On Post Office Walls

On Post Office Walls

(“Yahweh said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they tell you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them.’” 1 Samuel 8:7)

We cannot survive on silence,
the space between molecules gives us
nothing better than the missing pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle.

Have you ever seen one of those posters hung
on post office walls, or stapled to a telephone-pole?
The picture is a wide-smiling woman, business-casual,
and glad to have been photographed. “If you want to
enjoy your life
like her” it says, “Call the number below.”
You’ve seen them, I know you have. And along the
bottom of the poster tags are cut like a dozen tiny tickets.
Tear one off and take the phone number with you. Only,
this one, the one that caught your eye, the one that might change
your life,
has been stripped of every tag with its magic number.

God, we cannot hold you. You are worse than water to grasp.
We would pull you down like a string on a kite; we would
tug the tail of your coat until you recognized our smallish face.
But we only grip nearly weightless mass as the air passes
between our fingers.

We cannot populate invisible planets. Even if we could touch
without seeing, each step would be dread, not seeing the green, the yellow
or red. Hopscotch would be impossible; prodigals would never find
their way back to the homestead. Most frightening would be the
demagogue who said only he could see.

We do not want your Second, your Administrative Assistant.
We cannot live on mere representations of the only thing
we really want to know. Nations beg for rulers; democracies are
the worst. We expect the one who says she knows you best
will make it all comprehensible; the one who says he’s closer
than the rest…but both remind us of

One of those posters hung on post office walls.

A Christian Dad Sounds Off on the Lies About Transgender People and Restrooms

(Shared from "The Good Men Project: goodmenproject.com)

A Christian Dad Sounds Off on the Lies About Transgender People and Restrooms

Bruce Pagano is a devout Christian with strong principles. He respects those of his faith with whom he may disagree. He has a tough time, however, with those who deal in complete falsehoods. That is what he sees in today’s current discourse. He tells us why.

—

If you had to explain it to someone from another country, what would you tell them appears to be the biggest issues facing our country? Our economy? The millions of people who live in poverty? Our hard broken justice system? The fact that a crazy misogynist has grabbed the GOP nomination essentially unchallenged? Nope, nope, nope and nope. Oddly, you would likely be closer if you said our biggest issue, especially within the conservative Christian camp, is whether a person should be able to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Realistically this has been a point of contention and debate in one form or another for quite a few years, with instances like bakers refusing to make cakes for same gender weddings, the push to legalize same gender marriage, local government officials refusing to execute their civic duty when it comes to issuing said marriage licenses and a myriad of other rights that members of the LGBTQ community are working toward gaining. And in all that, Christians have been some of the loudest voices of opposition.

The Slow Descent of Years

The Slow Descent of Years

(“During those days He went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” Luke 6:12)

I have cried, I know You have seen it;
as autumn brings the slow descent of years.
Please (it is my ego’s petition) let me reach the end
with more than a sparsely sown field. My muscles
no longer ache,
I am in too much pain to use them.
But my soul has never hurt so deep while I wait
for just one more year of abundance. Battered
sometimes by words and reversed rhymes that
I never did see coming,
my hideaway is barely 12x12
and my prayers a shorter measure.

I have never loved You more, and yet,
in this final turn, though cheered on by many,
the blows I’ve taken over the years have left a deadly
scar I protect by letting the phone keep on ringing,
moving my mouth while others do the singing,
and resigning myself to my final fate; I wanted to
end better than this.

So, will You go to the mountain for me?
And, if I perhaps found the strength to hike halfway,
would You still meet me there? Would you show me
how to finish well, fill my swelling soul with so much more
than the mourning over memories?

So will You stay by the fountain with me;
though, like the Samaritan woman, I do not find my way there
till well into the afternoon?
And yet, I need you sooner. Certain of fewer doctrines,
and certain of no other options than the grace You
wooed me with, and the grace that will

Lead me home.

The First Place

The First Place

I heard the first place we went was undiscoverable,
they were caverns I had never seen, fissures in the granite
where glaciers had retreated. But now we stood
halfway up the slope like the spine of a giant whale
and we whispered the world between the breaths we took.

I would go farther, see the summit, but the damage done
over years of abuse
and self-styled announcements
has left me panting far below the treeline.
New wounds only irritate old wounds
and now I doubt all will be smoothed over
by the time I’m asked to deliver my final address
on the state of the world
and my place in it.

If you could supply, by grant or by inheritance,
I would comply without counting the dangers.
You know how sad I’ve become, you know my fingers
are crooked and my throat is bare. You know best,
besides the one sweet harbor of my years,
how far the crest of the stars has fallen from me.

I wanted the first place I went was out to sea,
they were trenches deeper than mountains, the wounds in the planet
darker than soldiers’ tears. Now I want to last, please,
at least until
I see the fire fall just once more. Until hose crying for aid,
lie on the ground and watch stars dance like before.

I want to know You have walked through the door
in your humblest theophany (you are the poor, the sick,
the aging, the abused) and we have gladly welcomed
the glad parade from here to home. 

Shine on Us!

"Shine on Us!"

“He will cause the bright dawn of salvation to rise on us and to shine from heaven on all those who live in the dark shadow of death, to guide our steps into the path of peace.” Luke 1:78b-79

I am sure many of us have had the same disconcerting moment. Something wakes us out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night. We may have been in the midst of a vivid dream full of images and people that seemed as real as the waking world. Those few moments between reverie and reality can be extremely disorienting. Perhaps it was bright daylight in your dream and you cannot figure out why it is now so dark. Or you were halfway through a conversation with an old friend, awaking to wonder how the conversation ended.

Half Done

Half Done

(Love each other in a way that makes you feel close like brothers and sisters. And give each other more honor than you give yourself.” Romans 12:10)

Our house was home-made décor, half done projects
on the walls, a green bean bag and dentist’s chair
on the living room floor.

It was mostly home, though the horticulture lacked
for purpose or design; the landscaper sneezed too readily
once hay fever season began and the weeds had a heyday
from fence to falling fence.

Sun tea was always brewing atop the flat verandah roof,
mom sunbathed will past afternoon and 45,
the black lab found the shade only after nuzzling each
visitor to their knees.

We liked the summer East Bay and found new ways to
play the same games, old ways to ask the same girls
for dates we were certain would turn us down. We lived
in town
and drove an hour to spend the day at Briones. (I’ve
written about it before. See my anthology, published after
my demise, and filed somewhere between Berkeley skies
and Jesus’ people meeting at Jacob’s Well for burgers and fries.)

Our house was occasional Goodwill influenced, though
we shopped mostly for clothing at St. Vincent de Paul.
I found platform shoes and denim blues, along with
paisley flannel shirts and macramé beads that looked mostly
like watermelon seeds.

I share all of this to say that, of all the ones I’ve known and met,
I miss you the most; the one who sat with me when the world
had ended. I miss old VWs and pool parties, talking about nothing
as if we were solving the world. I miss you, (never let me
regret
having felt it this well without telling you about it.) I miss
so many conversations that still have commas, and never
ended until

The words left unspoken fell upon the backyard pasture,
mixed with the lawn gone to seed and settled somewhere close to
or north of Petaluma.

Scratch That

Scratch That

I would have opened more to you
after you knocked on my window earlier than sunrise.
But, with slumber heavy on my limbs, my eyes
ran behind the thoughts still twisted around last night’s dream.

I would have let you in, let you have your say,
and, after you stayed and understood, we might have
taken a chance at another 20 years of friendship.

But I closed my window, out of reflex, out of weary
habits of explaining why I preferred it quietly shut;

Almost all the time.

And, since it was my window after all, I hoped you
would understand.

Here’s another thing, and I hate to explain,
or excuse my actions on the short-circuited synapses
in my brain…but the tapping on my bedroom window
only increases the flow of fiery impulses that squeeze my brain
like an iron-clad orange peel.

***
You’re not the first, though, maybe not the last. And,
I’ll certainly take my part.
***

No, scratch that. Don’t remember the previous lines.
Delete them, wipe them from your mind.

I am angry. I am boiling over. I want to pour wrath upon
every former friend who wished me dead…them dead to me.
I am tired of the punches unreturned. I am tired of the lies
that set up roadblocks to beauty they would have been a spring of joy
rising up to heal this hopeless heart.

Behind my back, oh the obituaries they wrote; short, to the point;
“He was here, He did, He died.”
And my insignificance floats further back in time so that my anger

Seems entirely out of line. Beware the conflagration of a heart
never allowed to speak its peace. Instead, with every intention
of making me zero; and every false apology reserving a hero’s welcome
for their consideration

Only put more kindling on a fire that could have burned out quickly
in a friend to friend bout of honesty. But, for some, broken rules

So much worse

Than broken hearts or cursed.