Everybody Has a Mountain

Everybody Has a Mountain

(“Because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them.” Matthew 13:15)

What do you see, what do you notice?
Are they too q for you? Or too diminished, or too damaged,
or too sinful, or eat too loudly, or have parties with transgressors,
sharing food like family? What are you seeing? What makes you
keep your distance? Or make your insistence clear that repentance
is the only cure for the pain they carry from daylight to sundown?

Are you able, at a moment’s notice, to rid yourself of easy aphorisms
that say little and mean even less. Do you discount the doctors who only
“practice”, why only God “heals”. Or can you see the doctors as the
hands of God, a miracle in the flesh, a co-conspirator in the dawn of
divine healing? Don’t diss the doctors. I’ve met more angels in white coats
than I have in blue suits occupying a box made for worship.

Everybody has a mountain they wish would move,
Everybody has waters they must traverse,
Everybody has danger that stalks them from long ago,
Everybody has a wasteland where food and water and health and matter
disappeared like an oasis approached at dusk.

Did you see the transman wanting to worship? Did you, with all the
confidence religion gives you, declare “God does not make mistakes.”
Did you forget about congenital heart disease, spina bifida, or cleft palates?
Our world is full of mistakes, imperfection is the beauty of our mosaic.
Why tell a rugged tourmaline that it should be a nicely polished emerald?
You are right. God makes no mistakes. And the sister who know she’s a
brother, is not a mistake and never has been. The baby who needed a
heart transplant within 3 weeks of birth was not a mistake. She’s going
to college now. She’s a miracle of God’s partnership with medicine.

What do you see? What are you forcing them to keep inside because
they know you’ll lecture them without knowledge?

Let us learn to hear again; let’s unstop our ears, let’s open our eyes.
We are the ones who need healing. We, the ones who have boxed in
so many hurting souls, driving them further from the divine acceptance
they deserve.

Let’s turn. Let’s face Jesus. Let’s look at him touching lepers, healing the
blind who everyone else thought was a sinner. Let’s watch him bring life
where everyone else was talking about death. Let’s pull it together,
sew it masterfully, a net that hauls all species of fish. Let’s build a
mosaic of healing to decorate the beauties of the Lord.

It Was All Unpredictable

It Was All Unpredictable

(“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” 2 Timothy 1:6)

Everybody needs some time because
there’s no one left to blame. Look around you,
all the suspects have been framed. All the runners
came up lame. And you and them and we will all
never be the same. We went. We came. And then I said:

I’m just the kind who won’t show up where I’m not wanted.

It was all accidental, and if it wasn’t, it was experimental.
My roost is too chilly to hatch half a plan. My time too empty
to recreate a masterpiece fully complete with classic characters
playing their music for a king. I steal words now from
songs I listen to. I haven’t written a melody in 54 weeks.

I’m just the kind that would love to sing around the campfire.

It was all unpredictable. Why do you say you thought it would
come to this? I can fill the page with printable ink only to waste it
by the end of the day. I used to have something to say; now I meander
from wall to wall while the memories swirl around the chimney when
the storms are delayed.

I’d walk in the rain if that would warm your thoughts toward me.

I swear I’ll write another song someday. But I have no one to
play them for.
I have no one to correct my cliches.
I swear I’ll sing another tune someday. But I have no one to
sing them with.
I have no one to co-write anything.

I’d sit the afternoon with you. Bring your guitar and your newest tune.

There is a steel wall between my wanting and my writing,
there is a dark gravity that keeps me from the sky.
There are memories of blue, dreams unpursued
that leave me jealous of the crows that yell at the
dogs in the yard. Everything is on standby till I
take pen in hand.

I’d write on the porch today if only I could read it aloud for you.

Everybody Wants to Know

Everybody Wants to Know

(“They kept on asking Him. Then He stood up and said, ‘Anyone of you who is without sin can throw the first stone at her.’” John 8:7)

The phone kept on ringing; everyone wanted to know the story.
Some were astounded, some felt he had been hounded, but most
were curiosity seekers with rocks in their pockets.

The letters with official stationery and watermarks kept arriving;
the mailbox was another source of panic attacks. New accusations,
new additions to the charges, new lies about what they said they had
not lied about. Though some were sympathetic, the still all had
rocks in their pockets.

He had failed, caught in the act, coughed between scene changes,
as sick over failure as over spoiled meat. He had wept, he had scored
a job just to keep his head above water. He shivered as he drove to
meet every client, sometimes drying tears before he went inside.

He heard about satan most times he gathered with the same clan
in a different town. He repented so many times he nearly drowned
in his own tears. He had revealed his weakness, sought out help,
and instead he was dismissed out of hand; one of the hands that
fiddled with stones in his pocket.

When men lie to destroy the one who sinned worse than them,
who gets to toss the rocks? When the men hate to make themselves
greater than the one who failed, how many stones will we need?

He heard about hell the rest of the times he gathered with
a similar clan that could not stand Obama. This time he was
done repenting
and showed the power of the poisoned arrows every time they
flew from the mouths of men that had no time for him. He escaped
to fewer trusted places, turned away from every face; the

fight for affection and the fear of unconnected rejection
nearly destroyed his soul. One rip after another left him
the loneliest he had ever been.

But he knew one thing, if not two, he would never carry
rocks in his pockets or spew another man’s sins by
phone or letter, word or sermon; he would not load another
man with a weight heavier than his own shame.