No Time for Questions

 

No Time for Questions

(“So Mary and Martha sent someone to tell Jesus, ‘Lord, your dear friend Lazarus is sick.’” John 11:3)

I read the letter halfway to home,
and finished it arriving in the driveway. There were
requests I could not fulfill,
anxiety I could not quell. But I knew love,
the old love,
the complete love that befriends nearly everyone
with a heart wide open like the North Dakota plains.

How many friends did you have, how many did you
cover with blankets of warm summer evening comfort?

Even now there are loved ones whose breath is shortened
by the unwelcome infections of dis/ease. Even now,
at the end of the letter, are the pleas for presence
and the possibility of miracles. Anything can happen,
any time the pressure can ease around the bed of the
frail and beloved friend.

Even now the street lights beckon, leading me home.
Even then the questions spun like uncertain diagnoses
and breakfast bringing up the last part of the morning.
No one ate that day, no one could. Everyone cried,
everyone revived their hope that this would not be the ending.

We pulled up next to the house, we heard the crying
over the lumbering engine. We cried too, how could we refuse;
there were tears from the front door to the kitchen and turning sharply
to the dimmed room halfway down the hall.

We opened the door, and we knew the sickness together.
We left extra late and arrived slightly early. We sat with
the illness speaking between us. It was certain that death
had filled the room and smirched our hopes. Taking his hand
we implored mightily, joined our voices with the others crying
for your vitality. But your breath faded, slow, one or two
lungfuls left. Your heart listened until the final groggy beat.

Where was he, the miracle worker? How did I get there before
he arrived? What would come of tomorrow with our friend
all but dead? What faith could we borrow once he was entombed?
His sisters had sat with him the whole long day. And now they
exhaled a breath they had held for nearly four days long. The
tomb was ready. The time was now. And I offered to wrap him
in strips of linen for the friends to carry him to the grave.

We cried because he could have been saved. We had seen the
chosen
one
cure even worse maladies and late. Why wasn’t he here,
why did he delay. We had no time for questions. It was time
to lay him on the bier and try to sleep the night away.

Questions Don’t Always Have Answers

Questions Don’t Always Have Answers

(“Then he said, ‘I tell you the truth. You must change and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:3)

I’ve seen you playing basketball in the street,
practicing your layups, your three-point plays,
your bounce passes and the hopes you will get to start
the very next game. But, though a teenager now, the child
hasn’t completely left, has it? I know you will even jump
on your trampoline with your 3-year-old sister. Maybe you
just put up with her, but that is what older brothers do.

I’m sure you’ve seen a slew of problems you would like to know
the answers to.
And even though you live right next to me, don’t hold out any hope
for certainty from me.

I know a girl whose mom died when she was 40. She nearly beat that
wicked cancer,
she did. But then her body was done. Her organs began shutting down,
her breathing became labored, and she was compassionately kept as
comfortable as possible.

We laid hands on her, didn’t we? All the relatives; her mom, her grandad,
her sisters, her daughter and their sometime pastor. We were convinced
God could do anything. We were persuaded God would not leave this
5-year-old child alone.

We used to ask for prayer requests at Sunday Services
and Nancy, that was the child’s name,
always asked for prayer for her momma. She asked for prayer when she
was in treatment,
she asked for prayer once she was buried. Nancy only knew God had
to do something good. And the something good would be having
mommy back in the house, laughing with her daughter, making
pumpkin pie together and walking in the fields to collect kindling
for the woodstove through November to February.
God can do anything, the Pastor even said so. But it seems so
unfair
that the God who can do anything refuses to do
everything. Children feel this more deeply than us all. God,
what in the hell did we do to you for you to take away a mom from her
vulnerable child?

My neighbor keeps practicing his shots from the field. I believe
he is getting better, and I’ve never asked him about God.

I only know that I’d rather live with the questions children ask than
the vanilla retorts adults learn from books that give 1000 answers to
questions that are never meant to have answers.

I see Nancy from time to time. She was the last person I every baptized.
Even then, as she went under the water (she did love Jesus), her question floated
just above her head: “Why, why, why, is my mother dead?”

The Unnaming of Things

The Unnaming of Things

(“Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forever.” Psalm 131:3)

After all this time,
before the moment I thought to design
a new philosophy of mind,
in the center of the bridge between
chorus and verse
I was surprised that you were nothing like
what I expected.

Certain I had it all defined,
I became bi-lingual and spoke fluently
in words so concrete they were always
bilateral
or
at least
black and white.

The rains came after my skin had been
baked by unknown suns,
the questions hung like laundry on the line
and had to be taken in for protection.

How could I restrict you to breezes I
had named? How could I presume to understand
your geography? I have learned
(such a presumptive phrase)
to love the anonymous blades of grass
and the rivers that ran before they could
be pronounced.

After all this time,
(before I listened for a mouthpiece)
I can swim for days without hearing a word.
My breath isolates me, and I must come up for air
sooner that when I was younger.
Glide. Stroke. Kick. Breathe.
And the clothes I once wore, now soaked in
river whorls midstream

Baptize me again to know far less than I knew
before.

Questions Like These

Questions Like These

(“A discussion started among them about who would be the greatest.” Luke 9:46)

Questions like these cause the world to stop spinning
and laugh like onions in a chocolate milkshake.
They are misguided missiles,
thought-bombs that explode far from
the source of every noun, every verb,
every proclamation complete with non-sequiturs
and slovenly rhetoric.

Give me children who wave at me,
neighborhood pets who run to me,
eagles ignoring me,
and breezes that barely whisper the names
that have
gone before me.

The strongest among us find their bones
becoming brittle eventually.
The few on the pyramid above us
find their breath thick and cannot spare
a single respiration. Inevitably.

Look inside my cedar chest, a few blankets,
mildewed clothing, chipped teacups and saucers.
We keep mementos because we could not keep
our ancestors alive. And two more generations,
maybe three, maybe all,
the keepsakes will crumble to dust, the wind
changing their course from owned to loam hundreds
of miles from here.

Give me a baby crying in the night,
give me the mother nursing the child,
give me the father walking the floor,
give me the make-believe that should
never die.

Questions like this keep our fists closed,
grasping rods of iron,
clenching thrones of power.
Set a child before me, let their eyes
loosen my hold on unearned titles.

Let me learn the lessons of upturned faces lifted
toward the sun.

I Barely Know the Questions

I Barely Know the Questions

(“None of the Pharisees could answer Jesus’ question, and after that day no one was brave enough to ask him any more questions.” Matthew 22:46)

I don’t know the answers either,
I barely know the questions. I see a self,
a ghost in the distance,
that is so much better than my existence. My
neighbor’s
husky looks out the window at me
and I wished I looked at myself with the same
all-inclusive eyes.
But I feel I feed on lies, on shells and masks,
on past efforts that now have worn me thin.
There is no beginning from where I sit and the ending
is longer and darker than I want to admit. So I sit in the flurry
of eddies formed where never, not yet, and what was meant to be
meet. Watch me spin. You will see a new face every revolution.

There are kisses I remember, smiles that fade in and out,
the conversations that frightened me then and frighten me again.
The question marks end and begin every sentence,
the conversations straddle bus seats I’ve forgotten.
And the earth keeps moving like iron wheels on rusting tracks;
they’ve changed the destinations, time erodes like that,
and I keep looking for ways to go back to

Find the part of me I left behind like lost luggage
strewn across the scenery.
I did not know what it meant then, I know too well now and
wish for the serenity of staying up all night with friends
whose names I barely remember. The ache, I think,

I was born with it. What were you born with Jesus,
and how did you travel between cavity and crowd?

I am Owned

I am Owned

(“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” 1 Corinthians 6:19)

Companion of all I am, my questions and vague answers,
my soft lawn and burning sand; sojourn here where dancers
sometimes brighten the day, and; where blisters enhance the limpI’ve carried from the first day I insisted on allowing You to stay.

You are stubborn, pulling me like magnetic migrants to rubble and storms;
You are gentle, showing me the tears that fall for urbans and farms;
You are stronger, still I must follow, you do not drive or strike me;
You are fiery, breaking the ice jams, burning my first plans and my psyche

Until I own that I am owned. I browse no longer, the window shopping is over,
I am overtaken by love, pulled by black hole wind that insists I fly without trying,
learning the sky and earth, moon and sun, soul and neighbor, all deserve the
best behavior

From a mere visitor upon the Holy One’s Sacred tour.

Share a Slice

Share a Slice

I wonder who would take me to task for asking
questions no one else asks (but is thinking).
I wonder would my words be rehashed over the
tiny backlash they caused, though the ship (is not sinking).

I wonder, if I held my tongue, and never disrupted
the party line, sung only the verses we all know (from memory),
I wonder, if the bell was rung, not to incite a riot
among the faithful; just to fill the space (sometimes empty).

I would share a piece of my mind, a slice of my brain sustained
from the 90% unused. It is kind to speak truth or (raise my hand)
when pieces don’t fit, when pieces are missing. I would share
a piece of velvet, a piece of cake; a pie, a muffin, (no lies stuffed)

In the middle of honest thought some fear is heresy.

At Night

At Night

(“He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Teacher, we know You have come from God to teach us. No one can do these powerful works You do unless God is with Him.’” John 3:2)

We search beneath the curtained sky, moonless nights,
shortened “whys”. We ask with whispered lips, shaky limbs,
tripping tongues.

We sat up straight from morning till noon,
took a lunch, and loped through the afternoon.
The phones rang and we answered. The questions lobbed

and we prepared our quotations. Our pace was certain,
though we misread the destination.

The mud was still warm, the tree limbs exhaled their
humid breath, and we found the steps to the ancient well
where we did our best thinking. The leftovers of the day
radiated from the darkening stones to our face wrinkled
more by inquisitive lines than age.

On the right day of the month we pick up our checks,
a reward for hours or completed projects, and yet,
it never fairly represents our work. We wish for more,
we deserve less. Nevertheless digits measure our worth
for better or worse.

The aquifer has fed the well for more generations than
present habitants can count. The water absorbs the
workday heat from our brow as we lean into the black
circle and smell life and moss; distant frogs and songs.

The place we do our best thinking is a puzzle of creation,
a mystery, a rebus that quenches our thirst for grace.

We wake in the morning to earn our living again,
sun up, doors creak, cashiers call; buy, trade, sell,
alone, afraid, a bonus, a pink slip, time spent without
knowing names.

The well remains.

More on Pain and Suffering

"The men who were holding Jesus in custody taunted him while they beat him. They blindfolded him and asked him repeatedly, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” Insulting him, they said many other horrible things against him.” Luke 11:63-64

It would be the utmost arrogance for me to assume the pain I have endured for nearly six years comes close to Jesus’ suffering. I have a headache of unknown causes diagnosed as New Daily Persistent Headache. I endure pain twenty four hours a day, with an average of six out of 10. It takes more than one try most days to simply get out of bed, and my physical activity has been severely limited. My wife and I just visited our kids and granddaughter for 14 days in Minneapolis and I ventured outdoors only once, with the pain keeping down the rest of the time.