Now We Are Us

Now We Are Us

(“But when you make a dinner, ask the people who are poor, hurt, lame, or blind.” Luke 14:13)

The places are set,
the invitations were sent weeks ago.
We once were clowns who only hung out
with the circus. But the sun came up like
no other months ago
and we canceled our subscription to the
magazines
that fashioned our disease. We only felt
comfortable with
people like us. We set the places
mindfully,
hoping for new conversations to open
the sky, new songs to answer why we never
thought of this before.

We were awkward at first, finding our words,
slaking our thirst, watching the door for the final
few to find their seats unrehearsed.

We hoped for inspiration, the kind you get when
you climb a mountain higher than the birds fly.
We hoped the air would clear our minds,
the breeze unfreeze our brains from ages of
sitting like mirrors around unstable tables.

We hoped they felt welcome.
We hoped to dispel some of our unconscious
biases lately starting to give us pain.
We hoped we knew their language,
we hoped we spoke of the face value
of beauty all around the plates set out for
anyone who would come.

We were them
once,
now we are us.

Late for Dinner

Late for Dinner

(“He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel, but Samuel didn’t come to Gilgal, and his troops began to desert.” 1 Samuel 13:8)

When waiting is the worst activity,
and being late is the ultimate sin,
we are tempted to take life into our own hands
(as if we could ever take life into our own hands)
and miss the final ingredient to complete the recipe
sending the aroma throughout the house for days.

But we jump too quickly, we act like another hour
is stealing precious jewels from our life. So, we prepare the meal,
feed those gathered,
and finish the pie just at the time the honored guest
arrives tardily. We hardly know what to say.

Did our stomachs grumble that much,
did we think we would starve for missing a meal,
did we think our guest would never show up,
did we think he was unreliable? Yet

It was we who rushed. It was we who could think of
no other way to spend our time in waiting
than to go ahead and eat the stew and biscuits,
drink the wine and water, serve the pie and cakes and
in the drowsiness after dinner forget we ever were
expecting a guest.

What do you say to the one you had gathered to honor,
what do you serve the one who had fed you well so
many times before?
What greeting can change the presumption that
makes previous arrangements the law of the table?

The dishes are not yet gathered. The family dog is licking
the plates.
We hear the knock on the door and are awakened from our
self-satisfied slumber to see
the one we had planned to feed. And we have

No excuse at all.

Waiting and keeping the communal meal warm
is an act of love, no matter how late anyone arrives.

Let us try again tomorrow night. We will wait,
we will play cards, we will listen to music, we will
tell jokes and silly stories to pass the time.

And when the last one arrives, we will serve
the meal with joy. With wine aplenty, we will sing
into the night.

She Never Dressed for Dinner

 

She Never Dressed for Dinner

(“Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker. Whoever rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.” Proverbs 17:5)

She never dressed for dinner,
it wasn’t worth the effort. And days alone,
days of cold,
days of cardboard and railroad clatter
only repeat
the chatter she hears when she
limps downtown.

She sat in the back at church,
she sat in the shadows,
she always left early,
she knew the lines by heart.
The righteous always prospered,
the wicked lost it all,
and the way she saw it
she had no more to lose.

The snow snuck in the corners of her trailer,
the floor had rotted, and the children cried.
Once a year, or again at Christmas,
someone came by with mittens and a turkey
and she never was ungrateful, but she always cried.
What would she do when the mercy ran out?
What would she do when the big machine made
decisions, when the official positions were like
incisions in her soul? What work could she do
to earn a place at the table when she had no money
to wash her children’s clothes?
She knew the smell, she had grown up with it,
and stayed away from pretty places with hardwood pews
and unstained carpets. She knew their songs
but kept her distance.

They promised to pray, the people in the steepled building
warmed by weekly contributions. They told her to tithe. They
told her it would be multiplied. They had not lied, they
had not been honest with themselves and told the truth they
had been fed.

No one laughed at her. But no one treated her like a miracle,
a wonder,
a daughter,
a sister,
a reflection of her Maker,
a beloved image of God.

Not Quite an Hour

Not Quite an Hour

(“When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’” Luke 16:17)

I had hoped to find you there, maybe in a corner, sitting with no one,
and catching up on every done, every right and wrong. We would
laugh at our serious adolescence, condole upon our misshapen dreams,
wonder at wisdom that left our coffee bitter,
some friendships, and some others, that started to the letter and
ended not answering the phone.

You would tell me of your husband’s passing, the one love you found
that took all of you, the full of you, and befriended the broken heart
you had finally come to understand. But he was older, 15 years or more;
but he was stronger than the teenage crushes, more settled than
the bad boys who usher in adulthood like a customized playground.

It would be not quite an hour of soft words, and the first tear forms.
The water rest, a captured bubble, filling in your lower eyelid, and
like me, like you, like many others, you do not blink, for as soon
as you do,
it will break the surface tension with the heavy tear dropping from
the icicle warming and settling like a mountaineer upon the crest of
your cheek; the frame of a face that denies forgetting.

I would mention my loves, remember time in 80 or 81 we
heard Terry Talbot sing his ballads to Jesus. You never flushed
nor squirmed and even joined our hands as pray floated from
the gymnasium floor to the ear of the Father. And, perhaps
a God who calls himself Father was the chief hurdle for your faith.

All I know, you were always gracious when at 19 I opened a
can of “Four Spiritual Laws” and spoon-fed it to you without any
thought of even heating it up.

But here we are, and I hope, when the dinner bell is rung, we might
meet you again, we might laugh as silly old friends, mention our
upcoming hip replacements and European vacations; and, with

30 years since placing eyes on each other, 20 years since hearing
as voice,
we might be content to skim the surface, yet comfortable to
open the curtain of our backstage lives, with nothing to lose
and so little time.

Meet me at the banquet, sit beside me at the table,
I expect to have a day full of errands,
but would rather break bread with a friend.