The State of My Brain

The State of My Brain

(“The Lord makes our human spirit like his lamp inside us. It shows us what we are really like.” Proverbs 20:27)

I’ve got enough time to read a chapter or two,
to turn on the overhead lamp and see what the words say.
I’ve been reading from the day I knew that one word and
another
could take me to world without moving a muscle.
A man down the street asked me what kind of books
I liked the best. I was eight or nine and I said “adventure”
though I wasn’t entirely clear what the word meant. He gave
me two books, one about the thirteen original colonies and
I don’t remember the other one. Maybe a Hardy Boys mystery.
I made weekly trips to the library; its front steps were marble.
Sometimes I walked since it was only six blocks from home.
I would take a volume of an encyclopedia and start reading articles
in alphabetical order. I wondered who wrote all this candid information
and how they knew so much stuff.

Reading captured me as a teen. I read all of Shakespeare in one summer and most
of John Steinbeck. The next summer it was Ray Bradbury along with the
poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Rod McKuen got an occasional look.

I read early twenty century playwrights and imagined their words in
my mouth.

Ten years later I was a newly formed follower and read books on
prayer and spiritual gifts and how to manage your emotions by concentrating
on Christ. Truth? I found myself falling woefully behind.
There was a method to pray an hour a day. I managed 15 minutes.
There was a way to speak in tongues, and I mumbled them well. I
never got my mind swept clean from thoughts that invaded constantly.

Today I read memoirs and liberal theology. Today I quiet my mind
with music before I read. Today I talk slower and less certain.
Today I am not sure of my purpose, but I do not shame myself
for the state of my brain.

Sit With Him Who Has No Breath

Sit With Him Who Has No Breath

(“He also described to us the love that you have in the Spirit.” Colossians 1:8)

Sit with him who has no breath,
set the table for her who cannot taste;
when the air is heavier than sotted fog
let silence carry you,
let ritual be the rails you ride until
breathing comes naturally again.

There is no moment without effect,
there are no movements without the tree leaf twitching.
When time has subtracted more than you wished,
let memory guide you,
let summer laughter reside a moment longer until
the lyrics return.

I prayed the Our Father with you, three times,
maybe four.
I am ashamed to say I forgot some words of that
Ancient Prayer
I prayed
every Sunday till my teens. On the last time I
whispered it
I think I remembered every phrase, though
out of order and halting. I sang Hallelujah to
you, and Amazing Grace.
But mostly the ICU room where you lay was
filled with machinery whirring, rewording our silence
into every breath you took.
I tried to match my own with yours,
to be present on perhaps our last moments together.

Angels attend you sweet friend, and may you know
how much love clung to your boots and pain,
how our crocks of clay eventually decay,
and how our spirits awake, here or elsewhere,
to human touch as well as divine.

Did I Use the Wrong Fork?

Did I Use the Wrong Fork?

(“For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17)

Would you listen as I rip off the bandages,
would you hear the cry of torn flesh and broken cell walls,
would you be frightened at the darkest parts of me?

I spent too much time unraveling every thought, and then
hiding again behind lofty words and preemptive attempts at prayer.
I kept the rules, some of them, some of the rules I kept.
Other I dismissed as unnecessary,
some I ignored and wept at my weakness.
Once I even un-curtained my uncertainties in hopes
of help with my idiosyncrasies. I was wrong. No one likes
a loser. No one likes a maverick who cannot learn to behave.

It really is no one’s fault. And there were a few who
gathered my tears in their hands and valued them like gems.
But the ones who struck out at me because I did not fit the team
never once
saw my tears as anything but
evidence I was as weak as they thought.

What they did not know, and what I tell you now,
is that I was, is that I am, weaker than anyone ever imagined,
weaker than snow in the Sahara.

Here, let me show you what I could never show. Will you
turn away in ghastly fear. Will you imagine my face so ghostly
you would call for an exorcism to purify your own thoughts?
Did I use the wrong fork for dessert, did I leave too much on the plate?
Did you finish my second helping after I left, did you huddle with others
to determine my fate?

Because I’ve tasted the menu, the bitterness of raw onion skin faith,
I invite my friends to dine, one at a time, and let the conversation unwind
till we get to the end of our piety and rest alone in human reality.