Untied Shoestrings

Untied Shoestrings

(“Watch out, worthless shepherd who abandons the flock!” Zechariah 11:17a)

Faintly I put myself in your hands,
silently I waited for another sideward glance saying
I’m not easy to hold.
I could have been bolder,
said my piece,
made you feel the way you did to me.
Your religion inflicted more pain than
my missteps deserved. You could explain
everything that your devilish assumptions ordained.

I never wanted to be exonerated, never wanted to
skate away free.
I just wanted to be another human
who tripped over his own untied shoestrings,
taking all the blame.

But you whispered to others and
raised your eyebrows at me. You listened
to the scowls around me that sculpted my cheating
like a statue at the end of the game. I was left on an island
guarded by gunboats blasting the reefs around my knees.

I shared my shadows and should have lied.
I confessed my persistent cough that plagued me
while you blew your nose behind my back. I just
wanted someone to see
me in the dark like the moon after your eyes get used
to midnight mass. I wanted to sit in the balcony again
while a best friend sang
O Holy Night.

Now the knots have been tied for so long
I cannot loosen them. I hope, after enough time,
after I’ve forgotten every trap set for me,
that the rhymes will come easier,
the light will shine like a meteor before the
northern lights shower the deepening night.
The sun fell into the horizon too fast for me to follow.

Faintly I offered my pain,
silently I sat like a broken vase,
sadly I thought I deserved so much worse,
finally I know better, but my emotions are tied fast
to the shepherd’s rod that bruised my back.

I’ll be who I am since the pain will be the
same
no matter how close I am to the end of the trail.
Faintly I hope my words will vent, my syllables
the agents of my partial health as stars shine the
same for me as the chains are chiseled off of me.
If I could forget

I’d gladly cast off their restraints.

My Life Has Become Smaller

My Life Has Become Smaller

(“He must become more important, but I must become less important.” John 3:30)

My life has become slower, smaller,
creeping along the afternoon blades of grass
between morning and noon.
No longer racing from book-page to onstage,
from hammer and nails to scanning emails
for anything meaningful.
My life has become smaller, a square foot at a time,
hemmed in by the pain that wrapped a braided
steel cable around my mind.
Stuck in the driveway, walking the same ellipse,
seeing the same cracks in the sidewalk, waving at
people who pass in cars with blackened windshields
never knowing if they wave back.

My life has become smaller between the long ranches,
the southwest desert and the coastal ranges my feet
once roamed. Now I stay home. 

I try to wash my hands,
I try to wash my hair,
I try to wash my heart
and all I see is dirt
and all I’ve been told is
make sure to scrub behind your ears.

But over the years the dirt has stayed
between wrinkles, beneath fingernails;
vestiges of each moment my hands touched the
face of the earth (a planet that breathes withs
clouds and sighs with thunder). I no longer wonder
why I don’t hurry to scour the remains of stellar dust
that cling to my body. The dust I hold is the dust that,
so old ago, I am made of.

I’ve got nothing in my pocket except wadded tissues.
I used to carry business cards, credit cards, folded
phone numbers and family pictures a dozen years old.
I’ve got nothing in my pocket except lint and tissues.
I travel lighter and smaller and forget my wallet when
I go to the doctor.

I still do not see well, and will have my eyes checked
in a week.
I still do not pray well, and have practiced every
technique.
I sit on the porch now, and wait for visits from my
toddler neighbors.
I sit on the porch now, and the wind speaks for me in
whispered prayers.

My life is smaller now and somehow
I do not mind. (Although I may answer different
if you ask me a different time.) My life is
smaller,
but the earth breathes the name to my broken heart
of the one who never let me become lost,
the more microscopic
I have become.

Grace Extended

Grace Extended

“For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:15

It was the scariest day of the first twelve years on the planet. Greg, one of the three meanest playground bullies had “called me out” to fight after school. Barely 110 pounds, my slight frame rarely stayed upright in the face of the few fisticuffs I encountered in school. But, whether out of a momentary bravissimo or stupidity, I agreed to meet him.

Most times when I felt threatened I would recruit Don Irwin to walk home with me. Held back a year, Don was bigger and stronger than everyone in our class. Though he never actually fought anyone, we all knew the outcome of any attempted brawl with Don. But, for some reason, Don was unavailable on the day Greg insisted we meet around the block after school.

I bravely faced off across from him, hands somewhere hanging on the ends of my arms. Within the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings twice a fist crashed into my left eye and across my nose. Immediately I started to cry. It was involuntary, but they were tears, nonetheless. (Do not try this at home, but a blow to your eye will bring the inevitable tears.) I couldn’t see, I was embarrassed and petrified. Not only had he caught me full force, I was blubbering in front of the school bully; a far worse shame than losing a fight.

Greg took a step back while my mind reeled. I wondered if I should take a wild swing while he watched me grimace. The he said, “Have you had enough?” I knew to say “Yes” meant to admit defeat. But, not wanting to lose two eyes, I said, “I guess.”

“Ok,” he responded, “It takes a big guy to admit he’s lost.” Then we had a couple of other words together, he walked off, I limped home, and we never fought again.

Grace, right? I was grateful for Greg’s grace. No! A thousand times “No!”

But I have met many Christians who see God’s grace much the same way. We do not go so far as to say God is a bully. But we do say things like “I deserve the punishment”. Or, even when things aren’t going quite right, “I must have messed up pretty bad for these things to be happening.” And so, we see God’s “grace” in terms of a God who occasionally lets us walk away from a black eye that He has inflicted.

The danger of this idea comes out in how we treat others. There seem to be two streams of “Christianity” in America: one which loves seeing God’s grace given to more and more people; and another which uses the word “grace” but seems to be slow in giving it. So, if we feel God was righteous to rough us up before he gave us grace, we also feel justified to speak and act in ways that are not fully grace-full.

You’ve seen it, I know you have. Christians who share ugly reports about politicians they disagree with; or who will not listen to the stories of those in untenable situations. Sometimes we make assumptions about the poor or the disadvantaged. We want to control what people do with their food stamps or disability.

But, here is what God did. Let’s suppose we actually deserved a black eye. The Greatest News of All is that Glen is not God. Glen would have given us our black eye, then backed off saying, “you learned your lesson.”

But Christ, in His Mighty Grace, suffered for us on the cruelty of the cross! He triumphed over the violence and the darkness of this world, not by fighting back, but by dying. He triumphed over the ungodly union of politics and religion in His own time by showing that God’s Kingdom is one of love and servitude.

Dear ones, perhaps you have never fully understood the great galaxy of God’s grace offered to you. Perhaps you feel you have deserved the hardships, and that, once you have suffered enough, God will be nice to you. In Christ, God is here now. He is the One who has spread the mercy and grace of God across the universe like a perfume that anoints our every sense.

Once you realize how great His grace truly is, you will never again speak harshly against the poor or spread falsehoods about opponents. Jesus, in His grace, offered His very life so that, according to this verse, “as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

Experience His grace today. And, experiencing it, let it extend from you to more and more people!