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.

Leftovers From the Fridge

 Leftovers From the Fridge

(“Notice the innocent person, and look at the decent person, because the peacemaker has a future.” Psalm 37:37)

Bought and sold at the outdoor markets,
a price is paid for counterfeit. A price is paid
for every elongated elocution that batters the air
and supercharges constant fear.

Offered in unkempt homes,
a loaf of bread is as good as a
prospector finding gold. The children
are noisy, the neighbors are often mowing their
lawns at dinner time,
and the hosts apologize for only offering water
to drink.

Judged and juried, injured by those who know how
everyone else
should behave,
the best and simplest are barred from front row seats.
Sometimes they are locked out. Sometimes others walk out.
And the decent heart, sans deodorant, sans decorum,
dries out and shrivels where it should had shined.

Some sit in the round, faces to faces, less hidden
and invited to speak of god without interruption. Glow
ascends from the back row toward the center where,
all together,
the sacred meal is served.

Well, yes, I suppose sometimes it is fish and chips,
sometimes tortillas and guacamole, sometimes the
leftovers from the fridge. But the sacrament is the same
when all look with blameless eyes at the neighbor who,
barred from better doors,
shows up to partake. Shows up to
celebrate.

Did You See the Way I Fell?

Did You See the Way I Fell?

(“Why do you notice the small piece of dust that is in your friend’s eye, but you don’t see the big piece of wood that is in your own eye?” Luke 6:41)

The pieces you see now I usually hid
before
the big bang that
started photons careening across my history.
Not that I’ll show it all,
or to everyone,
but I must admit I enjoy living with far
fewer fences.

Did you see the way I fell that day?
Did you see how I stumbled for more than a year?
Did you see the wobble in my orbit,
the onion peels in my opinion?
Did you suppose the dream you had
that cast me as a night-terror
was given you by a god who loves to
frighten shaking souls?
Did you see the way I cried?

I know you thought
you found trash in my back yard
months after I had moved away.
It should mean something to you that
I left it behind and
did not take it with me.

I admit my perceptions are colored by
an opaque woodenness. I confess I’ve thought
I might be death unlivable. But that was only based
upon
the words I heard from towering trees
whose roots were dry where they poked through
the hillsides. My roots were nearly lifeless too.

I’ve met vagabonds, I’ve met fancy dancers,
I’ve met wise men who eschewed answers,
I’ve met storage sheds locked up so tight
that they were all but empty inside.
I’ve met children of the forest, I’ve met mothers of the desert,
I’ve met drooping eyes that shined like starlight
and knew something they would not share.

I learned to welcome from those who welcomed me.
I learned to throw the garbage out
that I thought had stuck to me.

There are those whose eyes have wept for
their own pain,
and invite you like good medicine
to share the campfire where old stories
are only stories

After all.