The Shortage of Pillows

The Shortage of Pillows

(“And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” Luke 9:58)

Without a moment to spare I caught up with
the prophet who had exited through the double maple
doors.
An entourage surrounded him; suits, but no guns.
And I was afraid I might have to run to the end of the
parking lot to catch him.

Instead, I found him winded as I,
I looked in his eye and asked,
“Do you have any word for me?”

I had been in tears. I had pledged to follow the
Human One
years before and wandered from California to
Spokane, from San Jose to
Oklahoma, from Sacramento to
North Dakota and to the west coast again.
Every time I was certain (sometimes with deserved pressure
to go somewhere and do better);
every time I was certain I was following a divine plan
that would make my weeping cease and wring every selfish
craving from my tongue.

And so, a pastor on the plains, I was pulled by self-interest,
echoes of successes, and words in books that made it look like
the Spirit would bowl me over if I only lost my footing. If I
only scraped my knees long enough on silent tear-stained carpets.
I sat, mostly. Got bored, mostly. And never met the expectations
from holyghost shouts and unhinged inner dialogue. I could not
breathe without crying.

“Do you have any word for me?” I asked.

He was Italian, I think, and stretched his neck as he talked.
He glanced at me, stood straight and, without a moment’s pause
said,
“You will open a Christmas present soon.”

I had flown across the country (pastors often confer in
other cities to be anonymous and hope to be refilled)
and flew home two nights later.

I looked in my closets, I looked in the back of my jeep,
I read every letter, I prayed every steep and graded hill, but
never found gift wrap or ribbons. And my hope for
beatific visions
faded into dark February.

II.

I wish the
Human One
had answered me.
I wish I knew better how to follow.
The lonesome road can be the
closest thing to pristine joy
and needs no prophetic imagination or
central affirmations.

I wish I
knew earlier
about birds and foxes
and the shortage of pillows.

Today, my feet are in sandals,
my heart enjoys rambling (more
than ever before)
and I do not have to wait for a
published author
or a windy spirit
to knock me on the floor.

Moss-Covered Rocks

Moss-Covered Rocks

(“We are like clay jars in which this treasure is stored. The real power comes from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7)

What did you expect to find underneath
the moss-covered rocks? What might
crawl out
from crouched tunnels in the mud?

We wait hours for the sun on our face,
we sit in steel-backed chairs wondering
how much blood they will take
to test our disease.
How we pass the time,
how we cross the generational lines,
how we turn our faces and
align our minds toward darkness or shine,
how we offer up questions or
resign the debate with silly answers
no one believes;

How we measure the invisible waves
all decides, destination or journey,
how wide our world is and
how far we can see.

What did you expect to find up above
the world so high? What might
crack the night without making a
sound?

Enclosed by medical appointments,
grounded to the couch for more than a day,
it is easy to see time leaving us behind.
And we wish for more candles, or
shorter distances,
or instant telepathy that would
play our affection completely for
every person and every place
that brings them to memory. Some
have launched me like a dad lifting
his daughter to the sky.

Angels never masquerade; it is we who look away.
Happy boys who tell the patients in the waiting room
that he
hopes they have a good day,
and nurses from your hometown
appear like something solid yet
surreal.

There is more to find in a child’s smile
or an advocate’s laugh
or the life that teems beneath the soil

Than time can ever fill.

Let Me Begin Again

Let Me Begin Again

(“The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17)

The curtain closed on one more day
of the part I’ve been playing. I could
read the lines
time and time again.
I used to think about fences, like words,
like scripts,
that kept me in line.

Preoccupied with getting things right,
I feared missing a step or forgetting a line.
I tread the boards so carefully
I tripped over the first crack in the wood.

Without an audience or with limited applause,
the fault fell at my feet. It is not
that improvisation was disallowed or
frowned upon,
it was my fear of diving headfirst into
the deep end.

But you, gentle one, danced with me instead.
Your words were unrehearsed,
your eyes an invitation to swing around the moon,
pick daisies on Mars and
tour the stars one by one.

I was not as broken as I supposed,
I was born with atoms in my skin
that existed before the rivers, before the
globes and spheres,
before the sun we both felt on our faces.

You taught me to dance and sometimes cry…

Let me begin again:

I intended to use the stage, scripts, blocking,
props, sets, and lighting
as a metaphor
for
constraints.

I intended to describe the freedom of ad libs
in a culture of carefully drawn lines. I
intended
to write about sweet freedom,
complete with descriptions of ecstatic
experiences with the
God of words and the
Lord of dance.

Instead:

Today freedom means…

I can tell you honestly,
directly,
soliloquy,
that I am of more than one mind.

The theater never hindered me,
though another culture nearly did.
I am free to tell you
I never had a divine encounter

Unless it was in the presence of my cast
mates.

Like Rustic Bread

Like Rustic Bread

(“But he said to them, ‘You give them to eat.‘” Luke 9:13a)

Remember when we used to meet for lunch;
Denny’s, Round Table or the shop on Monument Boulevard
with 50 kinds of hamburgers? Meals were
our sacrament.

Remember the pizzas we ate hurriedly halfway through
dress rehearsals? We never thought
two dollars
could go so far.

Remember picnics in the shade and
the dogs misbehaving while we protected the
potato salad
from ants on the ground and the sun in the sky?

Remember the bottle of Almaden when we
could afford it? Otherwise, it was Boone’s Farm.
With the stream singing in the ravine
the birds harmonized in the tree above our
makeshift eucharist.

These days I am shy about
dinner invitations. I am less sure.
Conversation is pizzicato in my trembling fingers.
Blood rushes to my face
belying the uncertainty of gravity.

Do you remember sitting in grand circles
waiting for all the relatives to arrive at the
memorial? It was January and the roads were
frictionless. The friends of the departed
did not mind the extra time.
The food never stopped, and our laps were
precariously full in
the great hall
where coffee was poured all night.

I would give anything to be
brave enough again
to break off part of my heart
like rustic bread
and entrust it into your hands.

Time Hugged the Curves

Time Hugged the Curves

(“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.” 2 Corinthians 1:20a)

Time hugged the curves and could have turned
bitter (the over-brewed tea in the bottom of the cup.)
The ad libs did not come as easily
and the faces of everyone I’ve ever loved
met my thoughts through the fog.
I have auditioned new recipes, new shortcuts,
new days walking to school a dozen years old.

Today you know what I know,
another hit and the engine sputters to the
bottom of the hill.
It will not climb another, overheating and
coughing, I watch behind me for a ride
up the road.

Today I’ve told you the news,
(though the headline might read differently tomorrow)
I would rather cruise through your world and mine
hiding the wear and tear. Repaired or not,
I hear the voices of my children and Dad
is the sweetest syllable. The generations mix
from memories of floating sticks in the gutter
to the times I muttered my apologies too indistinct
to matter. (The headlines are not always honest.)

Wait for me at the top of the hill,
I’m not there yet, but I can see it from here.
You are my exclamation points; my friends,
my loves, my family. My unmapped
meander seeks an endpoint, a place where
we all can gather. A picnic that will not end
with sunset, a week of improvisation,
a year of touching the skin;
sound waves only wear out the heart.

No matter what I uncover, no matter lost or won,
no matter if my movements are slower than when
I began,
I still watch for a ride up the road,
a split second when everyone I’ve known
sparkles with the wink that says,
“I understand.”

Oh, Impetuous Spirit

 

Oh, Impetuous Spirit

(“Then the Spirit lifted me up and I heard a great earthquake behind me and the glory of the Lord arose from his place.” Ezekiel 3:12)

Oh, impetuous Spirit,
rumble behind my hearing,
shake my seat of knowing,
open the earth below me, the sky to
show me
what escapes my comprehension.

Or send a new wind unpredictable.
Whether from the mountains or the sea,
I’ve held my breath too long, wasted my
sighs on
unreported sightings of new
rainbows
astride twin hills outside stained-glass
windows.

Move me like smoke,
breathe on me, caress my cheeks with
blood warm breezes. Seize my doldrums
while I catch my breath ascending
the next hill.

I’ll stand or sit,
or, never fearing flight, only heights,
I’ll resist the urges of inertia,
the prophecies of entropy,
while you distill my tears mid-sky
into prisms. One fragrant rose

Married the freshening morning.

My Ears Are Wooden

  My Ears Are Wooden

(“Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the tempest of water, and they ceased, and it became calm.” Luke 8:24b)

In the meantime my ears were wooden,
I could not hear the beat set before the song began.
The winds whistled, shuffling the rhythm, and I
played on as if the damage was not done.

But we never finished together, the band and I.
I took the hard passages, the ones that were effortless
in my youth,
and now my fingers played on muddy fretboards,
I sloshed and panted my way through the solos.

I thought I was tired. I thought I was bored. I thought
I had grown old and would never touch the same tunes again.
I thought it was temporary. I thought I could come back.
I thought more practice would restore the agility of my youth.

But each solo my fingers were out of breath. Each melody meant
to take the song to the heights had to be edited,
my songs were discredited,
and my wooden ears only wanted to hear the way
I once played
before all the murmuring began.

Shiftless, lonely, angry, and afraid. It was another storm
among many. My energy was taxed by all the others before,
there was nothing left over. How to tell everyone that one more
crushing wind
has taken one more piece of my life
away again.

Without a band to rehearse. Without the skills I once had.
Without the tempo beating true. Without reserves to get me
through an entire song unwinded…

I’ve ended waiting alone for the winds to shift,
(if they have a mind to)
or send more bandmates to drift on the breeze
where we can easily play old songs like
old men do.

Someone to Blame

Someone to Blame

(“The Lord's acts of mercy indeed do not end, for His compassions do not fail.” Lamentations 3:22)

The troubles came out of nowhere like
the rain that hides behind the mountains.
Creeping hands of clouds loomed over the crags of
unconsciousness
and suddenly
we were drenched with invisibility.
Everything we could not see gripped us
so eyes that once saw clearly beyond the
eastern day
blinked away allergies and smoke.

We thought we knew it all,
we thought we knew cause and effect,
we thought the evil get punished,
we thought the righteous were without defect.
So why did it come to our town,
our holy little amendment on the river?
Why not upstream where the pollution
started, why not underground where the less polite
were hidden?

Our backs ached, our brains burned,
our hearts stopped when the power lines went down.
Once in a while the fog lifted
only to remind us what we were missing.
Still it seemed to all of us there must be
someone to blame. Someone had misspelled
the same day over and over again.

But above and below, while we sheltered at home,
the robins still sang, the dogs still pranced,
the children still played, though everything seemed to be
left to chance.
Someone hummed walking along the river,
someone looked for frogs on the bank.
Others slowly ate their lunches on picnic
benches wet from dew and rain.

It was not deliberate, but in the renewed silence
of water upon water
(the ions of joy and photons of vision)
we learned to breathe together again.
We saw again. Fireflies
lit up the night.

Did You See the Way I Fell?

Did You See the Way I Fell?

(“Why do you notice the small piece of dust that is in your friend’s eye, but you don’t see the big piece of wood that is in your own eye?” Luke 6:41)

The pieces you see now I usually hid
before
the big bang that
started photons careening across my history.
Not that I’ll show it all,
or to everyone,
but I must admit I enjoy living with far
fewer fences.

Did you see the way I fell that day?
Did you see how I stumbled for more than a year?
Did you see the wobble in my orbit,
the onion peels in my opinion?
Did you suppose the dream you had
that cast me as a night-terror
was given you by a god who loves to
frighten shaking souls?
Did you see the way I cried?

I know you thought
you found trash in my back yard
months after I had moved away.
It should mean something to you that
I left it behind and
did not take it with me.

I admit my perceptions are colored by
an opaque woodenness. I confess I’ve thought
I might be death unlivable. But that was only based
upon
the words I heard from towering trees
whose roots were dry where they poked through
the hillsides. My roots were nearly lifeless too.

I’ve met vagabonds, I’ve met fancy dancers,
I’ve met wise men who eschewed answers,
I’ve met storage sheds locked up so tight
that they were all but empty inside.
I’ve met children of the forest, I’ve met mothers of the desert,
I’ve met drooping eyes that shined like starlight
and knew something they would not share.

I learned to welcome from those who welcomed me.
I learned to throw the garbage out
that I thought had stuck to me.

There are those whose eyes have wept for
their own pain,
and invite you like good medicine
to share the campfire where old stories
are only stories

After all.

Call Me with Coffee

 Call Me with Coffee

(“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12)

Today light was handed me through a clouded sky,
and so my confidence lies partly awakened
and partly shaken;
life is like that.

Egos are like that.
A flash in the night, a comet out of gas,
a star you saw yesterday hides behind
a hundred moons.

I’ve given up my toys, but not my play.
I’ve given up my chums, but not my friends.
I’ve given up my pretensions, but not my dreams.
I’ve given up the timeouts, but not my curiosity.

Today was wet like yellow raincoats,
and so my letters melt slowly on the pavement,
partly faded.
Memories are like that.

Today is like that.
A wish for the past, a vision that did not last,
a story, a song, a friend beyond arm’s reach
and a hundred years long.

I’ve given up award shows, but not my creations.
I’ve given up tattling, but not truth-telling.
I’ve given up flattery, but not greeting cards.
I’ve given up standing in line, but not patience.

Today could be like that.
I have not disappeared at all. I live within
the chemical flashes of your brain. But your
voice is hidden from me,
and your warmth escaped like the first frost of autumn.
Some fences are like that.

I would have kept you in my field of vision,
I would have revised my strategy until you knew
there were no reasons for walls or silence
or u-turns of offense. Only friends who, like the
molecules of water,
sometimes are drunk from cups and
sometimes empty into the sea.
Today is like that; today, if you think it,
call me with coffee on your mind.

Holy Mosaic

Holy Mosaic

(“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12:4)

Everyone wore the same standard-issue smiles,
the aisles were filled with processed cheeses and
pressed meats of the day. The truth is, though no one
knew it,
we all wanted it that way.

There were always a few more fascinated with
ethnic groceries. There were always some who
came simply for the stories.
Why not sit on the wooden steps eating a
bahn mi
and listening to the prayer call from the mosque
only a few blocks away. There were a few
who knew they could hear the lilt of the Spirit;
still and slightly reverberating in dialects they
could not recall.

Everyone reacted to the suggestion that
the Spirit transcends religion. Everyone favored
style over substance. Some wanted soups,
others mosaics. Some wanted melting pots,
others orchestras. The Spirit

Blew in from all corners. She inhabited
the air in restaurants and alleys. She filled
soon and later with breath that
brightened eyes and rainbowed kitchens.
She always showed up.

There were always a few who did the dishes
inspired. Laughter and splashing just happened
to be the language they had agreed upon. The
Spirit danced gleefully.

The Girl from Ukraine

The Girl from Ukraine

(“He that eats and drinks carelessly is eating and drinking a judgment on himself, for he is blind to the presence of the Lord’s body.” 1 Corinthians 11:29 [J.B. Phillips])

The basements were bomb shelters,
the children cowered in corners,
the bombs sucked the oxygen from
the streets where lovers met for coffee
outside the restaurants.
And tyrants light candles to prove their orthodoxy.

The father and mother,
twin children a month old,
were taken from their tinies, leaving orphans
when a madman thought the dirt belonged to him.
And in the scratchy streets people lined up to take
the children home. Not for a night. Not for a month.
Not until children’s services showed up.
But for the length of family.

She had spent five years in Seattle, but was Ukraine
through and through.
She knew English, she knew her country,
she came back in the middle of cluster bombs and
concrete parking garages melting in the heat of
one man’s rage.
Her skin jumped off her body every time
another siren sounded. And all she wanted was
to have her loved ones around her. Her loved ones
had been canceled by the menace of demonic claims
to borders and nothing else.

Nothing ever changes, everything remains the same,
we are cursed to repeat the hubris that puts people in their place.
We do not know how to love the person close at hand
who believes Black Lives Matter, or transgenders deserve
life without snide remarks about bathrooms and penises.
We will not listen to the agonized voicings of Anthems
proclaiming equality and dignity.
We are smug and smokey when we name eunuchs devilish
dangers to God. We strangle the speech that only desires
to love our neighbor by wearing a mask that holds back the
virus that might infect their loved ones. We are ignoring

The body before us.
The body just like Jesus bore before us.
We are static when we should sing the chorus
that all God’s children’s got wings.

And the girl from Ukraine who knew the
Pacific Northwest,
only desires that, if we see the blue sky above us,
we should simply
cherish it.