Everybody Has a Mountain

Everybody Has a Mountain

(“Because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them.” Matthew 13:15)

What do you see, what do you notice?
Are they too q for you? Or too diminished, or too damaged,
or too sinful, or eat too loudly, or have parties with transgressors,
sharing food like family? What are you seeing? What makes you
keep your distance? Or make your insistence clear that repentance
is the only cure for the pain they carry from daylight to sundown?

Are you able, at a moment’s notice, to rid yourself of easy aphorisms
that say little and mean even less. Do you discount the doctors who only
“practice”, why only God “heals”. Or can you see the doctors as the
hands of God, a miracle in the flesh, a co-conspirator in the dawn of
divine healing? Don’t diss the doctors. I’ve met more angels in white coats
than I have in blue suits occupying a box made for worship.

Everybody has a mountain they wish would move,
Everybody has waters they must traverse,
Everybody has danger that stalks them from long ago,
Everybody has a wasteland where food and water and health and matter
disappeared like an oasis approached at dusk.

Did you see the transman wanting to worship? Did you, with all the
confidence religion gives you, declare “God does not make mistakes.”
Did you forget about congenital heart disease, spina bifida, or cleft palates?
Our world is full of mistakes, imperfection is the beauty of our mosaic.
Why tell a rugged tourmaline that it should be a nicely polished emerald?
You are right. God makes no mistakes. And the sister who know she’s a
brother, is not a mistake and never has been. The baby who needed a
heart transplant within 3 weeks of birth was not a mistake. She’s going
to college now. She’s a miracle of God’s partnership with medicine.

What do you see? What are you forcing them to keep inside because
they know you’ll lecture them without knowledge?

Let us learn to hear again; let’s unstop our ears, let’s open our eyes.
We are the ones who need healing. We, the ones who have boxed in
so many hurting souls, driving them further from the divine acceptance
they deserve.

Let’s turn. Let’s face Jesus. Let’s look at him touching lepers, healing the
blind who everyone else thought was a sinner. Let’s watch him bring life
where everyone else was talking about death. Let’s pull it together,
sew it masterfully, a net that hauls all species of fish. Let’s build a
mosaic of healing to decorate the beauties of the Lord.

How Much Louder

 

How Much Louder

 

How much louder can the spikes and
mountain peaks speak? They are not pleasant
echoes,
but syringes filled with yesterday’s aches
reflected off days of clotting rain.

It must sound like self-pity, these constant
allusions to pain.
And so it is, and so I wish it was not.

A lonesome soul, I stare blankly at leaves on
trees
turning yellow
with rain dripping like medicine from
each of them.

I miss the stage, the proscenium,
the rehearsals, the work days,
the torn curtain and the costumed relics
of shows no one remembers. I miss the
ensemble when running cues was better
than any cast party.

A lonesome soul, I wander toward the past
half a century ago and find it takes microseconds.
There is no replacement for the threads that
bind us without time. Yet my body remains
a monologue without an audience.

I would write you another letter, another longshot
that inks my heart once again. I would remind you, though
dizzily scratching the surface, I am friend, same now,
as then.

I miss the potlucks, the rainy picnics,
the best confessions shared well into the evening.
I miss the laughter at misspeaks and the way we tell
the story so many years later. I miss someone’s house
with a sofa made ready for me.

Fenced in by smoky thoughts, how much can I write
that will every be read at all? Remember when we
read our poetry
in high school
and people thought we were magic?
We borrowed each other’s metaphors and
never charged a dime.

Remember when we drove all night just to get to San Bernardino?

Blind Spots

Blind Spots

(“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Luke 3:4-5)

Way back in 1973 I was in my first major car crash. Only 18, I was driving home from my job at a pharmacy in Lafayette, Ca, to Concord. I was on the freeway and approached the split that veering left would take me home or to the right, take me further south. In those days I drove a blue Volkswagen van with tie-dye curtains. I had not merged into the left lane soon enough.

Driving in the second lane from the right, I needed to make my way one more lane to the left. I glanced in my truck-style sideview mirrors, then my rearview mirror and once more to the left one. I saw no cars. I had already set my blinker and began to merge into the next lane.

Suddenly I heard the angry honk of a car almost immediately to my left. I quickly turned the steering wheel to the right, applied the brakes a bit, and went into an out of control fishtail. I was now beyond the median that began to separate the two freeways.

At around 50 mph my right tires hit the median, and though it was no more than six inches high at this point, my van flipped to its side and skid across two lanes of traffic stopping on the right-hand shoulder.

Inside the van I was scared to death, and the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. A coffee mug lost its attachment to gravity and cracked into my forehead. Pencils, papers and a couple of books were suspended around me for what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Besides a scratch to my head, I was unhurt. I did call a friend to take me to the hospital and got to wear a lovely foam collar for a few weeks. Things could have been much worse. As the van skid across two lanes of traffic it was also leaking gasoline. The frame metal was sparking like the Fourth of July. I was extremely fortunate to escape a conflagration.

John the Baptist is telling people to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” He doesn’t specifically mention blind spots, but I think the image may be useful when we think about our own heart preparation.

He speaks of two things that should happen (among others): every valley should be filled, and every mountain should be made low. I think there may be blind spots associated with those who feel like their life is in the lowlands, and other blind spots for those who think they live on the mountain.

The valleys need to be “filled”. I think the valleys can refer to any disparaging thought about ourselves that keeps us from receiving the Lord’s best into our lives. Imagine someone who has constantly been told that they will never measure up, or they don’t have enough talent to pursue a dream. Or even worse, that God will punish them if the do not change. (So, they try with all their might to change, find they cannot, and determine they are outside of God’s blessing.)

I am reading a biography of the American First Ladies. Do you know that two of them lost children; one in a railroad accident where she saw a piece of metal take off the back of her beloved son’s head. For the rest of her life she believed God was punishing her because she had not been a good enough mother to that son!

She was a valley that needed to be “filled”. But imagine someone coming to her and saying, “I’ve lost a child too. You’ve just got to buck up, get on with your life. Stop complaining. I never complained.” Or, even worse, someone who has lost two children tells her the same thing. Think about it. Will these comments “fill” her valley? No, they dig it only deeper.

This person will now believe that, not only is God punishing her, but that she doesn’t even have the inner resolve to make life better. Those in the valley need to be filled, not given an earful. People are in valleys for may reasons. Mental illness can contribute to it, so can addiction, and of course, indulgent sin. But the answer for the one in the valley is filling.

Their blind spot is the inability to see God’s grace and mercy that are just up the road for them. If you are in a valley, please trust God wants to fill you with His grace. Examine the gospels and see how Jesus treated everyone who found themselves in the low places of life.

The other blind spot is just as prevalent and maybe harder to self-assess. When we are the mountain that needs to be made low, we usually feel like we are doing just fine in life. We may be a successful businessperson. A doctor with a burgeoning practice. A politician who is winning. We may even be and average man or woman, but we are pleased that we have kept all the rules that we think are important.

Nationalism is such a mountain. So is a strict reading of certain Bible passages that attempt to make other people submit to them. If it is “Israel first”, we have excluded 99 percent of the world’s population. If it is “America first”, the blind spot is just the same. And, when you are on the mountain, you have little empathy for anyone who, for whatever reason, is still down there in the valley slipping upon mountain trails.

Mountain people are the ones who lecture valley people about how to get out of the valley. Mountain people do not venture down, they wait for others through sheer effort, to make their way up the rugged slopes.

But that is not God’s solution. His solution, in preparing our way for the Lord, is that the mountain must come down! It’s as if He is saying, “If you won’t come down off your high righteous peak, then I’ll have to bring you and the mountain down to everyone else’s level.”

What is your blind spot today? Do you think you do not deserve anything from God? Well, you are wrong. You deserve love from the very One who created you. And you don’t earn it, you already have it because of God’s nature. That is why Jesus came; to show us the nature of Father God. Let Him fill up the low place, breathe again, and step into life.

Are you on the mountain? Have you lived surrounded by a Christian mindset for so long that you can no longer identify with people who struggle? Then hightail it off that mountain as quickly as you can! Sit with the mentally ill. Love the outcast. Welcome the immigrant and stranger.  Comfort the transsexual who struggles to know their way in life. Stop playing it safe.

Once valleys are lifted and mountains are torn down, that puts us all on the same level, doesn’t it? And guess what, that is exactly what God intended.

Ages Since I Climbed

Ages Since I Climbed

"Six days later Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain, where they were alone. As they looked on, a change came over Jesus." Mark 9:2)

I must confess, it has been ages since I climbed a mountain
of any significance.
I hate to complain, but the rivers and the plains,
along with the curbs and concrete of the suburbs
have left each day that passes grieving and lazy
without a hiking companion.

I wouldn't stay there long, at the apex of the journey,
perhaps long enough to see the eclipse of the sun
by the brighter transformation of the One I have tried
to love so long.

I told you long ago I would wander wherever You led.
I've been through the dark valley, stuttered on the desert echoes,
watched wheat ebb and flow, canola grow like mustard waves.
I've jumped when they said jump, and fallen over dead when
the scene demanded it. I've frozen my toes in sliding snow
wearing only my Sunday shoes. I've made friends whose souls
were mated to mine; and lost the same friends over politics,
cigars and beer.

They call it a family, Jesus; a family. Then why, when we disagree,
does this family become silent, change their addresses and keep me at
such long arm's length that I can't hear their words for listening.

But now age and health demand I stand as seldom as I can.
And yet I'd like to climb, find the time to. I'd love to share the path
with you. A night or two; I'd need to take it slowly. A friend or two,
one's I've known since we only knew Jesus was our friend.

Maybe I haven't lost you; maybe I'm afraid you think I'm no longer on the hike,
because I've adopted some travelers, received new brothers,
embraced outcast sisters, and shunned the warlike expressions of
a Jesus who wants to kill just about everybody who doesn't climb
at a space very close to the end of time. Maybe I'm just afraid
you think I'm not climbing the same mountain as you.

It has been ages, Jesus, since I've climbed a significant peak.
But on sidewalks and asphalt, tiny ekklesia and the emptiest skies,
I still want to follow, to wander, to meander more in Your lonesome ways
than a thoroughfare crammed with cocksure doctrines
and duct taped compassion. Just dig me deep as I travel on,
and catch the tears I weep when I miss the rest of the family.

You Speak to Me

You Speak to Me

(“Then he (Jesus) went up on a mountain where he could be alone and pray. Later that evening, he was still there.” Matthew 14:23)

I don’t think I could stay there all night,
in fact, I tried once, and ended up eating donuts before dawn.
There is so much power,
so much I could tell if only I could keep my feet
on the final swell from midnight till daylight.
I don’t know why I could not stay longer
with the one who,
I don’t know why,
loved me. But my mind is a prison

Of carousels and mosquitos that demand my attention.
I could excuse my thinnest moments on Your invisibility,
yet I can imagine the length and breadth of love or passion,
debates and conversations that never end. Arguments I’ll
never resolve
play merry-go-round, beginning, end, middle and then
starting someplace or other again. And the insects gnaw at
my best intentions; buzzing like radar, stinging like zeroes
and biting the truth in two.

Yet the moments when, at last, the mechanics of my mind
brake uphill and stop turning, when the gates have closed and
all conversation ceases, the quiet is dense as chocolate cream.
Frightening silence when half a newspaper, swirled by the breeze,
interrupts my reverie. The moments when the firing neurons
take their nap and leave my tiny spirit alone, the whisper of truth
which had hovered there all along, takes me hostage untethered
to a hiding place of lucidness, a cavern lit from within;

Those are when, a minute, an hour now hardly matter. For
I have heard the words I quivered to know,
thought myself unworthy to know,
and bow down, or leap up, or walk about or seek the star;
all are the delight of the solitary moments when
You speak to me.