It Used to be a Cathedral

It Used to be a Cathedral

(“You neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness! Matthew 23:23b)

They think they have it all figured out,
they post their demands on the underlings’ foreheads.
They think their cause is just when it is
merely
the same chant they’ve hummed from day one.
They fashion their bombs and measure them by the ton;
they load their words like ammo for a machine gun.
They insist everyone pays their way;
they record everything they say and
play it back
just to listen to their own voice.

All the while the song beckons from
under our feet and over our heads;
the song is no longer today than then,
but we mishear it and shoot ourselves in the foot.

It used to be a cathedral,
now it is just an armory.
It used to be a library, but all the books have
been banned, they’ve been burned,
they’ve been ripped to pieces by incisors
of know-it-alls who never learned to celebrate
the paragraphs the send us into the world.

Every book you erase leaves another author
ready to rearrange tomorrow like it needed to be.
Go fold your laundry, find a good book,
get a glass of wine and read something classic,
or challenging,
or, if heaven allows, something rambling
that opens the world to take that little house on the corner,
open the doors
and allow the stragglers a place at the table.

They think they have the answers;
they have written them on index cards.
They think the lyrics should never be played backwards,
and ignore the plainsong that used to
remove the cannons from the parapets and
melt them into fork and spoons, along with the food,
that never was paid for in the first place.

They think we’ll be impressed with how
impeccably that are dressed. But we are just fine
with thrift store finds. We are waiting for
the day when we obey the truce that was
declared ages ago. We are ready to shed
our garments of pain and leave the battlefield,

Transforming it into a park with a bandshell
where the song is flung in every direction and the
children play undetected where we once
wrestled forged enemies to the ground.

Her Name Was Not Hagar

Her Name Was Not Hagar

(I owe much of these thoughts to the excellent book by Karen Gonzalez, "The God Who Sees".)

https://www.amazon.com/God-Who-Sees-Immigrants-Journey/dp/151380412X

Hagar appears to us early in the 16th chapter of Genesis. She is a slave in Abraham's household, Sarah's "handmaiden". We know that Abraham means "father of many nations" and "Sarah" means "princess" or "noblewoman." Names are important. They identify us within families and culture.

So, how about Hagar? Would it surprise you that Hagar is most likely not a proper name at all? Probably coming to live with Abraham and Sarah during their time in Egypt, she becomes Sarah's servant. Her "name" means, roughly

"Foreign Thing". Variously it may also mean "dragged off" or "pressed into service."

We have no idea her given name; all we have is the label probably put upon her by Abraham and Sarah, identifying her position as "other".

Think how many labels we use to dehumanize others. "Immigrant", "Undocumented Worker", "Snowflake", "Reactionary", "Communist", (you can add to the list at your leisure.)

Hagar, or "The Foreign One" is given to Abraham by Sarah because Sarah has not borne any children. Even Hagar's body and offspring are not her own...let alone not having her own "name". After this Sarah and Hagar have a falling out, Sarah treats her harshly, and pregnant, Hagar runs away to the desert. The "Foreign One" becomes a refugee.

But here is the amazing part of the story. "Firsts" in the Scriptures can be important clues to valuable stories about God.

Guess what: Hagar is the first human in the Bible to give God a name! Yup. This "Foreign One" (btw, not even described as a foreign "woman", further dehumanizing her.)

A messenger from God appears and encourages her to return to Sarah, telling her that she also will bear many children. The messenger tells her to name the child in her womb Ishmael, that is, "God hears".

Stop. Right. There!

She certainly felt devalued and UNheard by both Sarah and Abraham. But her child Ishmael will forever remind her that God has truly "heard" her. What an impact that must have made. Certainly, given her "label", she must have felt isolated, unwelcome, and separated within the Abrahamic household.

But God would have NONE of that! She was "seen" by the God who is not limited by cultural and religious biases. And so, she gives God the first name recorded in the Book of Genesis:

"El Roi (the God who sees)" (Genesis 13). She continues, "Have I really seen the God who sees me?"

The story should inform us about how "seen" we all are. It should also move us to stop using dehumanizing labels. Learn a person's name. Learn their background. Hear their stories.

I'm sure you wore certain labels at one time or another. Meditate on how that felt. And consider the God who

Sees you personally. And begin to "see" others...not with labels, but with names that point to their worth and humanity.

Less Important Than the Melody

Less Important Than the Melody

(“Help each other in your troubles. In that way you obey Christ's law.” Galatians 6:2)

There is no reason to wait. Take the
sunrise to someone who
is still aching halfway through their day.
There is no reason to hesitate. Bring the
table with you and set it with
in the yard, gingham tablecloths and
fried chicken to tempt the neighbors
and their dogs. Enter the lonely space that
extends from the first tear of morning to the
half-shut eyes of midnight.
Why do you pray for miracles when
the old man up the road would be so happy
to hear a voice from the past, an anchor to reality
more heavenly
than a hundred verses of hymns.
And don’t forget the children who smile
so easily
at one twinkle of attention. Learn the choreography
that sets the burdened ones free.
Teach yourself the lessons you learned the last time
you returned from enforced silence to
hear native songs sung back to you again.
The words are less important than the melody
that lifts the eyes, lightens the shoulders, and brightens
the hills once shrouded in gloom.
Walk the dusty hills with the Teacher who
has no place to lay her head. Attend the weddings
of lovers
whose siblings stayed away. Dance with the groom,
twirl the bride, celebrate with cake on your face
and
invite the parson too. Be the presence in the
echoes, be the praises in the silence,
be the persona who frequent both
meadows and wilderness to discover the magic
and carry it to hovels waiting for time to begin.

The Timbre of My Own Guitar

 The Timbre of My Own Guitar

(“The important thing is faith—the kind of faith that works through love.” Galatians 5:6b)

As if I did not know the timbre of
my own guitar
I laid it on its side facing the window
and hoped the sun would revive it again.
And the saxophone squeaked through the speakers.
I snuck up on the day with
clouded clarity,
the wood fairies danced outside my
field of vision.
But closer in I could see the air,
the floaters and astronauts never obscuring
my view.
My heart beat against my lungs,
and pain wrapped its hot hands around my head,
but I still heard, through the auxiliary sounds,
the afternoon approaching
like those days in May when we
went driving through the hills with the
Moody Blues
on the radio.
With calloused fingers, swollen knuckles,
and a voice crackling like a paper bag,
I threatened to sing the solitary away.
Someone once pasted
get well cards
all over my bedroom wall. Someone
once washed my feet who I never had
met before.
Someone once sat on the edge of my couch
with tears to match my own.
Someone drove across the state to loan me
an extra breath or two.
Though I spend nearly every day alone
I carry the kindnesses in my body like
memories of poppy fields and warm Spring days.
Today I may play my guitar again.

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.