That Calls You Beloved

That Calls You Beloved

(“Look, my God will help me. My Lord will support me.” Psalm 54:4)

I’ve seen what the external voices have done to you
building a brick red barrier around your heart. I’ve seen
the locked door that sealed up the most human of your hopes.
I’ve seen how the music has changed, how it challenges your
perception of time. If only the days would end sooner;
if only the quiet would be sweeter;
if only the love captured deep inside you would win the day.

I’ve heard the same voices; you know I have. They still
show up in my dreams, don’t they? And yet you live with them
like words to your face to channel away any joy you had
accumulated over months of collecting the smallest moments
like semi-precious stones discovered along the riverbank.
You hid them away and hoped they would not be found.
You wrote about them, journaling the discoveries that
helped your chest relax, that steadied your breathing,
that allowed the tears to flow without embarrassment.
You hid your writing too; fearful it would be discovered
and cycles start all over again.

I know how you want to be alone to heal,
I know how loneliness can pierce your head like thunder
invading the middle of the night.
I know how you deserve love, I know how you wish
to be held, and pampered, and treated with everything that
love means.

Your trust is like a frayed rope. You feel ashamed that you
feel only half human, when you would rather live a heart
wide open to the ones who see you truly.

Instead, you are not allowed to speak your mind or it
will disintegrate into screaming. You wish you could
stand outside and let out all that has been stored within so long.

I see you. I love you. I want to hold you. I want to tell you
the truth that lies deep within you. I want to whisper you are worthy,
I want to sing that you are more precious than anything I could find.
I want to kiss away the tears when they come and let them drop from
your eyes to my fingertips.

I want to be your new voice that you hear until you hear your
own voice again. I want to tell you, even as I write this, that you
are a diamond for me, as rare a jewel I could ever find.

I want you to know that, besides me, God is especially
fond of you. Fond like a mother’s cuddle, fond like a father’s
laughing eyes. Fond like a light that guides you to the
end of the trail, hand in hand.

Write to me and send it like a letter to the sky.
Write everything you cannot say and find every word
that sticks in your throat. I’ll read every line of you,
I’d drink a case of you, I’d memorize it and repeat
it back to you.

So, I share this very quietly, my words mere sighs
beneath the noise of apprehension. I will never compromise
what I say to you, your worth, your esteem, your value
in my world.
In this wide world.
Hear the voice that calls you beloved in each breath
you take.

People Walk Right Over Him

 
People Walk Right Over Him

(“’Is it right to heal anyone on the Sabbath day?’ they asked him—hoping to bring a charge against him.” Matthew 12:10b)

While you colloquy and cant about
Sunday Mornings
there is someone who is housing impaired
ditched behind the house of worship
and grasping whisps of dying grass just
trying to get to street level again.

But who would want him; clothes smelling worse
than a cat box,
noxious fumes would fill the room.
Who would want him; so much surgery to stitch his
soul,
unroll the gurneys and send him to urgent care.
The Lord’s business happens in
this
building,
and we must not be interrupted by a case of
idleness gone to seed.

“oh no one says that. no one talks like that at all.”

Then why don’t you make a few calls,
search the tall grass,
take your offerings,
bake your good breads,
and find the leaking trailer where
despair and anger have damaged a mere man
in pain who never planned to forsake baths for
weeks at a time. He never imagined soggy socks
midwinter, and never asked for the isolation that
stumbling in the snow brings. People walk right
over you and
notice nothing until spring.

“oh but how should we know. we could not know about the hidden ones.”

Haven’t I just spoke to you in this short tome?
Haven’t I described him, (half of you know his name.)
Don’t you remember how he comes for coffee and donuts
and leaves before anyone can shake his hand?
Don’t you see that sheep limping and lost
are the mission statement of the Shepherd’s own?