Yeses

Yeses

(“For Jesus Christ, the Son of God…is not one who is ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ On the contrary, he is God's ‘Yes’”. 2 Corinthians; 1:19)

The hours passed like low-lying fog;
the river was dressed in gray and white.
I don’t believe in your destructive God,
I don’t believe the fire is eternal,
I don’t believe the ice has melted.
I just believe the love that hastens to
lead me through the rain. I just believe
in yeses again and again.
I could stand with the sun melting the mist,
I could walk with the breeze kissing my cheek.
I could walk to your house
leaving my house for the afternoon.

We could talk all afternoon if you want to.
We could paint a dozen sunsets before dusk.
We could sink all the vessels of doubt;
we could let all the anxiety out and
leave it on the uncompromising ground.
We could sit next to the river where the
fog is silently lifting.
We could walk there past the man
walking his dog,
the seagulls dropping baby clams on
the pavement,
the ducks huddled against the cold.

Why do we wait, you and I,
to live out loud? Why do we question
who we are when who we are
has never been uncertain?

Do you remember how we played for hours
afternoons after school? Do you remember
making kites from newspapers and clubhouses
from scrap lumber? Do you remember
who we were before everyone had an opinion
about our worth?

All I hear (or hope to hear) are yeses that sound
like your laughter from the sky. We have both
carried these backpacks of expectations far too long.
Today let us walk unladen like horses in the fields.

Doubt Is Not an Ink Blot

Doubt Is Not an Ink Blot

(“Calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” Luke 7:19)

Doubt is not an ink blot,
not an erasure,
not a final forecast of gray.
Doubt is not blindness,
not soulless,
not a symptom of falling away.

You can go around the same block,
this day, under the sun’s rays, watching blue jays,
or wishing you had stayed a hundred miles away.

The forecast says rain,
the daisies and daffodils, intoxicated,
sway with the barely breeze, and beg us to notice
their debut appearance. Doubt I’ll miss them
this time around.

Questions no longer frighten me, thinking is my
favorite pastime. No longer cast inside plaster,
beauty is the language I crave. Why would I
want
a warrior shooting blood from a lily-white cannon
when there are
sheep in the fields that turn my thoughts to
feasts for enemies and goodness surely following?

Faith is not certainty,
not an iron rod,
not a rule that is cast in stone.
Faith is not foresight,
not tap dance,
not a promise of simply whole tones.

You can take the same walk again,
this day. 

More on Pain and Suffering

"The men who were holding Jesus in custody taunted him while they beat him. They blindfolded him and asked him repeatedly, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” Insulting him, they said many other horrible things against him.” Luke 11:63-64

It would be the utmost arrogance for me to assume the pain I have endured for nearly six years comes close to Jesus’ suffering. I have a headache of unknown causes diagnosed as New Daily Persistent Headache. I endure pain twenty four hours a day, with an average of six out of 10. It takes more than one try most days to simply get out of bed, and my physical activity has been severely limited. My wife and I just visited our kids and granddaughter for 14 days in Minneapolis and I ventured outdoors only once, with the pain keeping down the rest of the time.

Should We Wait for Another?

Should We Wait for Another?

(“Go tell John what you have seen and heard. Blind people see. The lame people walk. People with leprosy are healed. People who could not hear can hear. Dead people are alive again. Poor people hear the good news.” Luke 7:22)

I have had my doubts, my u-turn possibilities;
I have wondered why the sky will not rain when
I am parched and need relief from my recent disabilities.
I wondered about each promise, just like you,
I have sought His solace, questioned his silence too.

Wondering why, at 3 am, someone won’t help me sleep,
or turn these dreams from lame and slipping to strong feet
and mental grip upon the faith I nodded aloud to follow.

I am no prophet, but a quiet shepherd, content to sit upon the hillocks,
the green and yellow moguls of spring or summer. I watch the sheep,
give them water, tend their weak, romp with the strong, and feed the
best fodder before night falls quietly and we gather in the fold.
I would be content to read my book, play pastoral on my mandolin,
and protect the loves, ewes and rams and lambs, upon the spreading
shadows of dawn.

I nodded yes to the Power I knew had every right to my existence,
and yet,
when I needed Authority to rid me of a certain incarceration, subsistence
was my ration.

I have asked the questions, the wonder about inability;
I have pulled God’s hair and turned His head around to see me,
to face me,
to embrace me,
and occasionally be startled by what I saw.

But the sheep have sometimes wondered where the lines were born
that were buried in my brow and cracked beside my eyes. And more
than twice a pair of eyes,
have met me from beneath uncombed wool that, sad before,
a half-dozen years or more,
brightly played like a happy lamb again; and I occasionally
was startled by what I saw.

"Just a Lonely Shrub"

“(The Lord) will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their supplication.” Psalm 102:17

Every person who has ever struggled with their faith goes through times when it seems as if God is silent. The writer of this Psalm feels pleads with God to not hide His face and to incline His ear; wanting a speedy answer in his distress.