Empty but Filled

Empty but Filled

(“I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” Philippians 4:12)

I am empty but being filled,
I am full but not slowing down.
I am flowing but not reckless.
I am thankful and that sits sweet upon my
tongue
like chocolate and mint in the afternoon.

There is a presence that inhabits it all,
a weight that does not burden,
a strong power that lays across my shoulders
like a yoke shared in joy.

Cancel my subscription to constant pleas
for more. I will dine in the dark, or I will
feast in the light, but I will be fed, nevertheless.

Disquiet my constant apprehensions, invade my
anxious silence. Fill it, oh Holy One who comes to recover
what was stolen, to redeem that which waits to be seen.
Take my shadows out of the caverns I’ve carved and
turn me around to face the light, to feel the warm and
nearness of the pleasant rays upon my body.

I have been without,
I have been within,
I have stolen moments,
I have them back again.
I picture the perfect from my
uncertain soul. But I find,
loose or windy, that the words of peace
can settle into the crevices between my shadowy self,
and bring me to him alit and gracious for all I lack,
for all I discover, for all I’m given, for all I return.

Just two hours before dawn on a late winter night
I felt the gravity quilt
enwrap me slowly.

I have learned, for now, that empty and full are
only words,
and that the Only One can inhabit it all.

Fill This Vacancy

 

Fill This Vacancy

(“You have done well, and proven yourself to be my loyal and trustworthy servant.” Matthew 25:21)

Let me educate you about silence,
about the abyss that exists when the decades you
invested
amount to hardly a whisper a quarter mile up the road.

I hide myself, take no risks,
wince at squinted questions,
die of laughingstocks.

Let me fill you in if you do not know
that, beaten at my own game, I stayed in until the
final seconds ticked my fate dry. If you are asking:

Yes, I cry every day.

My time ran out, my well ran dry,
my risk was greater than my apparent reward.
My friends forgot to write, and one or two
called me in 24 months of shivering solitude.

And just down the hill today, just a 10-minute walk today,
they gathered six months after my return. Isolation
has insulated me
from unwrapping my skin again. I trace the same route
over and over,
up the road and down the valley where
bramble and tree limbs entangle the cold banks of
the brook that is background noise to the mosquito buzz
haunting the abyss in my head. I am an analog
AM radio
forever caught in the static between stations.

I hope Jesus, the one quoted above, will fill this vacancy soon
because I’ve been a tenant on this battle hill too long.
And if no one else has a word, a hug, a plaque or an
invitation to dine around campfire smoke,

I hope the words he spoke will be enough for me to hear,
that someone thinks I’ve proven myself,
that someone thinks my self-inflicted wounds are
worth the time to heal.

The Preacher Loved Candles

 

The Preacher Loved Candles

(“One of them will fill his hand with the fine flour of the grain gift, with its oil and all the special perfume that is on it, and burn it on the altar to be remembered as a pleasing smell to the Lord.” Leviticus 6:15)

The preacher loved candles, the tiny vulnerable flames
that reminded him of the offerings of his heart,
barely seen by the outside world and often extinguished
by the first breezes of doubt. But he
loved they way they dotted the darkness and drew his
eye and drew his soul to silence.
He lit them often in the shaded sanctuary; in window ledges,
on altar, piano and organ. When the evening sun
breached the westward window, he would close the blinds
to know the flickering moments better.

The preacher loved candles, the way the wax filled the
air when lit and the ash filled the senses when pinched at
the end of his meditations.
Married with incense and perfume, vanilla and sandalwood,
fruit and ocean breeze, the scents swirled in a sacred matrix
of golden memory and sensual aroma that took him in and
outside of the world.

Each candle was a Christ candle from tea to taper and votives
with a million prayers cast into the night. Some were newly bought
from Walmart, chosen random in a quick shopping trip. Others
survived hundreds of evenings like this, new wax applied to the old
before the column disappeared. He thought of them as Christ indeed
and every birth, every baptism, every friend in need. When he
closed his eyes
the candles remained like angels dancing on the walls.

So, he decided on a Sunday morning, to light the room for
everyone who worshiped, to share the quiet radiance that
brought him peace and presence. And as the last song was sung,
the people between lunch and reverence, he saw two, then three,
with tears in their eyes. Certainly, the Spirit had been there
with her holy invitation.

But alas, greeting his friends, he discovered, they, unlike him,
were allergic to the scents that had been his personal salve.
Their voices were gentle, but their tears had been histamine.
And still the moment was holy.

He kept his private candlelight vigil alone.

Spinning a Narrative

Spinning a Narrative

(“I know what you have done, and that you are neither cold nor hot.” Revelation 3:15)

I would listen and, knowing what others
had said they had heard,
would scar my soul over the silence that
did not flow
but was the weight of summer obscurity.

I thought my sight was blurred,
my ears unhearing the very thing
I wished to find.

Lock me in my room, and do not let me out
until I’ve spent the night in the sweetest reverie
I’ve read about from men of old,
women like angels told,
and stories unfolded by names I heard quoted
at meetings of the devoted.

I paced, I read, I played three chords;
instead of songs or lengthy prayer
my eyelids like lead scratched my waiting watch.

I was certain no one had longed as deeply as I,
yet there was only the shallow dribble of my own mind’s
constant turbine spinning a narrative that has followed from
then until now. What I believed, hope and sought was
never as glowing as
the fireside stories; of parables in street shoes
and the buried treasure always discovered for the effort.

I have chased You, only Father, not well. I am tired,
I am weary, I have gone this far on this tiny soul’s
capacity alone.

Let me rest now, my breath is shallow. The rain has beat
upon the windows through the night
and the puddles are deep in the sunken footprints

Of a man who carried a mislaid burden much too far
up the mountain.

And yet the tears remind me there is so much love
I could never be satisfied, never filled, never stalling;
for the laying down of my burden is the only action
that leaves no footprints for the torrents to fill.