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.

Our Long Journey

Our Long Journey

(“Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” Luke 18:7a)

It felt like we had stood in line
for more than the circumference of time.
The asphalt melted our feet,
the tears evaporated in the heat,
the rush of muddy water, the river, the boundary
between journey and sojourn,
was our salvation, or our final destination.
We cried out for days to heads of state
whose ears were tickled by impoverished views of
unwashed throngs who left footprints behind them
a thousand miles long.

We immersed ourselves in suffering, we did not choose it.
We crossed horizons, we crawled when the canyons fell
below us. The songs caught up to us; we moved slowly enough
to carry them in our chests like anthems and amens,
the beginning and end of our petitions for
a hearing before we reached the border line.

There were rainbows hiking with us, the colors proud
as we took them into our fold. There were eunuchs and
pagans,
priests and variations of supplication. There were the
silent. There were the opalescent. There were the angry,
the defeated, the determined, the babies, the children,
the ancestors and all the rest. We all were seeking
a place among
the rising tide we were promised by the ancient
declarations,
the independent proclamations,
the handbills dropped from the sky that promised
a rebirth of unity.

It felt like we had stood in line
far longer than the foundations of nations
that fancied themselves beacons upon hills.
It felt like we would be waiting until a greater
Justice
would be our Advocate. We waited, and knew,
if only micro-dots per day, soon or late, we would know
slowly
our long journey was no longer wandering. Our long
journey
was stumbling upon the
New
Creation.

I Might Mend My Boat

I Might Mend My Boat

(“We are God’s creation. He created us to belong to Christ Jesus. Now we can do good works. Long ago God prepared these works for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10)

I never expected smooth sailing,
but this felt like a peaceful place to land.
The shore wasn’t far from dreams and visions
and the waves lapped gently most of the time.
Yet today, when all the universe rattled like a grain elevator,
I wanted to hear a fellow sailor say
they knew what it was like

When the swells were ferocious,
when they hit at acute angles,
when they propelled you higher than
the houses that hugged the narrow shore.

Those were the days that the box where I lock my troubles away
creaked at its hinges and threatened to unleash a bigger storm
than the river’s wild crashing.

But these days everyone’s boxes are full,
everyone’s docks are splintered,
everyone’s words are a slice of white bread
parading as pie.
Every person I’ve told about my journey
is far too polite,
(at least the ones who knew me when I embarked)
which I know is the nice way of saying
they wish I could just work things out,
could see the storm would pass,
would agree that everything happens for a reason,
(when I ask about the ones who died in the shipwreck
they tell me about the one that was saved)

They tell me to have friends I should be one;
but I have been one from the day I arrived.
I hear some say I’ve gone off the deep end,
but they have no idea how deep and which end.

If I had the strength, or the time, or the help,
or the tools, or the sunshine, or the courage,
or the health (oh mental health that wraps the
brain in cavernous sludge), I might mend my boat.
But my body would not allow me to enjoy it again.

No one likes lament,
no one like shipwreck stories without
survivors.
No one likes the brains that
capture darkness at noon and
silence in cafes full of burgers and
retired men.

And, if I am created, if I am

Art

Then, let me be the art that I am.

Like I said,
no one likes lament. We want
broth of carbonated shallows,
we want to wade in frothy waters.
We would rather tie up the loose ends
than admit walking barefoot sometimes hurts.

But, if I am art,
and am made of mud,
let my artwork be earthy and
my tears salty and loud. Let my heartache
in quarter time
be the one song that someone needs

Who has forgotten their own.

Flutes Upon the Hills

Flutes Upon the Hills

(“Circumcision and uncircumcision don’t mean anything. What really counts is that the new creation has come.” Galatians 6:15)

I don’t need to light another candle,
though I like the way they help me pray.
I don’t need a new amendment,
all things gleam in the eternal day.

I don’t need to study your words harder,
though they run through my mind anyway.
I don’t need a new translation,
all they do is get in my way.

I don’t need to smell all of the roses,
though I plan to plant some when I return.
I don’t need a new song to sing,
I have melodies yet to learn.

I’ll ride in a bus, I’ll ride on your bike,
I’ll pull you in a wagon, I’ll paint your tricycle red.
I’ll love my neighbor, I’ll love my enemy,
I’ll watch the wildflowers grow; breathlessly.

I’ll look toward the east, I’ll pray toward the west,
I walk northward for a while; in the south I’ll take my rest.
I’ll give you my time, and offer you a chair,
We’ll talk and talk with no notes to compare.

I’ll love you forever because that’s how you’ve loved me,
I’ll stumble in my promise, though I tried carefully
to be new when I am old, to be pure when I am soiled.
And all the time what mattered was that
all the time I belonged
in this new country; foggy or shine,
flutes upon the hills, fiddles on the plains,
all that has ever mattered (I’m finally resigned)
is the breath, the spirit, the mercy, the grace,
of Your life
in mine.

My Whole Body Buzzes

My Whole Body Buzzes

("And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation." Mark 16:15)

Today my whole body buzzes like a million tiny electrical bees
are coursing through every pore. Ready to cry at every sound,
ready to weep in alien silence. My brain sends signals that my
mind cannot control, less than whole, I have little to say.

But I do remember a voice, a thin voice, yet slightly wider than
a sparrow's, of a young girl struggling with her bike fallen to the ground.
She rode the sidewalk in front of me, a pink and purple helmet
protecting her preschool head.
She did not skin her knees, did not wince when she lost her balance.
She wrestled the contraption upright like she was grappling a goat,
and sat upon the seat just as I approached.

"Nice bike", said the old man walking for his health.
"Thanks," said the tiny voice scattering light like a prism.
The old man waved at the mother sunning across the street.

I continued my walk and seconds later, that thin-ray voice shot
sparkles through my thoughts, "I want to catch up with him."
Mom said something, it did not matter. I was a stranger, and my
sparrow-voiced child stayed behind.

And on days like this, when my skin crawls and my thoughts are
dark as shattered glass,
I remember I heard the good news from a Kingdom child

who simply wanted to ride her bike alongside an old man
who walks the same path in the suburbs each day, talking
to God
and hoping someone hears.

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.

What the Lord Requires

“Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to revere him, to obey all his commandments, to love him, to serve him with all your mind and being.” Deuteronomy 10:12

Once you assume there is a personal God who oversees all existence, it follows that our own personal meaning must flow out His heart for creation. We are not separate, self-fulfilling agents outside of God’s universe. We are as much a part of all nature as each tree, orchid, ant or elephant. We may be the height of His handiwork, but we are in no way separate from it at all.

About Time

About Time

(“The Lord is good to all, and has compassion on all he has made.” Psalm 145:9)

It was about time the rain stopped, about time the sun held sway
against yesterday’s angry skies. Nearly everyone noticed:
walking dogs, barking seals, daffodils budging above the clods;
a sweet dulcimer with soft hammered songs,
mowers buzz-cutting their shaggy lawns,
children squeal, sunlight heals, dancing blooms bestowed applause.

It was about time, we had waited to see the signs of relief,
each blistering gale that grabbed branches like swords,
ripped roof tiles and aimed them like discs toward the hills
decorated with debris. It was about time the lights came on

Where one could see burrows beneath fallen limbs,
bell-flowers awake and yawning misty investiture of Spring.

What if we are Hand-made? What if we are hard copy original,
a single-run print of a Grand idea that could never be repeated?
What if, just like sculptor’s work in wood, we are perfect and marred;
would we, unalarmed, love the art that left signature cuts rugged
and against the grain?

When the sun and breeze meet together where the seal couple
arrive each year about this time, listen to the miniature waves
hit the stones and lose some time wondering about music’s rhythm,
watercolor’s suspense, creation’s timing and the sheer nonsense of

Poetry’s thin attempts of anything concrete at all.

Percentages

Percentages

(“May the glorious presence of the Eternal linger among us forever. And may He rejoice in the greatness of His own works.” Psalm 140:31)

Within the warp and woof of creation are colors undiscovered,
shapes unobserved, motion rounder, speed louder, and stillness
crowding out the constant hum of men rubbing two sticks together
and sending fireballs beyond the stretches of the cosmos.

We are children playing in the sand.

Where appearances meet the titles we’ve tagged; we have
defined
the eternal with four or five words, left it at that,
and expected the universe to bow at our ingenious
vocabulary.

We are blacksmiths rewriting a thesaurus.

Where mass is great we cannot see it,
where velocity is so fast we cannot perceive it,
where colors run from midnight blue to blinding sun,
we have hung our titles on the split-seconds we occupy.

Yet, for all our names and titles, autographs and aliases,
we are just as distant from yesterday’s bee sting
and the beginning before events had definitions.

The glorious Presence, the power at each grand intersection,
the silence between the galaxies, the songs beneath the seas,
all exist, unnamed, untamed;

And we experience the first note like the lingering aroma of
the morning’s first cup of coffee while lunch is prepared.

We are children, we are blacksmiths, we are namers, we are rhymers,
we know more, and know nothing; percentages are slight slivers.

But forever the Name, the Creation’s Love, the Life Poet
lets us play within His masterpiece. And, putting down our
pen for one moment longer, we cannot name it,
but today the breeze is not merely weather, flowers not
simply horticulture, and we, are,

Unnamable.

All is Completed...

All is Completed…

(“Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the Lord had commanded. So Moses blessed them.” Exodus 39:43)

The noise surrounds every paint sprayer squeak,
nailgun blast, stiff-broom swoosh, and snap-line
pencil drawing one last straight-edge design beforeall is completed.

From the frost of the morning until the toasted afternoon,
every discussion at the cutting table, firing of aching muscles,
edging tight corners, and stripping the blue tape from dried paint,
all is amateur love of a divine masterpiece.

What blueprint attached ligament to bones; we are originals, not
tracings on onionskin. We are freehand, we are a sculpture begun
from within the stony interior; all dust and passion fashioned in
One Warm Breath and declared so good, the Son took the form
upon Himself to inspect the underfoot creation.

I played with tinker toys, and never liked the instructions. Wrestled
the erector set
and every tower fell flat. The pyramids still stand, and yet, will not
stand forever; the Sphinx is half-faceless, the guardian of the dead.

But we are not the toys of the gods, but the Master’s expression,
the Father’s poetry left with open stanzas; the pen passed on from
one to one to add the next line of completion upon the never-finished
opus of time spinning over time.

Let us write well, dance precisely, create the next impossible
salutation to the One who left us here with dreams in our pockets
and eternity in our hearts.

The Next Dot

The Next Dot

(“You alone are Yahweh. You created the heavens, the highest heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them, and the heavenly host worships You.” Nehemiah 9:6)

If I only look beyond the eggshell and stain,
the paper displays hung with home-made adhesive;
If I stare straight through the 10 foot regulations,
the attic that holds stale air and old Christmas decorations,

Sometimes if I peer, the blood lust from yesterday disappears,
the green skies of Aurora Borealis appears, and though it
may not cheer my mood completely,

Sometimes if I peer,

I can hear the Word that made the universe and never meant
for me to be cast

As the Lead.

Sometimes when I connect the tiniest particle which God
held in His hand to the next dot which banned my comment
on the fury unleashed by man, I see the tracer passed
right through me and around the universe from the first
“it is good” to the last “tears are past”

And spanned my tiny lifeline.

Today I will unlock the door and take a photo
of the next person I see and say, “I think we might
be friends.”

Turned the Day

Turned the Day

(“Remember, God is the One who makes you and us strong in Christ. God made us his chosen people.” 2 Corinthians 1:21)

When the sun breaks the stranglehold that dark rain
has left upon your thoughts, (so little sleep,
so much repetition), let the curve of earth
speak the first cue; Creation sings lightly
upon the brain’s stalled silence.

From the gaps between then, and when
beginning meets ends, the music roundly
enwraps the forces weak to great, and insists
in whispers
there is a stronger hand that fastened
the stars’ foundations.

From under the low ceiling we call and wonder,
we can do no other
when our hopes are built on mental insistence
that the world should bend to our own expectations.

From surrounded to unleashed, short-sighted to telescopic,
there is more we have not seen than is carried
in all the brains added time to now, and now to again.
Send the power just now.

From the hum of substations is the smallest expectation
that the source is greater than then the production;
without time, without delay,
without distance, without decay,
the weak are strong, mountains give way
to the smallest hope, the tiniest seed that sees

The Promise is “Yes” and “Always”, the
Amen has resounded; faith has turned the day.

Each Intermission

Each Intermission

(“God rested from his work. Those who enjoy God’s rest also rest from their work.” Hebrews 4:10)

In the heat of the day, or frost overnight
the mind examines inch after inch of each dimension,
correction its direction, usually sighting a familiar look
or the spark from some other’s eyes that insists it is
safe to turn in there for the night.

In the single second or the long of the year,
the mind can hold episodes and events in one grand
moment
that happened years ago on the Texas desert and others that
may yet
befall the man who suffers over tomorrow’s fear.

In the laugh of a daughter, or another unknown suicide
the mind combines tear after tear of each intermission
begging to be fully seen and feared to be held cleanly
without excursus or at least a lucid synopsis.

In one single Word God called the world Good,
in one quiet Day He did not hesitate to rest;
labor put upon the shelf, hammers and saws stored
until the final bell captured all the silence and stored it up
for days just like these.

Blessed be My Rock

Blessed be My Rock

(“The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation.” 2 Samuel 22:47)

The earth sings like children hogging the microphone,
Christmas Pageants with four year old Elvises, don’t know,
don’t care, don’t understand why they can’t share alone what
they’ve practiced for months to get right.
The earth sings like joy, perched between planets
parading ‘round the sun, it cannot keep quiet the victory; the
ceremony gladly gets out of hand. Nature sings, angels ring
the chorus with wings furiously scattering light across the vast
tapestry; choirs in harmony like prisms unveiling spectrums
seen and felt.

The skies defy the rainy logic of summer thunder reaching
higher than perception; direction (not up, down, in, out;
about a compass that will not stop whirling) fades and
center stage,
sheer joy rains unhindered from cloudless expanse.
The sky laughs at the mere suggestion that the seen
is all there is to observe. Absorbed, each eye sees a
different sky, each eye is in on the joke, laughing
at the right time, at a time when time runs ungrounded.

Astounded, trees clap their hands, rivers rejoice aloud,
winds dance desert wild, then turn and spin like a barefoot child
through the forests unspilled and leaping. Every living creature
smiles at the sound of the

Rock prefinished and unbegun. The solid ground of invisible delight,
the foundation upon which the universe rests, the location
of

Every trust and every treasure. It is
the eternal conversation of
divine and created which is the echo of In the Beginning
and the epilogue of
So Be It.

Those who see the unseen joy
sing for all the same reasons,
creation began when it was good
and increased its volume when
the cross of wood, nails of iron,
gave way to the invisible power
that raised the rock, dead and cold,
Manifest and Fully, Creation’s Lord and
King.

HeadLong

HeadLong

(“Therefore, you are to store up these words of mine in your heart and in all your being; tie them on your hand as a sign; put them at the front of a headband around your forehead.” Deuteronomy 11:18)

I wasn’t sure it was true until I ran
headlong
into the
headlights
coming at me down the wrong side of the road.

I tried to swallow every truth they fed me;
forced down the sour, calling it sweet;
swallowing poison, singing their visions
and swore upon my future grave everything
I thought buzzed up or down my mind
was what they taught me: God was all
tangled up with me.

I wasn’t convinced I could believe until I
turned on
the song
turned down
by half the town that hated simple ballads.

I tried to perform every ditty they taught me,
reworked lyrics to frame the obvious,
toned down the volume to fit the audience,
eventually lost my words and threw the
lead sheets to the wind. I never understood them
anyway.

I memorized, not proof-text and address,
but words like dancing, rules like common sensing
(permission before fencing along my neighbor-line)
I packed my wits for the journey with pictures
I had taken along the way. It seems the portraits I
captured of my Companion smiled more often than
the pictures others had given me with their letters of
introduction.

Head-on He struck me, call me brainDead now, or
merely foolishly aging, but I’ve renewed my license to
write with His picture hanging on the wall. Like a movie
where the hero has amnesia, now I’ve forgotten every bit
of advice that kept me from singing like it came from
anyplace, any space other than
straight from my heart.

Ponderings on Knowing God

“You deserved to be punished. But I will treat you in a way that will bring honor to my name, and you will know that I am the Lord God.” Ezekiel 20:44

We Christians refer to “knowing the Lord” quite often. It is sometimes used to discover is someone truly belongs to the club. “When did you come to know the Lord?” Sometimes it is a defense when someone threatens our faith. “I think I know the Lord too.” Other times it is a place saver for “keeping the rules”, “going to heaven”, or “and I’m not sure about you.”

We Scrape Creation

We Scrape Creation

(“Our Lord, it seems that you have just begun to show me your great power.” Deuteronomy 3:24a)

We scrape creation like wiggling comets
bursting with snow. There is nothing we know better
than ourselves,
nothing we know less.
Until I find a God who does not mind
that I detest destruction of any kind
I will keep on following Jesus alone
and let my other questions float loaded
with regrets it took so long to see Him
as I do now.

We make believe we believe and become
like the God’s we believe in. Angrier than
we ever become at children or spouse
we make Him wrath-Man full of thunder,
named Destruction, and hating the same enemies
we’ve hated all along.
Oh God of my choice, how glad I am You
chose me instead of the neighbors I’ve learned
to love to hate.

We scratch the surface of the universe like
fingernails of unseen travelers pulling giant Airstreams.
Still we fancy perfect knowledge about where
the imperfect spend forever hotly regretful.
We snub our noses at parents struggling to hold their own,
at teenagers with parents nearly disowned,
and at everything that doesn’t match our 2011
North American Christianese excess that says
you can have it all if you play the game
I’m playing with the rules I’ve invented, recently,
and thought were the rules all along.

Do I sound bitter or discouraged. No, I just know it all
better than anyone else who knows it better than the rest.
But I’ve come to my certainty more recently than you
and that makes me the closest to truth for now, without
counting what may be discovered tomorrow.

We mine the skies like fireflies thinking our tiny shine
illumines the entire firmament.

Creation’s Refrain

(“We know that the whole world has been crying. It has had much pain until now.” Romans 8:22)

In the moment of lingering silence, waiting for the sun,
buds yawn toward wakefulness, birds spread their wings
prepared to leave their nests to make their morning meetings
on lawns and leaves.

Roses that slept through winter and March
 sprout like covered heads removing quilts that
covered their slumber. Partially dead for a season,
they fumble less for their beauty than we do
for lightswitches hoping renewed coffee brewed.

Mourning Doves call, their mates answer the dawn together
after full night silence, they are make-ready, their song sounds lonely
though they may nest in the same-place year after year.
Black Birds crack open the sod with one dark-eye guarding,
ready to noise the intruder within its vista.
Blue Jays scour the lawn and leaves, picking up bunting
in their beaks for the perfect nursery décor, their
young brood waiting.

But there is a moment, a minute, maybe as much as
a half-hour predawn
where the only sound is the sun scratching the horizon
to pull itself up to vertical and start the song
sung for centuries and newly composed
every next rotation upon the planet that
cannot
complete the universe with verse and measure.

Like a castaway alone on a hidden island,
the days are vibrant with improvised colors
dancing to unfretted music sliding between
half-steps. It is a song, if we forget we are alone,
we would join every morning with the sunrise.

But needing salvation, our planet so full of melodies,
fastens hope to its flag while the trees (replanted)
inch their way to the vertical staff of the conductor’s
score.

A Temple Honoring

A Temple Honoring

(“My father David very much wanted to build a temple honoring the Name of God, the God of Israel.” 2 Chronicles 6:7 [The Message])

How deep are the foundations, past bedrock, clay and sand;
how high are the girders stretching beyond beams of the morning;
how thick the walls to hold it all, how pure the air to conserve it all

To hold in a single room

One sunset, a single glance, light upon eye the spectrum spread
horizontal past the whitecaps and on to cradle in the westerly haze.

How much larger the room for a nightful,
pinpoints larger than the nine planet orbit,
brighter than the daysweat summer,
added dimensions beyond 2 or 3 and can we fit it all
in wood and lather, plaster and i-beam, so it seems
as glorious as a walk in midnight after aurora borealis?

What made can hold the created?
What manufactured can house universal art?
What hammer can pound the nails for thunder?
What bandsaw can whine lightning’s length?

And with less than a handsaw You have placed
the glory greater than all Your design;

Will the Designer Dwell in manmade houses;

Yet You lodge, You linger, not sojourn but
Eternal humanly housed. Space is laced with
cold and dark, vacuum and vagrancy,

But lively, dense and sunrise embrace,
You chose Your abode, the forgiven human heart.