Small Things

 Small Things

(“If you receive this child in my name,” he said, “you receive me. And anyone who receives me, receives the one who sent me. Whoever is the least among you—that’s the one who is great.” Luke 9:48)

They started well, like an evening stroll through the forest,
like a dog greeting its owner, like a baby laughing out loud
for the very first time. But things expanded, they got bigger,
they demanded more attention shown to the leaders who started
out lying on cushions and now were seated on thrones.

It all got away from us; we got caught up in the hype that
everything we prayed for would make everything bigger than
we could ever imagine. And for a while, it worked. For a while
we convinced ourselves that the more obedience we demanded
the less bitter the future would be. We put our faces down to make
sure we toed the line and never stopped asking questions of the unaligned
who were a beat too slow when we sang our decorated hymns they
should have known.

We could have waited for them to learn the tunes,
to hum them unworded to start. We could have slowed it
all down but we had more people pounding down the doors
to get their next fix of what we advertised week to week.
We promised new songs given by the spirit,
we promised good health while they waited in line.
They crowded in to hear us pontificate about the triggers
that forced us to send them out against immediate enemies.
We grew, oh how we grew, like a creeping vine in midsummer.

We forgot all about the toddlers sleeping on Sunday.
We let the baby stay awake and left her at home.
We shushed the children who giggled too often,
we muted the questions the preteens asked too precisely.

We missed the wide-eyed fascination with canticles of faith.
We forgot how tiny voices could stay in our minds long after
the sermons drifted away.

We called for dedication, but left discernment aside.
We relied on lofty pronouncements when the truth was among
pint-sized.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the treasure we find in
cast aside converts who attempted to backslide. We doomed them
like the choking black of a moonless night.

But their story is truer. Their words full of life.
Their questions childlike, and their laughter
more holy than a dozen hallelujah shouted
full-throat by everyone in the balcony.

A Member of the Other Team

A Member of the Other Team

(“He asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?’” Acts 19:2)

I do not know if I was kneeling to pray,
or if it was a hit to my blindside that drove me to my knees.
Either way I had been disarmed and
my fears turned to tears turned to sweat
on the turf beneath me.

Shoved down or sunk down,
the game was over,
the jig was up,
the tide was lost.

Some had fallen around me,
some with their faces in the ground.
Some had fallen near me,
some with their eyes to the clouds.
Some stumbled over the noise until
everyone left.  The roar was over, the
music piped
away toward the east, and we picked up
the pieces
of a day when the pieces did not fit.

It was my fear that disarmed me. It was a
shiver I had felt the first time I found I could
not color within the lines. It was the flush I
hated that burned my forehead every time a referee
called my name in front of everyone. It was the
blood that drained from my face when the
public announcer
pointed me out, still wet and prone on the ground.

And then I dreamed. Or so it seemed. There was an opponent,
a member of the other team,
been in the league more years than most and carried
his weight in violence on the field.

I had not moved, my knees ached. And I felt a shadow come
over me from feet, to back, to neck, to arms. I felt a shadow
hover. And then the weight, the sweat of another body mixing
with mine.
He wrapped me like a tent. He covered me. I could move,
but I stayed, confused, dismayed and

Red in the face. But he would not let me loose. He only
shielded me. He did not know, but I wanted to refuse. This
refuge, this covering was far too masculine, and would wound
me
if I moved to escape.

But I was not wounded. I did not break. The muscles in the back of my neck
melted. For a moment this was the universe. For a second,
the lectures disappeared into the abyss. After minutes
I crawled
through the tree-trunk arms and saw the empty field.
We walked the circumference and did not say a word.
For once the wrestling was done.