Love Is Easier

Love Is Easier

(“No one pours new wine into old wineskins.” Luke 5:37a)

Love is so much easier than
reading from the scripts winding in your head
like chains and locks, like handcuffs and square knots.

There are more than the old, scribbled writings,
life is richer than the ransom notes we send
human after human,
year after year,
sermon after sermon,
election after election.

Joy flows if you will find it,
the grapes burst with sun and earth.
The wine brings color to the cheeks and
brightness to the eyes. Why protest
the radiance that
sets the bluebirds flying?

Love, rain on me here.
Joy, shine early and near.

On a planet, bio-diverse, sing the choruses
that list each divergent tongue as the number one,
the melodies that launch embraces instead of
vacuous mumbles repeated for effect.
There are far more faces than fit within your
narrow theology.

Love is easy. Love is wind and rain
and wine and mud. Love is never asking for
a decision or,
holding unknown soundwaves in derision,
shouting louder than the spectrum you think you
invented.

Love, fill us like daysprings.
Joy, etch our faces like newborns.
Love is easier if
we take the time to share new wine
trampled by feet we never knew.

Banish the Between

 

Banish the Between

(“May he give you what your heart wishes for. May he make all your plans succeed.” Psalm 20:4)

Banish the between us,
vanish the spaces that remain.
Drop the divide, cried and stopped
where the arms uncrossed, where the open
revolved like dance, like love.

Revive the among us,
survive the pauses, fog and rain.
Stop the collide, tried and started
where the brains defrost, where the daylight
snickered like French bread, like love.

In you (closer than far) more hearts beat
fully
than repainted in a day. In us (slower than near)
more mirrors
fully
refund colors and gray.

I’ll take a dozen new friends please,
but just like the old friends who have walked through
the breezeways to class,
sat on trampled grass,
asked question after question like a dreidel,
and never fatally ended our conversations
or lost them in the canopy of trees that preceded

Everything we thought we knew.

The Reckoning Blew In

 

The Reckoning Blew In

(“But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:28)

It all happened before we had a minute
to change our shoes;
the reckoning blew in on the northwest wind
and asked what time zone we thought we were living in.
We did not answer, we were alright,
we had been gazing upward most of the night.

We’re comfy here, we’ve made our living,
we empty our pockets every time they preach
about giving. But we still have enough to spare;
our boats are bobbing in the river,
our trucks are parked with guns in the rear.

Ask us about the south and the past,
about the north and the handicrafted biases
baked in to the system,
and we might explode because we are righteous,
we have voted so piously we have to defend it with
mediocrity.
We will never admit our chosen president
could be the one impediment to freedom for
anyone but us.

It all happened while we were tuned in to the latest
hand-clapping hymns for the children and beginners
on the radios that now searched the heavens;
the calculation fell like fire from the sky
and asked us why we hated books that told the truth,
took our shifts at the poll booths harassing everyone who
caught the fish in the river before our feet touched the shore.
We love statues of Columbus and tributes to Dixie
and worry our fingers to the bone whether we have committed
the unpardonable sin. (We hope not; who could begin to express
how many times we have averted our eyes from pornography,
or apologized for missing a month of Sundays? We YouTube
the truth these days.)

And from far away the die is cast while we are standing front to last;
we could have been one heart with the sins of our past that
silenced original voices and
kidnapped chattel
like destiny and the bible
told us so.

It is their redemption that is drawing near!

Come Near

Come Near

(“But God brought him back to life…” Acts 13:30)

Make no mistake, I believe in the resurrection,
but sometimes, here alone with the hours crawling by me,
I scratch my head over the rising from the dead.

When the air is heavy, the room is empty,
my mind is leaden and my head sinks beneath the
horizon between earth and sky;

When no one passes by and words are weaponized,
I long to see the view from the gondola of a
hot air balloon.

Or perhaps to hear the voice (another voice than mine)
tell me it is okay this time.

But even as I try to write about the doctrine I should have
no doubt about,
everything I think I know lives on the brink of termination.

But then, resurrection never precedes death, does it?
But why has my life felt like dying for so long?
And You, who have died and now are alive,
I wish you would visit now and again
in the voice of a trusted friend
or the face of children hopping with
eyes like fireflies against the forested backdrop.

“by faith, by faith, by faith,” they say,
and I believe them. They know every jot and tittle,
but cannot fathom the pathos of the heart.

“come near, come near come near,” I plead,
and they distrust me. I know every flaw and dimple,
but cannot discern the presence of the Son…

…until the breath returns to my lungs, until the apples
hang like Christmas bulbs, until a fawn crosses my path
and watches me like a puppy unawares. Until I see

That He inhabits everything, and has before the dying,
before Adam-and-Eve-ing, before creating the breathless void
we travel on. He is the last and was always the first,
ever present before the light began.