When the Noise Has Scattered

When the Noise Has Scattered

(“Perhaps the Lord will see my affliction and restore goodness to me instead of Shimei’s curses today.” 2 Samuel 16:12)

When the noise has scattered,
when the sky is shattered,
when the paths that mattered now seem
unfastened from the hillside,

How do we hide our fear? How do we regroup,
(circles or pyramids) outside the doors that
once invited us in?

When the songs are deployed,
when the prayers are employed,
when the chants we enjoyed now fall
unwritten from the towers,

How do we hid our grief? How do we refine,
(ignite or liquefy) inside the walls that
now all box us in?

When fire is rewarded,
when love is reworded,
when the priests discarded the low
unwelcome from the banquets,

How do we hide our tears? How do we resolve,
(theses and discourses) above the debates
that lock us all out?

We waited the way patients do,
simply hoping for some good news.
We tasted the honey, imbibed the perfume,
we drank the new wine, dined beneath the blooms.

And still we wondered why,
despite every well-oiled presentation,
so few wandered in, and when they did,
why they never stayed long.

I’ve Thought of Fire

 I’ve Thought of Fire

(“No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29)

I’ve thought of fire,
I’ve conjured smoke,
I’ve conferred with wind,
I’ve bought a home
for doves outside my window.

I’ve heard the sun,
I’ve written rain,
I’ve painted with snow,
I’ve lured the song
like sirens across the silence.

I’ve wrestled pain,
I’ve conquered fear,
I’ve compared the view,
I’ve sought the grass
for days to rest in summer.

But I’m still erasing,
I’ve awoken slow,
I’m still rehearsing,
I’ve run too fast,
I’ve brushed the golden hair
of a toddling daughter.

I’ve spoken low,
I’ve daydreamed sage,
I’ve deferred my soul,
I’ve smudged my words
for days like this. For
love.

After the Fire

 

After the Fire

(“After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire, there was a quiet, gentle voice.” 1 Kings 19:12)

I am weary of the quiet with no faces to watch,
though I open the windows and close all the screens.
All I see are the birds flying between my house and the trees.

My mind traverses back to sunny days
on be-cattled hills. Two or three friends,
a guitar and a song, silly stories and
the sky filling our faces.

I coveted the fire. I had heard the stories;
people hiding behind the piano in the corner of the church
just waiting for the flames of God
to ignite them like rocket engines.
I only experienced jet lag.

I begged for the wind. I had heard the tales;
people unexpectedly flying above the earth
with divine wind in their sails. Sometimes they
did not alight for days.
I was displaced by a tornado.

I would prefer not to write about the earthquakes.
They left me broken, split apart like glacial stones.
They pushed me down from the mountain and left me
disoriented, sad and too far from home. The
fault-line
ran straight through my soul.

But I would sit all day unworded with
a friend who let the silence pass between us
like the slow bloom of the cherry tree,
like the change in the wind after a storm,
like the ashes who recognize they have already been burned,
like a dandelion being born.

After the fire I might sleep for a while.
After the fire, then the
whisper.

Open Fire Breakfast

 

Open Fire Breakfast

(“Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isaiah 55:1)

Did you ever have one of those skillet breakfasts
in the forest cooked over an open fire? The eggs
and cheese and ham and peppers
sometimes cooked at home
but never tasting better in the smoke and resin
and dew. Even a tuna fish sandwich
tastes better outdoors.

Did you ever camp next to someone who motioned
you over
and shared that frittata with you, ashes clinging to
the cast iron pan? If you talked, I am sure
you do not remember the conversation now,
but the taste of kindling and coffee last
at least a decade or two.

The recipe in your kitchen and the
one over the coals
are identical.
But one tastes so free, stays so close to
your memory.

And so, we savor the divine. An invitation. A fellow
pilgrim disguised in flannel. I only wish you, my friend,
had invited me in.

Shuttered My Mind

 

Shuttered My Mind

I have shuttered my mind from the mad fire

that torches the fraying ropes of contentment.
And I am not perfect yet; in fact,
I am so far from it I cannot find it on the map.

The connections wave in the air, sailors away to other duties,
while, landbound, turbulence wakes me every hour and
leaves my mind riddled with fallen leaves, broken branches
and shattered jars that once held messages from across the ocean.

I have lost heart in the desert
while panic attacked in the jungle.
I have lied to keep my name intact,
I lied to keep yours gilded.

The sun is shining today, the shadow of naked branches
are painted on my neighbor’s house. I peeked
between the shutters
and hoped the shadows would flee and leave me
ready to sing again

On buttes with native flutes in the background.

Every time I have danced, though,
every word I ever sang,
the next day my windows exploded,
my mind reloaded every action that proved
I needed to board it all up again.

The air does not speak, nor does the sun hug
the locks and granite traces away. A voice, though,
could add a tiny space to let one ray leak through
this untitled soul the sits alone.

Both Fire and Water

Both Fire and Water

(“So the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God!’” Luke 1:30)

Tell me what I do not know about you,
let me hear it from your lips and eyes;
wipe my assumptions, delete my unruly religion
and bring both fire and water
to burn and begin the
renewal within.

The future is frightening; and yet you are there.
The questions are lightning; but thunder is rare.
The answers are puzzling; but the favored air
imbues today’s suffering; and grace still dwells here.

The Doorway of Suffering

“It was certainly our sickness that he carried, and our sufferings that he bore, but we thought him afflicted, struck down by God and tormented.” Isaiah 53:4

Suffering is one of those issues that makes it difficult to accept a loving God. The conundrum goes: If God is all-powerful, but He does not relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-loving. If He is all-loving, but cannot relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-powerful. But what if there is a different way to look at suffering and God’s involvement with pain?

First, it should be observed that we live in a world where suffering is possible. I just finished taking a walk. If I trip over a boulder and sprain my ankle, I will be in pain. God could have created a world without gravity, or boulders, or pain receptors. And, next universe, if you want to create one, give that some thought. But this is the universe in which we dwell.

My sprained ankle will heal, and the immediate pain tells me something is wrong and to tend to it. But what about meaningless pain? What about suffering that appears to have no purpose?

That, I believe, is the real question when we deal with suffering and God. For over ten years I have endured a daily headache that averages a pain level of six or seven out of 10. After numerous doctor’s appointments, tests and medications, I was diagnosed with a rare malady called New Daily Persistent Headache. You wake up one day with a headache that never goes away. Experts have little idea what causes it and it is extremely rare. So, I have wrestled with God over this “meaningless” pain.

Not only does it appear meaningless, it also has stripped significance and purpose from my life. I recently retired from active ministry nearly 10 years before I had planned. I simply could not continue conducting the duties of a pastor, manage the pain, and, well, remain somewhat sane.

What do we do when our suffering has no answer? How do we deal with afflictions that seem to have no purpose? I can reason that my suffering is still the result of a world where suffering is possible. My parents’ DNA combined in such a way to make me susceptible to this particular illness. I am not the only one to have a body that doesn’t work at its optimal level.

What if God, instead of relieving our pain, actually enters into it personally with us? How is this possible? The prophet Isaiah hints at it when, envisioning Jesus’ suffering, he says that He carried our sicknesses and bore our sufferings. Here we have a God who, no matter how else He deals with suffering, is not absent in it.

He does not come to us as if on a mission trip, visits our poor country of pain, holds a Vacation Bible School, bandages our scrapes, and then goes back home. He is not even a missionary from a privileged country going to live among the poor in another land. No, He becomes the poor, He carries the suffering of this world in His own being.

This is portrayed for us in the cross. Jesus was not some stoic that marched resolutely toward his destiny without thought or emotion. The night before his crucifixion he prayed three times that the cruelty of the cross would be taken from him. His distaste for the bitter cup caused him to sweat “drops of blood”. His agony began before the first whip sliced his back, the thorns pierced his head, the beam scraped across his open wounds or the first nail was driven into his hands and feet.

The desire to withdraw from taking our pain was so intense he invited his three closest friends to be with him in those final hours. “Please, stay with me, guys. Stay here. Stay awake. Pray for me.” Today he might have left them behind in the living room while he went to wrestle alone in the den. Solitary there, pleading with Father God, he asked that the awful moment could be taken away. And yet, because of the love between Jesus and the Father, he acquiesced, saying, “But, your will be done.” And, because of His love for all who suffer, he said, “Your will be done.”

His sorrow must have only increased when he went back to the living room to see his three friends snoring away on the couch and recliner. Three times he asked them, he needed them, he wanted the companionship of those who would simply wait with him in his darkest hour; and they took a nap.

Over the next twenty-four hours Jesus would suffer excruciating pain, emotional abandonment and a true spiritual suffering so intense that he would quote the Psalms, “My God, My God, why have you left me all alone?” Though the Father never left him, the intensity of suffering caused him to experience the same black void that pain creates for every human.

I do not understand all of this mystery, believe me. And, it needs to be said that “suffering” and “sin” are not meant to be equated. People suffer for a myriad of reasons, and one should never assume it is the result of some lack of faith, wrongdoing, or curse.

But I do know that Jesus is in this suffering with me. He has not alleviated it. Being a Jesus-follower has not lowered my pain level. But it has heightened my empathy level. When Jesus took the suffering of the world on himself, that became the entryway into every individual’s pain. So, what if my pain is meant to be an entry into other people’s pain?

Notice that the Scripture says he took our suffering upon himself. If I only find solace for myself in this truth, then I think I am missing the entire point. Jesus did not simply take my pain; he took the world’s pain as his own.

So, as his follower, as part of what is called the “Body of Christ”, my pain calls me to use it as an entryway into the suffering of others. Once Jesus took the suffering of “us”, he eliminated “them”.

To be like him, my suffering should allow me to enter the pain of a refugee family at a foreign country’s border. It should be the door into the suffering of a friend fighting cancer, a homeless woman on the street, a gay high schooler who feels rejected by peers and perhaps by his own family. To be like Jesus means I feel the affliction when three Louisiana Black Churches are burned. I feel the sorrow of those who want to follow Jesus but have been hurt by those who carry his name. To be like Jesus means I run that chance of being misunderstood.

Suffering is hard enough. But, to allow yourself to empathize, to feel the pain of any and all groups, no matter who they are, may cause people to question who you are. It made them question Jesus’ identity, didn’t it? Isaiah says that we though “he was afflicted by God”!

I may not understand suffering. And, I get depressed plenty of times, feeling the hope drain from my being. I yell at God; I tell Him he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But, in the small, quiet corners when my brain is not on fire, I know suffering is a door. It is the very entryway for God’s love to me in Christ, and it is the passageway for my empathy toward others as his follower.

Know the Fire

Know the Fire

(“Order the People of Israel to bring you virgin olive oil for light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually.” Leviticus 24:2)

Once the dust has cleared,
once the tables have turned,
once the night fog has lifted,
once the lessons have been learned

We may see the fire, we may see the fire,
we may feel the flame, and sing with every
citizen and alien, the light eternal
is climbing higher.

Once the guns have stopped,
once the arrows are sheathed,
once the cannons are silent,
once the truth has been believed

We may feel the fire, we may feel the fire,
we may see the flame, and dance at every
neighborhood and boundary, the light concentric
began the choir.

Don’t settle for less
when the deserts bloom.
Don’t keep up the battle
where war is entombed.
Wait for the valleys to rise,
watch for mountains to fall.
Lay down your armor, your shields,
your thrones and quarterly yields.
The day has arrived for divides
to learn from bridges and
home-light to be the newest general address.

We will know the fire, we will know the fire,
we will give the flame, and share with every
loyalist and objector, the existent light
is kindling desire.

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

To Be Played in B Temporary Minor

(“Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17)

It rained like the notes of a dusty upright piano played
in the parlor corner behind a dozen conversations.
The massive maple frame vibrated and rang,
and thunder background awoke the lazy gathering
like fire.

What is this dissonance, where the lost chords,
the freezing droplets at my back door? Who first
struck the white and black, the lightning aimed
like a late attack upon our senses?

What hands hewed the wood and studied each joint
to take the strain of 236 strings and 17 tons of tension?
What hand threw the flood and fire that started in the wall
and climbed while no one watched it smolder overnight,
after each guest from young to older left for home?

Whose frost wet the embers? Whose mind chewed through time
and swallowed the old piano whole which hands
on which mother and child suffered etudes and
dreamed the Beatles best tunes?

The home was empty when the fire attacked,
lives were saved, but memories and melancholy
still litter the battlefield where the uncompromise began.

Would you walk alone, now, with the sound alone, now;
would you settle for less once the music is silence and
the wedding photos are sloppy burnt? Will the

Stockpile of grace
consume all that was taken
and replace the hand-me-down piano
in a new parlor in the Father’s house?

Nighttime Offered no Applause

Nighttime Offered no Applause

(“They tested God again and again, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.” Psalm 78:41)

We stomped out conflagrations on the desert side of the mountains,
we were watchers, we were the vigilant, we spotted the first flumes
from our high towers. In a season so dry we watched unblinking.
We did not cower before the hundredth call to choke the flames
that flapped crisply, giant wings threatening to engulf our diligence.

But then the fires raged exponentially, rained heated ash and glowing embers
behind every advance of its sinister army. Barely with breath sufficient
for one skirmish, the fires sucked all the oxygen from the ground,
from the sky, from the know world we had searched, and surely
well beyond. This giant non-breathing dragging inhaled everything;
left us less respirations than a walk after summer’s lunch.

No one gave up; hope was shouted from line to line. No one
went home; photos in our wallets folded tight kept us reminded.

I remembered leaving home, out the front door, down the street,
merging with others along the East Bay Corridor, through the
Caldecott, over the Bay Bridge, paying for parking heart-center
of the financial district. Alone. Here was my territory, here were
my clients. Though the clients were future to this cold-call artist.

The street is rarely sunny, until you reach the pier. Any season
other than summer
you may find the sun in patches for a two o’ clock sack lunch. But.

I was unreimbursed; though I had rehearsed every word, my worries
and anxiety pushed me forward. I could only lose if I refused.

I lost something then; the fire and finance district. There was more
than I could do; less than I could discover. In my early wonder,
before cash and college and marriage and children. It was archaeology
that knew my name; where digging gave me plenty of reasons for
the dirt under my knuckles. Yet, I am sure, I would have tested
and tested

God’s good faith just the same; caused Him pain because
I cried so easily when the curtains closed, the day was over,
and the nighttime offered no applause.

Wrapped up in Christ

Wrapped up in Christ

John the Baptist: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Luke 3:16

How much thought do you give to your wardrobe each day? If you are like my 20 year old daughter, you choose what you wear carefully, with an eye toward good color coordination and fashion. Or, you may have a job that requires some protective wear such as gloves or a hardhat. Maybe you are an executive and wear a suit and tie to the office. Or, along with me, you might say you have no fashion at all. You just wear what is clean; or at least a shirt and pants that have only been worn once.

Fields on Fire

Fields on Fire

Set our fields on fire, spark or accelerant;
ignite our desire, let it burn beyond the heavy brush
and let it rush in a controlled burn consuming, down to bare earth,
each dry and dusty remnant of yesterday’s harvest.

In a cauldron smelt our ore, in Your foundry
refine us sweeter to the core. We have guarded our
oxidation, our patina only shows our age.

In your kiln collect finish our shape, in Your furnace
fire us freer to belong, light years from the place we’ve become.
Stamp us, your imprint, your handprint, solid as heat,
blazing and glazed with your glory.

Let our fields, rid of the dry, accept the rains, the splashes,
the lightning, the flashes of brilliance that coax the grain
green as spring and
ready for late summer harvesting.

Let the river run overflowing past the burn’s black and ash,
let the fawn drink at dawn, the barn owl nest, resting at dusk,
and life return where fire cleared the brush of previous
generations.