Front Porches and Fire Pits

Front Porches and Fire Pits

(“May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.” Jude 1:2)

The negotiations nearly ceased when the
bands battled aimlessly. They played in different keys
and ragged tempos while we listened from opposite
sides of the park.
Gazebo against gazebo,
they played like the day would never end.
Our ears heard multitudes clashing. Those unused
tunes wiggled like earthworms below our feet.
No one planned it,
this disconcerting entertainment. It was merely the
result of too many musicians and not enough direction.

Thunderclouds had been building to the west all afternoon,
And when the lightning took us all by surprise the thunder
sounded out from one end of the day to the next.
It realigned our unrehearsed ragas and turned our attention
toward the rhythm the rain made as it hit the ground.
We had heard there were fires in the grassland and flash floods
in the hills. We counted out the time now, one and two and
three and four. We let the fancy trills and turnarounds go
for the simpler melodies of folks making it all up on
front porches and around fire pits. We put our instruments away
and merely sang. One word, two words, a break,
two words and then three.

We made up songs that sounded like they had been in the
back catalogue for ages. We learned them on the spot and
discovered we knew more than we thought.

We had been afraid that the discord we heard would
divide the afternoon from the giggles of children we were
used to hearing. We began sharing our apprehensions
across fences and learned there was so much more
we could say. We spoke and waved and tried our
concerted passages anyway.

We passed the lyrics on to our progeny.

An Artifact for the Future

An Artifact for the Future

(“At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic.” Exodus 14:24)

The ground in front of us tilted and almost melted away.
We hadn’t counted on anything stopping our campaign,
we hadn’t planned for any opposition.
Just like that we were in the dark again;
the wind was dusty and the sky was gone.
The water nearly swallowed us up and the
morning fled like a dirge underneath our feet.
We had conceived of a quick weekend operation,
a short foray into the jaws of destiny.
We did not expect to come home so wounded,
to return with so little to result for our time.
How could we anticipate this scattering, this
chattering after training so well?
We called on our gods, we devised our sacrifices,
we practiced our prayers and were certain we
had been heard. We could not lose.
We could only win.
We planned on kissing our wives when we returned,
but we were still recovering from the frightening
thunder that came from nowhere. We thought we
were impervious, we thought we could win anywhere
with the help of our gods and our technology.
But those we enslaved escaped; we were meant to
bring them back. They became invisible and we,
confused and dazed, decided the time had come to
retreat. Everything we believed had become an artifact
for the future to unearth. We did not look forward to
giving our full report.

The Magic Appears

The Magic Appears

(“For the earth bears fruit by itself: first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Mark 4:28)

The magic appears on grass muddied fields
where a white-faced calf prances between heifers
and cows
while the January sun melts the puddles frozen
overnight. Are myths begun as simply as this?

We do not invent the blossoms that begin
before we think about looking. We do not
assemble the apples or sculpt them into being.
We would paint them and glue them to branches,
expecting them to glow like Christmas lights year
to
year.

We can arrange our money, though. My father taught me
50 years ago.
Large bills in back, then in descending order toward the
front of your wallet, all facing the same direction.

That would have helped me today at the pot store;
I owed forty-seven dollars and thought I had enough
singles. Dug through every bill, and told the braided cashier
what I tell you now,
and she confessed she always arranged hers (except when
she didn’t…a mess.) I would shop there even if I did not
buy cannabis,
the employees laugh like they are happy to be there.

Did I mention that the magic appears, but only when we look
for it?
And no, I only had six singles and paid with 3 twenty dollar bills.

My chihuahua joins me when I make the rounds, on my lap,
paws on my arms, peering out the window. She whines when
we are almost home. Sometimes we read each other’s minds,
sometimes we puzzle over language, sometimes she looks at me
when I try to hold an entire conversation with her. Her ears
lie flat
and she wonders why I have said anything at all.

Today the magic is that there is a
today at all.

Love is Enough

 Love is Enough

(“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34)

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough,
and yet we stuff the heads of congregants
full of lead-weight conspiracies
so all they will see
is a world so dark something needs to be destroyed.

Love is ageless,
was always ageless,
will ever be ageless,
and yet a certain few, who will remain nameless,
are convinced we’ve turned the corner into everlasting
dark
ness.
Flash-fire weapons are the only solution.
Forgetting that the ammunition and collateral damage have
caused the pollution
that keeps us from sitting in the sun.

Love is divine,
was always divine,
will ever be divine,
and still we insist on justifying more hatred toward
completed souls whose love we do not understand.
We still insist on strangling the message from women
whose prophetic words open the world wide to seditious
hope, (the million dollar men broadcasting their rants against sin
only see the prophets as pernicious heretics who, no longer burned,
are shunned with fire and fury.)

Love is costly,
was always costly,
will every be costly,
and yet we kick the homeless out of our towns,
make them find shelter in locked sheds when the snow flies.
And we put our money into new chairs and chandeliers,
a fancy sign and then resign when the pay does not match
our preferred lifestyle.

Love is enough,
was always enough,
will ever be enough.
Let’s smooth the rough edges that
make the meek cower and the brave
go elsewhere to find
the kind of love
that suffers on crosses,
never draws lines,
but always draws the circle wider for
all humanity to enter.
Love is always front and center.

Standing Right in Front of You

 

Standing Right in Front of You

(“Jesus said this because the people were saying that he had an evil spirit in him.” Mark 3:30)

You have him standing right in front of you,
the one without the loaded gun,
(No, I do not have a gun).
the one who eschewed the sword,
(Lord of peace, king imbued with grace).
You have him kneeling right in front of you,
the one with the washcloth in his hand.
(No, I do not boast of loss).
the one who disdained the crown,
(Prince of the found and lost).

And still we ignore you, too quiet for our own tastes.
And still we mistake you, too subversive to be a saint.
And still we see demons where healing is measured
in bushels of liberation to the underserving back alleys
and sad mistakes
and perpetual retakes
and weighted heartaches
without ever entering the high stakes
steeples we have erected to point far above
the places you selected to dwell.

We will learn to dissolve our high-minded walls
when we lay down our calls for doctrines to referee
every notion encapsulated minds have formed.
(if they said demons inhabited You,
what prevents us from saying worse about the
least of these?)

Meanwhile we load our rifles, grab our clubs,
march into a garden where a man has been praying
all night long (far after the last refrain of the last psalm)
and demand proof of his identity.

We see demons everywhere when demons have circled our
unrequited thoughts and pulled them tightly around us like
a hat band squeezing our brain. Little room remains to see
the world, the divine,
the image, the new wine,
the healed, the holy
in the feet of one who walks the backroads
slowly, ambling through our souls, one at a time,
and healing those we have left behind.