Memorize the Faces

Memorize the Faces

(“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for well-being and not for trouble, to give you a future and a hope.’” Jeremiah 29:11)

Start. Why do you scale the walls of anger when
peace is within reach? Aim.
Cancel every subscription to insanity and seek
the places where
sunlight reaches every crevice, every imagined slight.
Why do you accept invitations to trouble
when
there are bridges the connect us all?
Place.
Did you make reservations for the patch of land
you so patriotically protect? Who was there
before you,
and after, who will own it then?
Send.
Write it down. Memorize the faces that cry
out,
(what a crime)
for mothers moments before dying.

Every bottle in the cupboard has been mislabeled,
the horizon is blocked by the mountains you’ve built.
Show.

Look around at Babylon, (do you disdain its idols?)
and send a letter home about the friends you’ve found.

Last, learn to love and
First.

The Extinction of Flattery

The Extinction of Flattery

(“Many plans are in the human heart, but the advice of the Lord will endure.” Proverbs 19:21)

There is more flint in our hearts than we know,
and I admit my own stony intrusions.
Encrusted upon our purest plans
are every whim and whisper we have impolitely shouted
or secretly hidden under muddy fields in fear.

You proclaimed what would come to pass,
told the man he would win election,
You proclaimed it was God’s command,
God’s purpose, God’s eternal plan.
But the election came and went, as all do,
and the fellow you uttered you confidence over,
fell far flat of your prophecy.
You told him, didn’t you?
You emboldened him, didn’t you?
But, you were wrong, weren’t you?

There is more me in my ministry than I like to admit,
more desire for notice, more smiles from past beneficiaries
who received such benefit that we knew it must be god (with
my name in parenthesis, but still spoken, please.)

But you proclaimed a yes that became a no. You
loved the center, you loved the words you thought were
fool proof;
but we are the fools, the fragile, the clowns who fall over
our shoes.
So, when yes was no, did you go to the fellow and confess
that you somehow got it wrong? That you spoke too soon?
That your ego was a big as the rest of ours, and it ballooned at
just the wrong moment?

Doors sometimes close without another window opening.
Mountains sometimes remain after long seasons of praying.
Miles separate the wish from fulfillment and trials dam the river
we swore would flow forever.

But there is a long road, sometimes solitary, most times narrow,
that edges us toward the extinction of flattery. There is a road,
a royal one,
that follows the wadis through the barren and red striations
of rock and sand laid down ages ago.

Today a door closed. No one proclaimed it, no one laid hands
on me
at all.

But the road still calls (though today I can venture only this scrawl)
and I’ll claim correctness less often with some help I hope,
lay my soul down in peace.

A Touchstone of Remembrance

A Touchstone of Remembrance

(“Suddenly, God, your light floods my path, God drives out the darkness.” 2 Samuel 22:29 [The Message])

The lonesome daughter, with her parents halfway across the country,
drives to the home where she grew up, sits on the vacant patio and feels
closer than before.

The troubled father, with his career now over, wanders the sidewalk in search
of connections in a suburb of strangers. His nightmares are full of failures.

He ponders that on his journey home he will visit the town of his birth,
the tiny west Texas town where his own father killed a rattlesnake outside the
church where he was pastor.

He researches the church, hopes to remember the pews and the baptistry,
(the one he shouted about going swimming in with his dad), but discovers
it is no longer on the map. Yet, he still makes plans to stay a day on his return.

The placid mother, in a new career, winds her way through themes and students,
questions and computers, becoming fluent in the language learned on the
steepest curve of her life.

She plans to visit her brother, matching comp time with 3-day weekends,
so he knows she was there, remembers she was there. She will bring a cheeseburger
so he knows she was there.

She will spend a day with the lonesome daughter, hug her, laugh and stick their
toes in the sand or have their toes painted, or paint the town with root beers and tacos.

She will tell her daughter to go to the old house anytime she is lonesome, and before
she flies home, leaves a new pot of shasta daisies hanging from the vacant patio roof.

We all want home, acceptance, a touchstone of remembrance. We want to taste
the bread that mother made in the mornings, the sun tea steeping on sunny afternoons.

We want to visit the home, the church, the school, the old building with broken windows
where people we loved once filled us with undeniable existence.

And Master, that is why, now and truly, it is amazing that You have visited me.

Applaud the Portfolios

Applaud the Portfolios

(“He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:53)

Didn’t we hear it when the poverty crept into
our modern towers, our suburban powers were all
in a fix
because no one served mixed drinks anymore.

Didn’t we avoid the side effects, the stress-sweat
that followed dripped on the broken sidewalks
in a fix
over derelict cars never running well.

Didn’t we follow the lead of every person before us?
Didn’t we drive beyond the camps foreshadowed by
our taste for sharper images and victoria’s secrets
left us little time to add another 15 minutes to the rest
of our plans.

But the thunder will reverse our fortunes and favors,
tsunamis will wash the cliff-dwellers away,
no one will laugh at the hoarded destruction or
applaud the fatty portfolio’s disintegration.

Why do we wait? Why? Do we? Wait a few moments
longer
at the grocery aisle,
check out the daughters and sons who
walk and run in tennis shoes; then, single-file
inspect the soles abbreviated by time,
the uppers ripped from the pages of hand-me-down novels
and consider:

How long will it take for me, for Your name’s sake,
to see the tears we thought were the lament of the poor
are instead

The grief of the One who creates all to be fed by mercy,
no matter their wages, their mobile stages; but simply their
shared humanity.