Invitations in the Mail

Invitations in the Mail

(“For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said: ‘I will live and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” 2 Corinthians 6:16b)

Did you truly need an explanation about grace
and how it crosses the divides between shame and power?
Did you truly think your hardness was acceptable,
that your curses were blessings, and your judgment the very
throne of God?

How did we ever arrive at a time when people with no sense of God
told us everything
God hated about us? Did you turn your Sunday School lessons into
declarations of division? Did you think that Christ would not notice
your atom bombs and jack-booted roundups of people
who are more like you than you can imagine?

I’ve been waiting for a turn of phrase,
for a moment of grace,
for a day of mercy,
for a year of humanity that finally celebrates
every color of the rainbow and every hue we cannot see.
I’ve been watching and all I hear are enthusiastic salutes
that send us deeper into sorrow and loathing.

If God wants to be our God, then why are we expecting him
to stamp his insignia on our basest instincts. Do you want
God
to be your God
and never give a moment’s fuck to what it means when he
asks us to rethink everything we’ve been poisoning the world with?

This is my deposition: I have never wanted a single person excluded
from the fellowship, the fraternity, the family that laughs at the
feet that keep walking toward home. There are invitations still
coming in the mail.

Dog-Eared Invitations

Dog-Eared Invitations

(“The Lord remembers us and will bless us.” Psalm 115:12a)

Look inside the rain, let it remind you of faces
that you used to see, faces you know were good
for a kiss or a laugh and usually both.
I know you would prefer that the
thread reached back 50 years unbroken.
Instead the spool unraveled five or ten years
at a time.

You can take to the road to find them,
you can send a letter describing how they
showed up in your dreams.
You can call and hope their voice sounds the same,
you can count up the words lost over the
stretches of highway from desert to home.

The road narrows but rarely answers the
questions we’ve never asked. I’d travel the
world with you,
I’d scrape the sand off your face. I’d help
you find the faces you left behind,
I’d deliver invitations to everyone who has
forgotten your name.

Do you feel unseen? Do you tell yourself stories
of what might have been? Does the rain keep you
from going outside; does it mock your hope for
freedom’s ring?

Listen beyond the trail that has led you here.
Let the wind carry the voices from the past.
I know you ache for forgotten friends; I know you
would never forsake even the one who cannot
remember your name.

Let’s start the journey by faith;
let’s empty our baskets and create a
new recipe for road trips. A day, a week,
a reverie, a sleep, a month, a cross-country
race to the end where we cash in our
dog-eared invitations to dance around
the bonfires again.