink coffee,
the false buy you new ties and hang them around your neck.
The false reflect the sun, the false blind everyone, the false drink no alcohol,
the false do no wrong at all.

I have confessed, I have more confessing left. But the false, in their perfection,
never admit their own sleight of hand, yet demand full repentance from all
(the more you confess, the better you will heal).

“You want grace for yourself and judgment for others”, one once said.
Instead of responding, let me test it instead. Once said say, “I have said things
I regret. I was out of order. I hurt you with my words.” I say to Once said,
“All is forgiven. Forgotten. You are now free to move about my friendship again.”

They will call my wife names, and protect their speech with claims of
authority.

No wonder, more than once God, your words say, “there is none righteous, no not one.”