The Circle Widens

The Circle Widens

(“Let me tell you, it’s easier to gallop a camel through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter God’s kingdom.” Matthew 19:24 [The Message])

The circle widens as we look toward the horizon and see
the way we waste our efforts in converting 400 people to become
just like us.
The night darkens while we light another lamp to create
some smokey brightness to break open the faces that are
just like us.
The private jets whoosh past above the timberline where the snows
stays trapped from middle Spring squalls, captained by people who are
just like us.
We never expected to be such consumers of black plastic bags and
thousand dollar bills. We had only hoped to have enough to eat tomorrow
and to have a little lunch for later in the day. But billions landed
next to us, from a suitcase in the sky,
and what could we do but spend it like a black-tie dinner.
Some, I heard, spent their earnings in little bits at a time:
a power boat, a jet ski, a Mercedes or two, an indoor tennis court
and spices that come all the way from china. Money made us think,
money made us lose track, money made us turn black what would have been
the brightest of skies.
The rich point at the homeless and refuse to listen to their stories,
and accuse them of not taking advantage of programs made for them.
One fool says we should take their lives involuntarily. That is what has
become of pursuing Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

No wonder it is nearly impossible for rich people to enter the kingdom,
they are so bloated, so overfed, so obese they cannot fit their
fat asses through the gates to the kingdom. We wonder how to remember
people that were once
just like us.

I’ve Narrated the Road

I’ve Narrated the Road

(“Let us look only to Jesus. He is the one who began our faith, and he makes our faith perfect.” Hebrews 12:2a)

The story doesn’t end there, even though it felt like the final chapter.
The asteroids still circled obliquely.
Bring me another water please; my throat is dry and I have
such a long tale to tell.
We haven’t finished, though we needed a moment’s rest.
The pale yellow butterflies show it best, the way they
flit from flower to flower undisguised as the day lengthens.
The beginning has little thrills,
the middle is unexciting,
but the ending is unexpected and sometimes causes me to flinch.

When you have come this far already it is hard to
see clearly the beliefs that may be unsupported by the facts.
My story is full of pitfalls, my tale surrounded by struggles,
my ending unreliable, my addendum just a summation of facts.
But I suppose I’ll keep writing,
I might keep believing if there are no more suitors for my heart.
I could use a navigator,
a fellow traveler who knows the terrain well. Or someone
who doesn’t mind traveling blind. You take the wheel for a while
and I will nap until our next pitstop. We can write our bearings in
the journal I’m keeping, another chapter to a story I would never
have written if I hadn’t traveled so far. I could use a navigator,
I would love an illustrator to picture my ups and downs.

I’ve narrated the road from beginning to end, from “gentlemen
start your engines” to the checkered flag. I finished far back
in the pack, which explains why so few follow me.
But on further cogitation, I say, without qualification,
that the one who began the race still accompanies me and
has completed the story long before I’ve crossed the finish line.

Look to the Margins

Look to the Margins

(“Then a Samaritan man traveled down that road. He came to the place where the hurt man was lying. He saw the man and felt very sorry for him.” Luke 10:33)

Look to the margins,
take the drive to the edge of town,
find the strangers just behind the fences.
You know their names because
they have visited in your dreams.
Write them down next time,
bring them around next time you
grill steaks for the neighborhood.

The ecclesiastical tornados blow right
past the bloody messes left behind
by unfortunate destinations. The professionals
are keeping score, they tick each item off their list,
and having finished for the day find another way home.

Let them sojourn. We can take the drive
to the edge of town and put a few friends in
the back of the pickup truck.
Let them settle. Learn their names, and their children’s,
and their pets’. Learn the way their eyes ask
only for sanity, only for cold water, only for
an escape from the rain.

You used to play in the mud in front of your
suburban house with the lime-green porch.
You used to know everyone’s name that
waved from the sidewalk, every neighbor whose
child was just looking for a friend.
You used to hope that the popular ones would take
you in
to their treehouse, their club house, their secret pledges
made with bandanas around their necks.

Look to the edges,
just outside your peripheral vision. Take the journey
around the alleys behind the restaurants in the middle of town.
Some can’t afford the trip at all. Some would rather walk
than be caught riding the rusting bike they’ve had since
last Christmas.

Expand your boundaries, now that you know you have them.
You’ve seen their skin baked by the sun.
You’ve seen their loves hidden behind pulpit blinds.
You’ve heard their muffled cries. All they want is
to be welcome in your home.

No, I Would Rather See

 No, I Would Rather See

(“Look! He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, including those who pierced Him.” Revelation 1:7a)

If you look with the back of your eye
you will see the solid tree that has stood
for decades in your yard
is full of atoms and space. What we see
depends on
eyes and brain
and everything else we have been taught
about how the world should be.

Can clouds be the medium where the divine
paints the beginning and end of all things? Or
is that only for our marbled vantage point?
Visions are written over midnight musings,
dreams keep the isolated company when banished
to islands full of caverns.

Lately I’ve wondered how our thoughts become
so concrete that
the must be jackhammered to be
broken. While the clouds shift like ocean foam,
opinions become dehydrated remains of something that
once was joy in new wineskins. What shall we see if
all we have to offer is the dregs?

We have become religious wrestlers, pay-per-view
tournaments of cage match philosophies. I’d rather
be laughing at a potluck picnic with
agnostics, heretics, sous chefs, and preachers
than be confined to the corners of cinder block orthodoxy.

But who am I to talk (I would rather see),
who am I to make my thoughts the new mastery
with syllabi and mystical syllogisms
proving the points that may be debunked tomorrow.

No, I would rather see. And know, although language
would escape me, that beauty is better than definitions
and love is fuller than solidified catechisms.

There Was No Sea

There Was No Sea

(People won’t say ‘Look, here it is’, or ‘Look, over there!’ No: God’s kingdom is within your grasp.” Luke 17:21)

It was New Year’s Eve and I
was determined to meet the beginning
with knees bowed all night. I was nineteen.

I asked the pastor, “Can you lock me in the church?”
“Overnight, I mean.” Impressed with my spiritual hubris,
after our watchnight service
he turned the key to make the church safe
and showed me how to exit in the new sun morning.

I was determined to meet the beginning
with stomach rumbling. I started the fast the previous morning.
I read books, book after book, and knew that God
always
showed
up
when people were serious about skipping a meal or so.

The night started like brushes on a snare-drum playing
60s club jazz. I was glad I was going to do what no one
else wanted to do, though I was not proud about it. I
just wanted to put in the effort.

The sea was red only one night I remember when
friends pointed me past the breakers where the algae bloomed.

This night there was no sea, no mountain, no slippery waterfall
to climb and no music to pass the time. So I prayed. Then stood up.
Ten minutes in I said everything I wanted to say and wondered how
God could possibly be impressed by my short-windedness.

The Santa Monica Pier was a place where homes of embedded barnacles
embellish the pilings. Buskers played for money above,
teenage couples practiced kissing below.

This night there was only a linoleum floor, no melodies, no creatures,
no hippies and no lovers. There was only me, a teenager singly trying
to make God show up. And not for experience’s sake, I had a backpack
full
I wanted to unload. There was a library there, a turnstile of paperbacks
mostly about doctrine and victorious living. I picked one I hoped would
allow me to leave, finally, as a conqueror.

I have never possessed a string of pearls, nor discovered one in an oyster.
I knew they were made when the oyster felt itchy, and I was itchy
For an experience with God.

But not that itchy.

Hours passed, I read book after book, interspersed with repeated prayers
(though I was sure God hadn’t forgotten what I said by my third go around.)
Two hours in, two in the morning, and my faith felt as alive as shorn hair
at the feet of a barber’s chair.

I slept on a pew, though I vowed to stay awake. I read, though my eyes
began to ache. I prayed, shorter and shorter (and had visions of steak.)
I knew nothing about listening; don’t know much now. So I called my
girlfriend (quite early on that New Day). She came quickly and whisked me
away
To Winchell’s donuts where I ate chocolate greedily and with shame.

The evening began like a jazz trio and today I know better, so I let God
say whatever he will through the wandering bass, the ravenous piano
or the frugal drums merely marking time.