The Answer to Every Question

The Answer to Every Question

(“This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.” 1 John 4:10)

You would know me from a distance,
I have the same appeal I did when we first met.
We can start again because we have ended at the same
fork in the road. Tell me which way you will go and
I will turn that way too. Tell me your destination and
I will make it my own. Follow me, I may not know where
we will end up,
but I know I want to go there with you.
My car is old and slower than it used to be,
but we can still get there if we take our time.
I will take my time until the breeze whispers that
you are mine.
Feel it all, the large and the small; let the emotions
that are hidden come out into the afternoon sun. Put
them in my hand and I will massage them, the hurting ones.
Put them in my hand and I will cherish them, the loving ones.
Waiting only postpones the way our souls relate,
putting it off increases the ennui. Can’t tell if it’s
right or wrong,
I just want to sing the words of the song and watch them
etch beloved lyrics upon your face. You might smile
while I am awkward with the tune. But you will know,
later or soon, how much they mean.
We both have been bogged down in tradition,
we both have been forced to keep the rules that keep us
fenced up like incarcerated rabbits caught nibbling the garden.
Today I do not even need to persuade you,
today I only want to upgrade the love first begun.
We can get out and walk once we reach our destination,
we can feel the sand between our toes. We can feel our
hands lightly touching,
we can hear the surf filling in the words we have forgotten.
And in that moment you know and I know there is nothing
we could tell that would drive us away.
The universe answers with the deepest love when we
ask the questions we have been afraid to ask.
It is you, I have seen you in the storm;
It is you; I have loved you in the warm and quiet
afternoons. And only hope to be loved too.
Then you take my hand and put it on your face and
I know
No one can replace you, then or now, and I take
you in my arms and hold you softly as our eyes
kiss and we know the answer to every question we’ve been asking.

I Don’t Mean to Question You

I Don’t Mean to Question You

(“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s pleasure to give you a kingdom.” Luke 12:32)

I don’t mean to question you, but I will.
Where is the flock, the kingdom, the pleasure, the joy?
Where are the carousels that once made me dance?
Where are the voices that used to elicit my laughter,
where is the treasure I thought my heart sought after?

I’m locked inside my body again,
my brain refuses the sun. The sentences I used to underline,
now are gibberish, a language from another time.
The songs I waggled on keys of black and white
pass through me like icicles of steam. The spark is
dead,
the embers are
cold,
and I waste time like I had years
that will never end.

All my mistakes are on repeat,
all my joys are dead weight,
all my complaints are deaf,
my thoughts squashed by rules that
that I’ve broken and paid for, from curios to
curiosity. I’ve shackled my words to avoid
conflagrations.
I’ve handcuffed my sentences and simply hope
that someone can read my moods. I’ve muted
so much
that I forget half the alphabet. Do I overstate it?

No

Even as I write I edit. I apologize, but days like this
feel like
dying. I hate sleight of hand; I would never deceive you.
But I can’t reveal too much for fear of driving yet another
beloved one away.

Don’t promise me heaven. Just stop with that shit. Don’t
promise me
no more tears
like I need a baby shampoo.
I want a garden here in my back yard,
not a paradise in the clouds.

How can anyone understand when my own
thoughts defy translation? Pain is a trap,
a snare in the forest.
Pain is a mind like a cauldron
boiling with an iron lid around its neck.

Did I say I don’t mean to question? Did I lie?
Pity is not the antibiotic I need,
tranquility is overrated.
But as people have been subtracted from me,
no one has been added.

I’m locked inside the pain again,
and chained to all my secrecy.
I am not finished.
I shall write again tomorrow.

The Wrong Question

The Wrong Question

“’I don’t know whether he’s a sinner or not,’ replied the man. ‘All I know is this: I used to be blind, and now I can see.’” John 9:25

We are all influenced by our perceptions. And, when we are young, we often have little cognitive ability to tell the difference between what we have taught is right and what might actually be true. I was fortunate to grow up in a home that taught racial equality as a core value. That was unusual at the time, born in 1955 and growing up in the 60s with both parents from the South. Dad was born in Missouri; Mom in Oklahoma and I was born in Texas. We moved to Southern California when I was in second grade.

But I also knew, as a child, the attitudes of some of my peers. Growing up in a small West Texas oil town, we had a mix of Mexican and White families. I remember quite vividly walking home from school with friends when they saw a dark-skinned classmate ahead of us. They all said we needed to walk on the other side of the street. My friends were not born with the perception; they were taught.

In John chapter 9 we have a story of the religious rulers who cannot get past their false religious perceptions and assumptions. Jesus heals a man who has been blind from birth, a most unusual healing, and the only one recorded of congenital blindness. Not even the disciples are immune from false perceptions.  They ask, “Whose sin was it that caused this man to be born blind? Did he sin, or did his parents?”

First of all, does it strike you strange that the ask about a man blind from birth if his ailment was a result of personal sin? Our presumptions can take us to outrageous and nonsensical ideas. They also ask about the parents, which is more reasonable. But Jesus tears down their entire argument at its base.

“He didn’t sin, nor did his parents.” Take that in, please! Jesus puts to rest the whole idea that catastrophe is some evidence of God’s displeasure. No, hurricanes are not cause by homosexuals. Floods are not caused by unmarried sex. And tornadoes are not caused by abortions. By this reasoning, the United States would have been destroyed many times over for its genocide of Native Americans and its enslavement and dehumanization of African Americans. Sin does have consequences; but most often, they are the natural bad results from evil.

And, by the way, do you notice that those who want to attribute catastrophe to God’s judgment have a very narrow list of the sins God is pissed about? Why? Perception, assumption, just like the religious leaders in our story.

They did not like Jesus much. In fact, that say he is from the devil and a sinner more than once in this story. Why would people who were supposed to lead the nation to God be so jealous and blind when the Son of God appears? One reason is that He disassembled their perceptions about God, sin, and righteousness.

They, like the disciples, assumed there were “righteous” and “unrighteous” people. The righteous got God’s blessing, the unrighteous his wrath. They didn’t like the story where Jesus describes a religious leader going into the temple, praying the way that good religious leaders do:

“God, I thank you that I am not like the other people – greedy, unjust, immoral, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get.” (Luke 18:11-12) Maybe you have heard similar prayers in your church. Maybe not. Hopefully not. But the sentiment permeates much of evangelical thinking. “Look at me and how good I am for God!”

The tax-collector referred to in the Pharisee’s prayer stood a long way off, not even lifting up his eyes to heaven. Beating his breast, he prayed simply: “God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am.”

Jesus says this man was the one who went home vindicated by God and not the other. The Pharisees didn’t like that.

They didn’t like that Jesus made a hated Samaritan the hero in his story about being good neighbors. They were offended that He did good to outsiders: lepers, tax-collectors, prostitutes, those outside of Israel’s elect. They were angry that He didn’t kowtow to their religious power, but advocated, not a violent overthrow of oppression, but the peaceful reign of God.

So, with all their false perceptions, these “leaders” cannot even recognize that this healing of a man blind from birth could ever be from God. Why? Because Jesus did it!

The Pharisees call the healed man and say, “Give God the glory! We know that this man (Jesus) is a sinner!” To which the man replies, “All I know is this: I used to be blind, and now I can see.”

When you see grace permeating someone’s life, can you open your heart to the possibility that Christ is involved? When you see someone who acts in compassion toward those who can give back nothing, can you suppose they might be working for the Kingdom of God? Jesus called Samaritans, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes and the like to be His people.

Jesus is knocking at the door of the church. Please don’t let rigid religious assumptions, a self-righteous attitude toward sin, or an unholy nationalism keep you from seeing what Jesus is doing. And once you see what He is doing, jump on board. The ride may be scary at first, but you will never be the same.

Even One

Even One

(“Don’t be too quick to get angry because anger lives in the fool’s heart” Ecclesiastes 7:9)

You would never know when his lid would blow
spilling the scant particles of mind in rapid fashion.
He was my friend, a sort of pretending that doubles up the masks
of deception and self-preservation. One never knew the true man,
even the cracks in his character were darker than
the serrated edges around his eyes. I must apologize, Mr. Cohen,
this one time, these exact tracks never did let the light get in.)

I still ache. I am not well. I have not healed. I still shake when
no one is watching,
and my eyes swell at night while the tick-tocking pounds me awake.

There are plaques on my wall to illustrate my goodness, but now that,
10 years after the double-barrel burst from the double-masked man
I know fewer and fewer people, the radius of friends is smaller and smaller.
And, if I could have my way, I would crawl into the groundhogs’ burrow,
a solitary rodent hoping to use less breath than yesterday.

Do not be dismayed, do not attempt to heal or fix me;
some have, with the warmest intent but with results as silly
as dropping a dozen groundhogs into a hole in the ground:
and, with one short command: “Play!” and expect them to stand and dance
and ask you for more.

“It has been 10 years, son”, I hear them say. “10 years you’re still hung up on.”
And they are right, my mind, my plight, my guts sprung far too tight,
my brain ache, my shaking skin and the nighttime rest that will not
let me in…still exist. And, just for the record, since you wondered, since
you asked,
You are right, but here is my question for you:
“In those same 10 years, sir”, please hear me say, “10 years I have never heard from…

….even one.”