War No More

War No More

(“They will pound their swords into plowshares and their spears into blades for trimming vines. Nation will not raise the sword against nation, and they will not learn how to wage war any longer.” Micah 4:3b)

War no more; Hear the chant in beats and plainsong.
War no more; Look upon the faces ravaged by the storm.
War no more; Believe there can come an end to nonsense and plunder.
War no more; Lay down your messages and arrest warrants.
War no more; Pick up the new flowers for Peace Gardens to come.
War no more; Burn your bullets with their casings.
War no more; Smelt your rapid fire rifles into golden.
War no more; Retool your swords and prune the fruit trees
War no more; Bench your aggressive drones on the side of the road.
War no more; Melt your spears into shapes that imitate the sun.
War no more; Leave this scenery of battles behind.
War no more; Fill in the trenches completely to the top.
War no more; Let the doves land upon your helmeted head.
War no more; Watch the lion lay down with the lamb.
War no more; Redraw the boundaries and the locks on the gates.
War no more; Rewrite every song that celebrates bombs bursting anywhere.
War no more: Go to school again.
War no more; Learn the sweet savor of diversity.
War no more; Open the door, swing wide the windows, let the breeze whisper,
War no more; And let it become the refrain of new anthem celebrating
War no more; And sing it standing, kneeling, lying down. Memorize
War no more; And learn every line like a school child sing
War no more; Memorized like a new pledge of a new allegiance to
War no more;
War no more;
War no more.

By the End of the Day

By the End of the Day

(“Those who regard vain idols forsake their own mercy.” Jonah 2:8)

Fascinated by the worship of dreams we focus on
specters manufactured by our minds. Contemplating what
is in it for us,
we cannot get enough of the thin air surrounding us.
We put crosses and American flags on the same platform,
insisting our every instinct is the tide-turning revolution
just an incantation away. We don’t even need to pray
because we have determined the outcome from the beginning
of the day.

If you could listen closer, quiet the demands of sharp-toothed
politics; if you could leave the masquerade behind that
quotes verses to keep everyone in line; if you could
quit your addiction to strong arm tactics and endure the
withdrawal symptoms, then maybe
you could join the small family of a dozen or so
who prefer a doubt or two over your unholy
attention to certainty.

I was stuck in the narrow hallway where there
was room for only one voice at a time. No place
to hide,
but no place to open my arms to embrace the
voices that were canceled by such closer quarters.
I tried to do what everyone suggested, I tried to
stay in the limits, coloring inside the lines.
But my hands shook and my paint ran;
I fell to my knees before the proclamations that
took their authority for granted. Who knew that
religion was an idol as sure as any leaden god
perched upon a window frame.

My head is finally above the water, at least for today.
Dismantling the careless way I believed every word,
I can find a way less self-assured. I can find the
new Creation by the end of the day.

How the Day Begins

How the Day Begins

(“I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel.” Galatians 1:6

My chest started out tight today;
underground memories crowded my mind.
Too many crimes congregate and push the
better moments aside.

The glassy sky was reflected in the dew that
was shaded from the sun to start and gone within
an hour. But the lawn was still wet to the touch
and the optics rewarded the future. We might be
able to see the river from here if we climbed a
few feet higher.

I confess I don’t take the time with the invasion
of thoughts that show up in night vision. I saw
you in a dream last night and I could not remember
your brother’s name. But you still held me in mind
and spoke lightly. You helped erase every unkind
infusion I partook in.

As my muscles relaxed, I walked with a slight
limp toward the same course I walk every day.
Unintentionally I rehearsed the silence that comes
following the storm that tried to make me remember
a decade or more of stumbling. I still fear the looks
of everyone I think knows the way my face shook
on days like these. There are warm pools that wash
away the creeping doubts, the increasing debts I owe.

My vision, though, is grace beyond the short-circuited
sight of my reoccurring sadness. It is all supernatural
and still invades my DNA like a steady rain covering
the fields with expectation.

The Moment You Banished

The Moment You Banished

(“They trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth, and they turn aside the claims of the oppressed.” Amos 2:7a)

When you turned away to follow the gleam of gold
and the sparkle of silver you left the dust behind
for anyone you called homeless in your prearranged language.
You build statues to your name;
you cast away the foreigner from your front door.
You think you’ve received commission from the gods
and your bank account is enough to make you believe.
You take the whole pie for yourself and sweep the crumbs
under the rug. You would keep the rain from falling on
the poor man’s field and hoard it for you own if you could.
They are impoverished by the way you feed on the
vintages you make sure they cannot afford. You
have turned up the music and hear nothing of their
cries that carry across the canyon you have created.
You don’t answer the phone when it rings for you;
you don’t open the door to the east wind blowing the
songs of the workers from the castaway fields. You
cannot hear their winter dirges for the frozen dreams
you have pierced with your penthouse palisades.

But there is one who hears, there is one who sees
every idol erected to your ego. You will find,
at the end of the day, how empty your idolatry
became
the moment you banished the oppressed from your
mind.

With Room to Breathe

With Room to Breathe

(“For you bear with a man if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, or if he strikes you on the face.” 2 Corinthians 11:20)

They call us the heretics, but we never made demands,
used serpentine words to manipulate you, or shamed you
into a faux repentance. We stayed resistant to the strategies
of those who talk with lengthy panoramas to convince you
they were the elite and the narrow way to God.

While they punch you into submission, making you unworthy
for only fasting a day; while they wave their arms like
backstreet gypsies, they list themselves among the top tier
consummate eras of pickpocket prophets.
They will tell you your fortune for a contribution to
their flag-wrapped  They predict earthquakes, they
promise a place at the top of the hierarchy, they have
occupied the pyramid since they learned how to
manipulate people’s fears.

Meanwhile the vagabond raggamuffins speak slowly,
their soft words barely heard above the boasting using
divinity for personal gain. They slovenly sit at banquets
of overpriced menus. They put on weight while their
authority floats as light as a feather. They boast about
40 day fasts and are ready to sell you a book all about it.

The only boast from the hobos who eat around campfires late,
is they never made any demands, had suffered at the hands of
many super-apostles trying to keep them quiet. But these
scrappy vagrants for Christ find little reason to speak today.
They know the fruit will show up at last, the love that does
not
demand its own way.

Within a matter of days their quiet campfires will burn
ablaze with room to breath and invitations to share the
true stories of the quietly redeemed.

Overtures of Invitation

Overtures of Invitation

(“I have had a change of heart. All my tender compassions are aroused.” Hosea 11:8b)

Have we measured yet how volatile love can be?
Have we discovered mercy behind the messy proclamations?
And yet,
noisy as a storm, we must listen to know the moment’s sound
is hidden within the fiery thunder we shiver under.
Yet we find ourselves favored in the midst of our
own discontent. The heat of your love melts all our
resistance. The light you awaken in us remains long
after we have turned away. If only we would carry
it closer than our hourly burdens of certainty.

We forget, so intimately joined to our previous suppositions,
so scathed by our attempts to escape. Sometimes I just need
to stop walking and discover the passage of time that keeps me
bonded when I feel unequal and unglued. I heard your
passions are stirred toward the worst we have done.
I saw you in the morning and found out loud that you
waited within me and invited me as a beloved apprentice.
We learn to practice what we have seen; we read the
music on the pages and sing the ballads of the secrets
made known that we thought could never be decoded.

We still feel the electricity in our nerves, the anxiety
that buzzes so loudly we miss the quiet overtures
of invitation, the understated pleasure of the divine.
But today we can RSVP to the joy strung up like
helium ballons. We can mark our calendars with
this day that we were reminded the world revolves
around the heart of Christ. We will not mince our
words, but dance like those who just got our
invites in the mail.

UnMasked

UnMasked

(”For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich.” 2 Corinthians 8:9)

I hardly knew what to do when the gift was dropped off
outside my door. Should I open it; what was it there for?
I set it inside on top of a coffee table and went about my
day, making lunch, drinking wine, and wondering how much time
I had before I heard the famous voice that thundered everything
into place.

But the noises outside and the people who cried
that justice looked sad were in the streets today.
There was no peace from the camouflaged recruits who
pummeled observers of their over-privileged gunfire.
Hard on the way, they lay another one upon the concrete
as if they are simply punching bags for practice.

It was all on video, for those who would watch it.
It all was heard, though many refused it.
It was unlicensed aggravation and children kidnapped
from outside their schools. It was a nurse to veterans
being beaten for pointing his phone at the officers of fear.

But thousands showed up and broke the silence. Thousands
sang songs of resistance and beat their drums above the anguish
laying low and loud. They are trauma-breakers assisting the wounded.

And still the gift sits unopened, its contents hidden underneath
layers of paper and perforations. We have thrown away the wealth
of harmony paid at such a price the universe trembles. The estranged
are invited to join the sanity that is richer and offers reunion
to armies of boots on the ground. Unwrap the present and join
the mass apology for the pain created by the masked unrighteous
ways of hardened lawless masquerading as officers of the peace.

Small Things

 Small Things

(“If you receive this child in my name,” he said, “you receive me. And anyone who receives me, receives the one who sent me. Whoever is the least among you—that’s the one who is great.” Luke 9:48)

They started well, like an evening stroll through the forest,
like a dog greeting its owner, like a baby laughing out loud
for the very first time. But things expanded, they got bigger,
they demanded more attention shown to the leaders who started
out lying on cushions and now were seated on thrones.

It all got away from us; we got caught up in the hype that
everything we prayed for would make everything bigger than
we could ever imagine. And for a while, it worked. For a while
we convinced ourselves that the more obedience we demanded
the less bitter the future would be. We put our faces down to make
sure we toed the line and never stopped asking questions of the unaligned
who were a beat too slow when we sang our decorated hymns they
should have known.

We could have waited for them to learn the tunes,
to hum them unworded to start. We could have slowed it
all down but we had more people pounding down the doors
to get their next fix of what we advertised week to week.
We promised new songs given by the spirit,
we promised good health while they waited in line.
They crowded in to hear us pontificate about the triggers
that forced us to send them out against immediate enemies.
We grew, oh how we grew, like a creeping vine in midsummer.

We forgot all about the toddlers sleeping on Sunday.
We let the baby stay awake and left her at home.
We shushed the children who giggled too often,
we muted the questions the preteens asked too precisely.

We missed the wide-eyed fascination with canticles of faith.
We forgot how tiny voices could stay in our minds long after
the sermons drifted away.

We called for dedication, but left discernment aside.
We relied on lofty pronouncements when the truth was among
pint-sized.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the treasure we find in
cast aside converts who attempted to backslide. We doomed them
like the choking black of a moonless night.

But their story is truer. Their words full of life.
Their questions childlike, and their laughter
more holy than a dozen hallelujah shouted
full-throat by everyone in the balcony.

Don’t Disappear

Don’t Disappear

(“Christ died for all so that those who live would not continue to live for themselves. He died for them and was raised from the dead so that they would live for him.” 2 Corinthians 5:15)

Don’t disappear over desperation that knocks
noisily in your mind. Don’t lose the ending just because
the beginning is out of view. The time of rising has
arrived. The time of sentient exploration brings you
closer to the pathway you have dreamed. It could
be today,
it might be later. It might be sunny, it might be
unwieldy. It might be the visions of a well-earned
peace on the streets of disaster. It might be transportation
from airlifts that move us from complacent complaints
to marches of confidence. We will speak confidentially
with those who wait within hollowed homes for the
announcement that holy joy is rounding the bend.

But it all looks like death right now,
doesn’t it. It reeks of deterioration,
it smells like decomposition. We cannot
ignore it and fly right by without noticing
the targets on the backs of colors we no longer
want to accept. Brown and black are hiding behind
doors of terror when the peaceful are called radicals
and the warmongers are called leaders. Get in line
they tell us,
and wait for your apprehension. The cuffs dig into
the wrists of the wrongly arrested. We stand
next to the fallen. We find the marks upon the mothers
who hide their children from the camouflage pretenders
who pace the residential avenues with fear.

There is still a stream that flows through the city,
a living river that sweeps the dead dust away.
There is still a hope that breathes and listens
for the wings of the Spirit. There are still streets
that are alive with healing at every turn.
Sanity demands we embrace the metamorphosis
of dying to living, and see through revitalized eyes
the imprints of the divine being born even while
we cry.

The Sacred Meal

The Sacred Meal

(Therefore, since we have this ministry as a result of the mercy shown us, we are not discouraged.” 2 Corinthians 4:1)

We no longer hide behind manufactured words
and disguised shadows in the sun.
We no longer panic when the winds blow
cold from the north and try to pierce us through
buttoned coats. But we will continue without pretense.
We are filled from the beginning by methods of
grace
that have opened our hearts to newday like flowers
seeking the sun.

Once the announcement was made we learned how
honesty and repair looked once we opened our eyes.
We took it all to heart, we gathered our children
to celebrate new movements of sanity and purpose.
By this grace we have learned to make space for
dozens who do not believe yet, who think we may be
lost because we have moved outside their rigid restraints.

We invite them to the dance and hope they will join us.
We cancel our subscription to the prescriptions they
thought had healed us. Instead, we break bread with
the bare-faced children who come in with mud on their face.
We share the declaration we heard from further within
than we could imagine.

Open further. See sooner. Speak truer.
Live longer. Dance faster. Love deeper.
Dine at the banquet set with oval tables
in the meadow with seats for everyone.

We put down our visors meant to hide our eyes,
and look across the table at every tribe under heaven
sharing the sacred meal of the beloved.

We Refused to Turn

We Refused to Turn

(“These three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the middle of the burning fiery furnace.” Daniel 3:23)

You erected an idol to yourself,
you demanded worship at the statue of your
insanity. We could not comply, we could not
bow
like it was some worship song flowing up
from creamy faces to the sun. You
sent the worst after us,
to subdue us,
to confuse us.
But we refused to turn our faces to
the effigy built in your image.

You sent the worst to arrest us,
door to door you knocked with your
covered faces, asking questions we had
no obligation to answer. We politely,
but plainly told you to fuck off.
Your brutish hands clutched the door
and we smelled the acrid tear gas you
had punched into crowds that were countering
your evil directives.

In short, burn us in your furnaces of fury
if you will but the short and full of it is
simple:
We
will
not
bow.

Singe the edges if you will.
We will sing our songs of sanity
to your appropriated helmets of state-sponsored
status. We will move with resolve
to introduce the truth. If you arrest us
we will stand. If you apprehend us, we will
still speak. If you sentence us, we will steadily
place our purpose where it belongs. We will
avert our eyes from your monstrous image and
turn to the invisible God who is truth and truth
and truth.

Our Comfortable Borders

Our Comfortable Borders

(“Nothing is secret but what will be known. Anything that is hidden will be brought into the light.” Luke 8:17)

We assumed we were seeing well,
the light was bright,
and our apostles were speaking truth.
We were aligned and everything seemed righteous.

But the corner we occupied was filled with darkness.
Our eyes had dilated to let in the
limping bit of light that was left. Our prophets
were hidden with us, calming our souls
and caressing our egos. We sung it all
so well
that people outside patted us on the back for
our stellar harmonies.

But one of us woke up.
One of us ventured a few feet away from our
comfortable borders. One of us
happened upon the rays of light that could have
dispelled the dark side we had taken for granted.

Our egos had swollen in the dark, our narration
memorized to keep out the loudest voices of transformation.
We had become accustomed to every patch of
ground we stood upon. We were blind in our
stupor, we were stained by our hiding place.
We were constrained by our habits and lowlights
behind the scenes. We had locked down our faith
and configured it to fit our biases fashionably.

But one spoke from the outside, from the light that
unsighted our darkness at the first look. But soon,
accustomed to the rays and particles that filled space
like the facets of a diamond
we were confronted about our preconceptions.
We were no longer protected. We were no longer
accustomed to arrested proclamations.

We turned away from the darkened corner and
listened to the ones who had brought their
shaded self into the light. We saw the
unambiguous recitations of truth and were
confronted with our own contributions to the
darkened minds we once called sane.

A piece at a time we climbed out of our
cavern and, taking a backward look we were
astonished at what we had assumed. We
wept over our misapprehensions, over our
staggering domination of the narrative that now
seemed to be a pinpoint star fading into the background.

We were changed by the light we had shaded. We had
worn visors that hid the corners of our hearts.
The songs now were of resistance, of revolution,
resolution, and renovation that uprooted our attachment
to a few square feet of surety. We had crowded into
corners and thought the world behaved in predictable ways.

It was grace that created the new perception,
it was vast prairies full of sun that called the invisible
dawn that deleted our defense of a few square feet
of certainty.
It was a noise like bluebirds,
it was motion like rainbows rising from the plains.
And we left that claustrophobia that turned us into
inspectors of the imperfect and embraced the light
that led the advance of a new prophetic voice that
brightened the darkest acts of our religious wars.

The Circle of Mercy

The Circle of Mercy

(“God encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.” 2 Corinthians 1:4)

I dreamed how many times I had fallen,
how often I was afraid of stepping over the edge.
I dreamed of tainted love that caught me napping,
of uncertain words of dread. I sweated sometimes
just remembering the sadness I felt and the sadness I caused.

But I also dreamed how two lifted me up, two who didn’t
mind walking next to me in the pit of my despair.
I put them on my calendar, today and the next,
meaning to thank them for breathing life into this
stumbling soul. I never meant to try to go it alone,
though that could be inferred from the way I hid inside.

I found them later that day, ready to shake their hands
and encircle them the way they had enfolded me.
But their hands were already busy lifting another from
the abyss where they had fallen. It’s not that they were
too busy for me; they invited me to come and

Join the circle of mercy along with them.

Rolled Up on the Couch

Rolled Up on the Couch

(“We were made like that man of earth, so we will also be made like that man of heaven.” 1 Corinthians 15:49)

My feet are cold standing on the floor,
the thermostat is working, I just set it too low.
What I would give for a larger footprint
that kept me warmer while the rains plot patterns
in the mud.
I woke up early, two minutes I think, and I napped
for an hour waiting to write. My head aches,
the same as it has for 17 years and I wonder when
I will ever be able to jump for joy again.
I don’t mean to sound self-occupied or whiny,
I don’t mean to take all the attention.
But I’d rather be back in the middle of things
thinking I made a difference or two. Instead, I’m
holed up,
rolled up on the couch waiting for the echoes
to pass like yesterday’s thunder. I’m waiting to
play something experimental, keyboard configurations
of things so stable they are candidly spotted under
timed-sequences of tune. I want to cross over on
the bridge to another beginning, an angelic singing
of possibilities. I want to say it without feeling
damaged, but the past catches up with me, the future
pulls away and presently I am stuck inside a
cyclone of consequences that I’ve almost owned.
I’ve left most of my justifications on the side of the road.
One day I will not sink beneath the weight of pain,
I will rise above this gravity’s habits of resistance,
and simply be wrapped up like I once was before
I placed my feet on the floor wanting warmer mornings
and longer passages of joy.

Space Now Between

Space Now Between

(“God blesses you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” Luke 6:20a)

Somewhere between complete confidence
and the quilt of unknowing
there are thoughts that once were strong as
mud-bricked walls. They have not fallen,
but they speak underneath my consciousness
and call me to listen above their current frequency.

Somewhere below my previous expectations
and above the poverty line there were verses
of poetry I had not written. And if I did, I swear
the meaning would be hidden. If only I had learned
the song long ago. If only it was committed to
the filing cabinets inside my mind.

Somewhere away from manufacturing
and toward clear crisp creation I faced a
new situation where want became the previous
shortcut I always took. Now I walked close to
silence, the stillness of innovation unmeasured
on the page.

At this point I would honestly say that finances
frightened me
like fire consuming my innovation. I pictured a
some day that would be a sunnier day without
the halting breaths between words. Today
I cannot tell you what will break between
midnight and noon or what phase the moon is
as it circles like a hula hoop. But there is space now
between what I know for sure and what I will never
discern
for sparks to ignite an avalanche of blessing
on the mountain slopes beneath my feet.

And We Frolicked

And We Frolicked

(“Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’” Ezekiel 37:9)

It was a strong wind that lifted the crossword images
from the river to the sightlines from the shore.
We were scratching
jigsaw puzzles we bought for Christmas.
The sonic booms tried their hand at prophesying
new faces of the moon. All they ended up doing
was scaring the dogs huddled underneath the tables
in the living room.
There was an exhalation that warmed the journey
we expected to run in the morning mist. We were
dead on our feet,
deceased upon the heels of our discontent.
We ceased moving and wallowed in the mud
while waiting for the wind to come our way again.

We had been looking for our necessary mood when our time
finally ran out. We were dry as corpses, broken like
long-held fantasies of winning back our losses. That
was the day breathing and the sun turned to sand.

But there was movement in the air, we could feel it
though we could not hear it. There were wild geese
honking up the sky in their v-shaped migration. And the
wind stirred between us, lifting us lightly above ourselves,
entering ourselves, unwrapping ourselves, reviving our
selves in ways we had wished for so long. We missed the
ways things once were when the trees caught the breeze
in their branches and shared it with the forest floor.

The wild geese stirred the wind again and like a burst
of unbounded joy we opened anew to as breath
entered us, centered us, reoriented us; we saw anew and
thanked the spirit. We heard anew and knew the tune. We spoke
too soon, so we quietly listened as our skin felt the touch of
wildness we had been pursuing for years. In our stillness
it caught up with us, and we frolicked like we had been
born again.

Love Surrounds

Love Surrounds

([“Love is not] rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. 1 Corinthians 13:5)

Take the time like it matters,
preserve it like messages from the mountains that
love lies waiting for the forgotten and the unseen.
They had flinched when the words cascaded toward them,
sharp accusations and suppositions and nothing an inch worth
of truth. The implications were clear though the cause was not.
They only felt good once they lowered him a peg or two.

But love lies waiting like a rescue hammock, it meets the
expectation of summer sunny afternoons. Though others gave it
stingily, one gave kindness first place and made room for others
whose hearts had been silenced by those who forgot they
did not know enough.

But love surrounds the wounds left behind by
judgment without cause. Love asks how the hurt began and
listens to the stories even over and over again
until all facets have been exposed to its light.

We thought we had caused their irritation, that we had
manufactured words in a smelter and fashioned them into
swords. But that was not our plan. We formed
platters to serve everyone. We kept hoping to
manufacture a moment in time where the blinders fell
off and we were comfortable to see each other as we are,
even if we had never seen that way before.

Some did and found the scars still healing. Some bound
them anew with bandages and care. We filled a bowl with
water and washed their hands while we waited for
the rest to arrive.