I Sweep my Emotions

I Sweep my Emotions

 

I was tempted to lie about my status,
to tell you I felt loved and whole.
It’s not that I’m left alone, or misheard,
or disrupted by delusions of my late afternoon words.
I was even questioned in the friendliest of ways
about my plans for the afternoon and weekend.

There are dozens of friends I could call on,
there are maybe a hundred that know my name;
there are scores who have witnessed my wounds,
and fewer who blame me for my forgotten moods.

Even as I sit down to write this, I question every
word or phrase,
I sweep my emotions out the front door and do not know
if they will return in the morning to
remind me how stolen I feel. I remember the voices
who said I drank the Kool-Aid,
who told me to get over it,
who said I shouldn’t feel any sort of way. Even the sun
feels foreign on this summer afternoon.

I’ve asked, as if anyone is listening, if it is dark yet.
I’ve wondered how long the days can be. I’ve wasted
my days with endless talking heads and tried to write when
all I knew were tasteless odes to disembodied heroes.

I heard it was a five-year-old’s birthday in the restaurant
I retire to when I want to read and sip a beer. I gave her a dollar
and loved the way she giggled and smiled. If only I knew
every child’s birthday.

Someone said I was obsessed with politics when all I
wanted
was for a few believers to love the Sermon on the Mount
more than their pet projects that canceled the hopes of
thousands. When will love be the answer? When will
devotion look like another helping of soup without
questions for the hungry ones who only needed a
spot of daylight to create unconscious acceptance?

I won’t lie again to be more accepted. I won’t
support your rebuttal of good science. I’ll stand
up every day for the unassuming immigrant who only
wants to find a new place to call home.

The Inner Critic

The Inner Critic

(“…one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:6)

All you ever wanted was to be heard,
to be seen,
to be understood as
simply a boy who wanted to play
under the trees with half a dozen friends
who lived next door.

But you ran away sometimes,
you hid in the garage sometimes between
the musty moving boxes filled with photography
magazines.
You ate the candy you bought from the neighborhood store.
There, with a home-made crystal radio plugged into your ear
you heard
“Stop in the Name of Love” for
the very first time.

You knew you would be found,
you knew you couldn’t wait it out past
supper time. You wished you were
somewhere else where moods were quieter,
where
you knew how to build a playhouse out of
wood scraps from the back yard.
Or how to make a paper kite from yesterday’s
Herald Examiner.
Or were smart enough to know when to cry.

One day you started away toward downtown,
a half mile from home,
six blocks south where you bought your first
walkie-talkies that barely worked a block apart.
You dropped your bag filled with coins you had
saved since
Christmas and walked home to try them out
with your brother.
Nothing ever was as good as you hoped.

You made robots out of tin cans and pipe cleaners,
models of the San Gabriel mission out of shoe boxes,
and read encyclopedia articles randomly.

The voice you liked the least was the one
that critiqued everything you tried. It was
not your father’s nor your mother’s nor even
the voice of the principal at school. It was your
own
that scolded you, that told you how short you
fell below the norm. Even getting straight As
could not silence it.

The voice chased you, didn’t it, right past
the age when you married, had kids, and then beyond
the day when the last left home. And you tried
everything to make life sing the way you had
read about in those Faith Magazines.

Nearly 70 now, not 7, you rummaged through
storage boxes in the garage and drank a glass of
wine midafternoon. Some days the critic is
silenced while the divine soothes the DNA
that it damaged with its harangue demanding
perfection. The critic needed to

Feel loved too.

The Eyes We First Loved

The Eyes We First Loved

(“Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16)

Faintly the sounds of the vinyl spun
as we believed we knew all there was to know
of love.
We danced longer so our parents wouldn’t call
us home too soon.
We loved sandalwood, we wore paisley,
we adopted patios on summer nights
as our own.

But we have forgotten the names of those
whose eyes we first loved. We have traveled far
beyond the five-cent coffee and
newspaper kites we learned to fashion after
school.

But we remember the faces,
we remember the spaces, barely inches between us,
as we navigated parks with sloping hills,
as we wondered if holding hands was a portent
of something more.

Some of us cry as much now as we
did then,
some of us more.
Some of us try to call the same number that
we remember. Was it 415 or 213? The area codes
have changed.

Our houses were built so closely that
we talked through the windows to the girl-next-
door. Our houses were larger than life,
our flower beds were planted by someone before
we were born.

Did you ever ride your bike to visit the girl
who lived just far enough that your calls were
long-distance? Did you remind the night that some
names
are never to be forgotten?

We marry, have children, raise them to be better
than we thought we had been. But maybe
we lost
our way when we gave our first pet dog,
the one who danced around our two-year-old grinning;
when we gave our first dog Princess away
to a farmer so she would have more fun
chasing rabbits in the fields.

We should have kept her. We should have found a way
to acquaint a gray merle Australian Shepherd
with houses that were now smaller than we remembered.

Permeate Us Like Rain

Permeate Us Like Rain

(“This is My much-loved Son. Listen to Him.” Mark 9:7)

Permeate us like rain,
let the clouds surround us with the intense
privacy of light. But our ears are
stuffed and marooned on the islands of
powdered wine. We pass nothing to each other,
and can think of nothing more to say than
we hope it all turns out okay. But ok
is nothing more than
saying I want it to turn out my way.

We pass the sidewalk saints for the black
and white
that describes every person’s plight in morality plays.
We make do with lists of rules. We tailor our
prophecies so fools can fancy themselves kings.

Lord it over us, we ask you, please. And spill the dross
from the outliers of the gold rush we hoard for ourselves.
We can sell the dust in vials of water from the Jordan,
we can make a killing on gilded pages too holy to read.

But there is a turning, a do-si-do that is deeper than earth,
higher than your cruciform steeples. But there is a fancy
dance
that invites every tribe to see the leap of child to parent,
clasp to sharing, strangers to lovers, and an imitation so
clumsy we all fall down laughing.

And we never speak of locked buildings again. We have
seen what we have seen, we have died how we have died,
we have lived

How we are loved. And we can never die again.

10 Minutes of Clarity

 10 Minutes of Clarity

(“Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope.” 2 Thessalonians 2:16)

During the first half of the movie I had
10 minutes of clarity.
It was a French movie set in the 70s
and the subtitles kept me engaged.
For half the time of a good nap
the ocean swept over me without drowning me,
the loves and pains, the stains and steeps were
all the same. They did not disappear, but were
clearly there in my psyche; fish and plankton,
all a part of the biome of over 60 years
of mortality.

I breathed easy. Surgical incisions were insistent
but not consuming. Friends I hoped would call,
didn’t. But I remained undisturbed. I could see that
minutes or days beyond my control were simply the passing
of weather systems out of reach and unrelated
to my ability to swim.

I had not chosen this place, this fleeting vision. It
surprised me like a warm shower out of a clear sky
on a Thursday afternoon. I could not capture the clouds
any more than I could stop the waves that gently rocked
my soul.

It was 10 minutes. Then my anxiety; every shivering thought,
every regret over reckless words, every impossible repentance,
every lead-covered silence, every solitary song I never meant
to sing alone.
Every one of them, short-circuited within, powered my skin,
my heart, my lungs, my head and threatened to trip the fuse
I thought
was out of danger during my

10 minutes of clarity.

Look on the Lenses

Look on the Lenses

(“Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girded his mantle to him (for he had stripped down), and sprang into the sea.” John 21:7)

Look on the lenses of my glasses to
detect the sorrow of my moods,
the eyelashes have transferred the salt of my tears
and spotted my spectacles from the inside out.

What do you do when it seems everyone you know
has forgotten you? Where do you look for the invisible
friends upon the shore? How do you grasp a God
this far from home?

I feel like throwing something against glass,
crashing it into shards, the window, the mirror,
the windshield; something that will break as surely as
the ice pick pits the ground. I feel like smashing the roof
with a sledgehammer,
the sidewalk with a pickax;
but I hold it in and it all comes out in trembling hands,
thunderstorm tears,
aching hips and images appearing in sleep
that haunt my lonely heart for day.

I have no profession to return to,
the boats are owned by others now.
My avocations are solo performances,
a cast of one
for an audience or none.

If someone said she saw you I would run
toward her gaze. I would clothe myself quickly
and beg her to take me to the observatory,
café or public park to find you. I would not
finish this phrase…

When God Weeps

When God Weeps

“‘Look,’ said the Judaeans, ‘see how much he loved him!’” John 11:36

Jesus was on the way to Lazarus’ tomb. Martha, Lazarus’ sister had met Jesus on the road, falling at his feet and saying, “If you’d only been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

Jesus had received news of Lazarus’ illness, but delayed two full days before embarking for Bethany where Lazarus, Mary and Martha resided. The two sisters and their brother were good friends of Jesus and he stayed often at their home. Now, though Jesus’ friend was very ill, Jesus did not hurry.

Most are so familiar with this story that some of the emotion of the narrative escapes us. But think about Martha meeting Jesus on the road after her brother was already dead four days. She knows, she believes, she has no doubt that if Jesus had been there earlier, he could have healed Lazarus.

Jesus tells her that her brother will live because he is “the resurrection and the life.” Martha holds tight to her trust in Jesus, despite her grief, telling him, “I believe this: that you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who has come into the world.”

They both make their way back to the house to find Mary being consoled by their friends. Mary immediately tells Jesus the same thing as her sister: “If you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Jesus sees her tears and the weeping of those around her and is stirred deeply within, to the point of being troubled.

He asks, “Where have you laid him?” They invite him to come and see.

And then, the memory verse every person knows, because it’s the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” He burst into tears. Not a single tear. Not a little sniffle. He wept. This isn’t the sort of tear you wipe away with a tissue during a sentimental movie. This is deep, from the gut, weeping.

This should astound us. Jesus told his disciples before they left that he was going to Bethany to “wake up” Lazarus. Jesus knew that in only a few moments his friend would come walking out of the tomb he had occupied for half a week. And yet he weeps.

Please don’t picture Jesus here with a tear running down his cheek. This is red-eyed, snot-nosed, full-throated weeping. The preacher would stop preaching at the sound. The singer would stop her song. Everyone would turn to hear where this wailing came from. And they would see the Son of God in full-on waves of grief.

Had we been there I have little doubt we would have said the same as the friends who had gathered: “See how much he loved him.”

Do you see it in your mind? Can you hear Jesus’ weeping? Here is the one who is perfectly human. Jesus is the full representation of what humanity is like. And humanity cries. Humanity weeps. Humanity grieves. Humanity openly expresses pain over the love of someone we lose.

This is important for us. Have you been raised to hold back your emotions? Did people ever say to you, “Don’t cry”? Well, Jesus won’t say that. Cry. Weep. If you are in a situation that feels dead, it is perfectly human to give sway to the emotions within.

Please do not think it a lack of faith to let the tears flow. Please don’t let your culture or upbringing prevent you from giving full expression to the present grief or pain. You may have finally reached your breaking point at your job. Your children may have wandered so far, your heart yearns for them. You may have a breach with your parents. You may even be in an abusive marriage or relationship that once seemed alive. There are actions you can take, but please don’t refrain from weeping.

In the dead moments of life, weeping is the gift God has built into our very being. Now, some of us are more prone to emotional display than others. Only you can know your true self. But please, do not hold back because it does not seem appropriate. Let the tears flow. Pain is real. Grief is real. Dead-end jobs are real. And death is real. So real that the Son of God himself wept deeply as they approached the tomb of the one he loved.

Which brings us to the next observation; not only is it human to feel grief, but God grieves with you. Do not hurry to Lazarus’ resurrection without stopping here for a moment. I don’t care what sermon, what book, or what preacher you’ve heard; your tears are no sign of a lack of faith. Your weeping does not show mistrust. In fact, God weeps with you.

Your pain is God’s pain. Your grief is God’s grief. Your frustration and confusion are His. When you want to bang your head against the wall, God is there, not to scold you, but to hold you. When the hurts of a thousand memories crowd your mind and you wish you were over them by now, God does not upbraid you for your lack of faith. He settles in right with you and weeps so openly that if someone else was in the room they would say, “Look how much God loves her!” “Look how much God loves him!”

And, by the way, once you have learned this to be true, you are able to weep for others as well. Your tears will come more easily than your judgment. Your heart will be moved by those you once dismissed. You won’t be afraid to embrace those whose lives are shattered because You’ve felt the weeping heart of God. You no longer feel compelled to tell people, “Come on, look alive!” You have learned to weep with others.

Above and beyond it all is life! Jesus knew the depth of his friends’ grief, he expressed the overflow of his own love for Lazarus, but he also was about to show that he ultimately comes to bring life, abiding life, eternal life.

So he stood at that tomb, raised his voice and shouted, “Lazarus—come out!” And Lazarus did. The graveclothes still hung from him; his face still wrapped in the cloth. They untied him and Lazarus was restored to his family.

Please do not be hard on yourself if, in the middle of what feels like a graveyard, you don’t feel very alive. But here is what I know. The more you open yourself to truly expressing your heart and the more you open your heart to God’s empathetic love for you, the closer you will be to knowing within that, no matter the situation, there is life. That life is in Jesus, fully and completely, and he loves you so much he will weep with you though the healing takes a lifetime.

The Slow Descent of Years

The Slow Descent of Years

(“During those days He went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” Luke 6:12)

I have cried, I know You have seen it;
as autumn brings the slow descent of years.
Please (it is my ego’s petition) let me reach the end
with more than a sparsely sown field. My muscles
no longer ache,
I am in too much pain to use them.
But my soul has never hurt so deep while I wait
for just one more year of abundance. Battered
sometimes by words and reversed rhymes that
I never did see coming,
my hideaway is barely 12x12
and my prayers a shorter measure.

I have never loved You more, and yet,
in this final turn, though cheered on by many,
the blows I’ve taken over the years have left a deadly
scar I protect by letting the phone keep on ringing,
moving my mouth while others do the singing,
and resigning myself to my final fate; I wanted to
end better than this.

So, will You go to the mountain for me?
And, if I perhaps found the strength to hike halfway,
would You still meet me there? Would you show me
how to finish well, fill my swelling soul with so much more
than the mourning over memories?

So will You stay by the fountain with me;
though, like the Samaritan woman, I do not find my way there
till well into the afternoon?
And yet, I need you sooner. Certain of fewer doctrines,
and certain of no other options than the grace You
wooed me with, and the grace that will

Lead me home.