Sunsets and Fawns

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” John 11:25

I meet each Wednesday afternoon with a group of teenagers. Any middle school or high school student is welcome to join me at “Pop with Pastor”. I spring for drink for all who show up and we usually just have conversation for 45 minutes or so. We will talk about everything from our favorite milkshake flavor to the latest “drama” happening on campus. Occasionally we even get to mumble a bit about spiritual things. More than a “teaching” time, it is simply a way to make myself accessible; and just rounding the bend to 60, I need their input as well!

Rise to Receive

Rise to Receive

(“For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.” 2 Corinthians 5:19a)

It is Monday, today, day two,
the second after Sunday, and the leading tone
toward Tuesday.

Moments are not paragraphs,
nor hours chapters,
nor days a story or
years a novel at all.

The day light was declared good
is the day hours passed and remained
just as fast,
just the same.

The dark afternoon when death was life
is the dark that passed and does not remain
just as true,
just the same.

Robin on the wire, your days are longer than mine,
your children hatch and learn and fly in that single season,
then leave the twiggy home for another fence post in
a suburban garden.

Doe and fawn who wander the blackberry blinds,
you hear more than I see, and lead the silent path
where last year’s Columbian White-Tail led
their own the river’s protected shore.

Humanity searches ruins of the ancient past,
kings lie in state and peasants have dusted away
while potsherds evoke possible tunes written upon the clay.

Who will find me and my own? Where, in all memory
have I played the songs that reflect the day, convey the way
life has invaded the unexpected waiting of Creation
and Adam. 

We rise to receive the Majesty and, believe,
earth and sky and child and elder are caught up together

In the Day when our imagination was much too small
for all the universe and the Father’s reconciliation.

Between Connections

Between Connections

(“Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12)

It is in the connections our synapses fire,
the gaps between place and space, between
arrival and departure. And life is filled with
gaps,
filled with tears without reason,
smiles without memory,
and cause without effect.

We are lost in the distances,
circling the block hoping a new neighbor
will come into view our fourth turn
after so many mornings with the same
faces we have never spoken to.

All the energy we possess erupts, sparks
traversing
the zero between integers,
the minus between pluses,
the forever between creations

From eternity past until a new millennium.

The snow hill behind our house in North Dakota
is as close today in Spring and facing the Pacific Ocean,
as when my college daughter scooted across the ice preschool
to climb another slide down the frozen slope; our tiny white
Maltese Poodle, skipping atop the crusted snow.

The love is in the space between that memory and today’s moment.

The first girl’s smile, the Christmas with the Lionel train circling the tree,
the first view of the fair-haired maiden who chose to marry me;
each is alive, unfaded and exerting more power than the instant
they occurred,
merged in time and mixed with longing for their present tense now.

Between connections I live in the cracks where cement disguises
the solids made mostly of nothing, and thoughts seem concrete
as touch and smell.

We do well to continue, this day to the next, refusing to fear
lost connections on our journey toward perpetuity. 

An Unchanging Promise

(“This is exactly what Christ promised: eternal life, real life!” 1 John 2:25 [The Message])

Anyone can make a promise. There are promises of health if you just drink someone’s juice product. You can lose 50 pounds in 2 days if you use the most recent weight-loss gimmick. Men and women promise to live together as husband and wife, “forsaking all others”. Friends graduate from High School, and, before moving off to college promise to make sure they will stay in touch.

A Great Chasm

 “Besides, in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to, nor can anyone cross over from you to us.” Luke 16:26

Jesus tells about Lazarus, a poor man who used to sit begging outside a rich man’s gates. Both of them died; Lazarus going to “Abraham’s bosom” and the rich man to “Hades”. Abraham speaks these words to the rich man after he asks if Lazarus would simply dip his finger in water and place them upon his scorched tongue. “For I am in torment in this flame” the rich man says.