The Medicine You Need

 

The Medicine You Need

 

(“Because of what Christ has done, you believe in God. It was God who raised him from the dead. And it was God who gave him glory. So your faith and hope are in God.” 1 Peter 1:21)

 

Remember when you were argumentative and
missed the train and late?
Trains run on tracks but do not always run on time.

What if the medicine you need is buried deep below the earth,
What if the healing you crave is carried on the clouds?

 

Remember when you were so dangerous and
missed the point and weight?
Spikes finish spears but do not always find their mark.
What if the righteousness you need is as plain as ocean and sky,
What if the goodness you thirst is coded in the doubts?

 

Do you listen to the two-year-olds squeal and laugh,
Do you notice how they think puppies are funny?
Do you see their eyes wide and dark; a new face,
an unknown label for the color green, and knees that bend
every second; the tiny hopping child.

 

Who will come to the lap of glory,
who will sit where toddlers play,
who will arrive so early that they are soaked
by the rain before the sun beings?
Who will plant the poppies and daffodils,
who will tread the path to where joy begins?

 

Remember when life was so casual and
turned the eye and mind?
Sights seduced scenes that played across your thoughts in dreams.
What if the mercy you’ve missed is waiting on the edge of thought,
what if the favor, the bliss, awaits away from the crowds?

My Silent Chair

My Silent Chair

(“Peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters, and may God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you love with faithfulness. “ Ephesians 6:23)

I wait for the next tick of the clock hoping ease
will find my silent chair.
I've always wanted to be more than I am,
better than I appear,
and I alone know the secret places I've stashed
the inky past.
I cannot rely upon my myriad attempts at regeneration;
the cushions have taken my form. I leave my chair but
my dense impressions remain.

How many times have I begged for peace when yesterday's creases
keep stalking me down?
How many loves have I preached only to envy another fleeting and
manufactured fragrance?
How slowly my faith has weathered, the silt below me all parts
of my beginning?

So they ask me how miserable I am. They ask in love, they ask in concern.
But there is no cure and no end to the pain. More than the decade of arrows
to my brain,
the spears to my soul have gouged me far past my prime.
And I have turned towards and away, inward and awry, passion and pedantic;
only to find the same heart beating, the same blood pulsing, and I wonder where
the new creation begins after far too many endings for my taste.

I will cheer for you. Yes, I know the hunger after the crisis,
the ennui after the knife is removed when all believe the healing has begun.

I've started more times than you realize. I've stopped even more. And I can
only depend on what I hope is the love-of-Christ and
the interests of a
few-dear-friends.

No Secrets

“But in these final days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the material universe.” Hebrews 1:2

It is said that we all remember where we were when President Kennedy was shot. For the generation that followed his assassination, perhaps the same can be said about the day the New York Twin Towers fell, perhaps always to be known as “9/11”. I was in second grade when the news hit the country that the President had been shot in Dallas while riding in now infamous black Cadillac convertible. Strangely enough, what I remember most is that school was canceled for at least one day, maybe two, and I spent much of that day off coloring.

Stars Inside

Stars Inside

(“Yet when [the mustard seed] is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Mark 4:32)

There are stars inside us preheated before explosion,
preparing for expansion, spinning toward constellations
no eyes have perceived. Souls do have their dreams.

There is a universe within the smallest frame;
tiny fingers, bony toes, skinny necks, legs like sticks,
that contains the molecules and recipe for the masterpiece
hung on heaven’s wall; the melody played down heaven’s hallways.

We are not and yet, we are full and void, we shout the echoes,
whisper the amperage, and walk so small it is a wonder
we are noticed at all.

We are tall and flat, we are poets and pedants, we laugh whimsy,
scowl about rumors, and crawl so huge we peek above the clouds
dragging our feet through the deluge.

There are demons inside us where we seldom lodge,
uneasy, we quote their excuses as if it reduces our
personal contribution to the thin layers of global harming.

There are sinners and angels, God’s image and Adam’s,
the conflagration of destruction, the inferno of purification.
We are creation’s wonder, and the source of mourning for
all our humility and hubris.

There is a Morning Star poised just below the horizon,
a speck of light in minute degrees sometimes seen between
the firs and cedars. There is a Daylight Name within each
layer of fascination. The voice to uneasy space, the full
to emptied disgrace; pulling all toward itself; the Gravity

Of a Humble King who is found among impossible things.

Kum Ba Yah

Kum Ba Yah

(“He will oppose himself to everything that people call a god or make an object of worship; he will put himself above them all, so that he will sit in the Temple of God and proclaim that he himself is God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:4)

Another brag cracks the theater curtain and the followspot
aims through the theatrical smoke to produce one more mouth-sized
deceit staging its newly aged last day promise to cure cancer
and bad breath; our millenium’s elixir, snake-oil and QVC--a
perfect pair to merchandise religious fakery. The litany is
echoed without offense, since, without sense at all, it is a potpourri
of every wish without a mendicant’s objection.

We worship God and country
(does anyone leap to protest?)
and disguise national borders in
choir robes keeping pagans out and holding the elite
American Holy and Republican Democratic Society of
the First-Born of many in;
until we declare what we’ve been taught to beware,
the Late Great Planet might be Taken to the dance
sometime in Late December 1012 (read the papers, they’ll
report our near misses).

So, while bible-algebraics strain to make each chapter of Daniel
align with John’s Great Vision, (putting Russia and Communism
in their place,
The righteous USA disgraced, misplaced or embraced by God
first before any other little bitty nation (depending on which
arithmetic you read);

While they forecast their dates and identified the traits of the next
sure to be anti-christ wannabe,

I’ll light me an autumn bonfire, put my feet up on an old wet log,
sit back in the yellow armchair with one strap nearly broken and
sing Kum Ba Yah just like I did when all I knew was it meant
“Jesus, ‘Come by Hear’”, and “Come by Hear” is all I meant.

Dangerous

“Jesus said to them, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.’” John 8:28

It is not as evident to us, 2000 years down the line, but the audience Jesus spoke to was very aware of what Jesus meant when he said, “You will know that I am he.” In fact, it was their understanding of his meaning that made them so angry. Here, as in so many other places in the gospels, Jesus speaks about himself as “God”.

Who Washed Your Hands

Who Washed Your Hands

(“Every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26)

It should have been me who washed Your hands
that night before eating the exodus meal; I should have
set the table neat with white linen, poured the wine
red
in the cups that speak so well,
set the matzo unbroken before our final
consummation, our ears not hearing
this was no celebration;
more memorial, a portrait predicting
what we would not speak throughout our
entire meal.

How could we know (except You had told us
time times it all) what we were too excited to hear.

We knew who You were, but missed who You are,
We confessed You Messiah, but doubted Your methods,
We wanted to follow, though unclear of our destination,
We asked the right questions, and lost the answers in our assumptions.

I cannot approach the table again with my sentences dotted,
my paragraphs complete.
I will not dine so certain nor stare down the uninvited,
I will sit with men uninitiated, talk with women untrained
and admit we are all simply amateurs, in it
for the love of the game.

It should have been me, washed Your feet,
but You took the towel, the basin, the water.

It should have been me, broken like bread,
but You took the fracture, the spikes and the thorns.

It should have been me, poured out like wine,
but You spilled the blood, for our tears and sweat

And built a family upon winning one death final
like we thought we would die given half the chance
(accomplishing nothing).

And built a family upon dying like victory
teaching us with basins and nails the announcement to make
to a world dead of war and sick of valor.

"Going to Hades"

 “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.” Matthew 11:23

Capernaum was Jesus’ center of operations, being called “his own city” often in the gospels. This makes his denunciation of Capernaum and comparison with Sodom even more striking. Sodom’s infamy, of course, is because of the wicked and violent attempt to rape the angels who resided with Lot. God destroyed Sodom, along with Gomorrah because “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous.” (Genesis 18:20)

King Over all the Earth

“The Lord will become King over all the earth in that day; the Lord shall be One and His name One.” Zechariah 14:9

There is no greater dream than the prospect of God’s final rule over all the earth. The kingdom of God will finally be completely fulfilled, and all will be summed up in the singular goodness and holiness of God. In other words, all evil, all destruction, hatred and violence will come to an end and God’s kingdom, with Christ as King, will reign with all peace, righteousness and justice.

Denser than Wit

Denser than Wit

(“God’s Son was before all else, and by him everything is held together.” Colossians 1:17)
A sandwich of protons, denser than wit,
hangs unlikely over every human head.
Light thicker than black holes contains
every thought conjured by unwitting to
university wed. Air shinier than the blast furnace
full of pre-alloy conjurations,
reciprocates every vibration from the beginning
until then.

Like swimming in a vacuum,
washing in the quicksand,
eating with your mouth open,
praying with your hat on,
or putting out your cigaret on the sole of your foot

Everything unlikely has

Already happened larger than we put our minds too
and closer than string and tin can telephones take us.

If we can only accept it, all is already new,
the tears shed are diamonds,
the sins tried are reminders
that the light swallowed them once the
darkness of noon yawned towards evening
and the Son breathed His last

Then

Breathed again before farmers awake on
the first day of the week.

Rolling Rocks

“…They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them; and that rock was Christ himself.” 1 Corinthians 10:4

While the Israelites wandered in the desert, God provided water for them that sprang supernaturally from a rock. God told Moses to strike the rock with his rod, and when he did, water gushed out. A later time God told Moses to merely speak to the rock and water would come out. Moses, acting presumptuously, struck the rock just has he had done before. In God’s kindness He still allowed the water to proceed from the rock, but He disciplined Moses by disallowing him from entering the Promised Land.