With Room to Breathe

With Room to Breathe

(“For you bear with a man if he brings you into bondage, if he devours you, if he takes you captive, if he exalts himself, or if he strikes you on the face.” 2 Corinthians 11:20)

They call us the heretics, but we never made demands,
used serpentine words to manipulate you, or shamed you
into a faux repentance. We stayed resistant to the strategies
of those who talk with lengthy panoramas to convince you
they were the elite and the narrow way to God.

While they punch you into submission, making you unworthy
for only fasting a day; while they wave their arms like
backstreet gypsies, they list themselves among the top tier
consummate eras of pickpocket prophets.
They will tell you your fortune for a contribution to
their flag-wrapped  They predict earthquakes, they
promise a place at the top of the hierarchy, they have
occupied the pyramid since they learned how to
manipulate people’s fears.

Meanwhile the vagabond raggamuffins speak slowly,
their soft words barely heard above the boasting using
divinity for personal gain. They slovenly sit at banquets
of overpriced menus. They put on weight while their
authority floats as light as a feather. They boast about
40 day fasts and are ready to sell you a book all about it.

The only boast from the hobos who eat around campfires late,
is they never made any demands, had suffered at the hands of
many super-apostles trying to keep them quiet. But these
scrappy vagrants for Christ find little reason to speak today.
They know the fruit will show up at last, the love that does
not
demand its own way.

Within a matter of days their quiet campfires will burn
ablaze with room to breath and invitations to share the
true stories of the quietly redeemed.

The Unshakeable Room

The Unshakeable Room

(“So since we are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us give thanks, and through this let us offer worship pleasing to God in devotion and awe.” Hebrews 12:28)

I tried every door, tested every lock,
tried to gain admittance, you rang the bell,
I knocked on the door until it echoed back to
my knuckles on the wood.

There was rubble all around me, but I wasn’t
sure why. The buildings had just been standing proudly
the day before.
But I stood at the threshold the only edifice left unbroken.
It was a home, it was a bungalow,
it was the dwelling of a handful of vagabonds
who insisted the world was not their final home.

I listened for their voices. They seemed coarse,
almost hoarse. Had they not used them, had they
vowed away their noise for silence?
Someone turned the handle, and the door curved
on its hinges slowly, without creaking. It was a
heavy wood and dark, maybe mahogany. A large man
filled the frame and invited me in.

I turned around to look
one more time
at the debris behind me and wondered how this simple
abode stayed standing all alone.
The man croaked lowly at me, inviting me in
and I turned my head around once more to see
my bearded host bid me come. It was dark inside,
illuminated by candles. Half a dozen sat around a
large table in the middle of the room. They were laughing
in the midst of tragedy. They were waiting for others to
seek sanctuary. They were sending invitations up the road
as far as they could see.

I did not know how they escaped
destruction,
but I knew I needed the instruction they could give. I knew
there would be others at the door, so I took a platter,
ate and drank what I needed, and asked permission to welcome
others up and down the block to the unshakeable room.

Something Caught My Eye

Something Caught My Eye

(“You gave me room when I was in distress.” Psalm 4:1b)

I nearly caught up with the day
that I
followed the fall line across the
East Bay hills
below Mount Diablo. I nearly saw the
place again
where play was more likely than
definitions constructed behind fenced-
in
yards.

But I locked the gate myself, I
guess;
I thought better of sitting in the sun while
a friend smiled
and admired my silly guitar chords on a late
afternoon.

I still can smell that sweet mown hay,
I still can see the way clouds looked like angels
and there was no one enforcing the time or place
where we could get lost
and walk the same circles as if they were the first.

These days I swear I may burst,
I may have rehearsed my answers far to well.
These moments my reach is diminished,
my sight locked and myopic. My opinions have changed
(I have fewer), but everything still looks the way it has
for decades now.

I would give anything to play on the hills again,
to sing the songs that teenagers sing. I would find
the open space and
never
let it lock me in again.

Something caught my eye. I am trying to remember it.
I am trying to say that someone gave me open space once,
and I no longer own it. And I catch my breath like I
catch the flu
and stay inside alone until the summer is ended.

To sum it up, I could dance if you played the tune we
both know
long enough.

And Then the Wind Turned

 And Then the Wind Turned

(“They stopped asking, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us from the land of Egypt…’” Jeremiah 2:6a)

There was a time when I thought that
an empty room
and vacant thoughts
meant God had left the premises.
There was a time I screamed for
God’s return.
There was a time when I was certain
that wind like fire was
the certification of a job well done.
There were times I fasted badly,
told no one (or only a few)
and convinced myself had I held out longer
my troubles and temptations would have
melted like ice cream in the sun.
There was a time when I expected everyone
to agree. 

And then the wind turned on itself
when the big voices
insisted hurricanes were God’s destruction
for
blank and blank and so much sin that
it stank in his nostrils. Can we begin again? 

Please? 

Did God knock down trees simply to appease
your bluster mister man while you collected diamonds
on the backs of the poor?
And while you spread lies about stolen votes
you have sucked the soul right out of the nation.
How much fasting will replace your deceptions? 

Now I see (somewhat dimly)
the fullness of things, the revolution that
moves into the neighborhoods we once skirted
and called dark and oppressive. When,
all the while,
God waited for us to show up and see
what God was already doing. 

More or Less Precisely

 

(Anika Sage Phillips)

More or Less Precisely

for caring health workers and my beloved granddaughter Anika

(“All of God’s promises have their yes in him. That is why we say Amen through him to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20)

I walked into the room and sat down in the maroon lounger
ready for my quarterly cocktail of headache juice.
Something in my brain broke 4,470 days ago
(more or less precisely)
and now I visit the infusion bar for another
in a long chain of failed remedies. The pain
in my head
runs in front of me most days,
digging a rut, a labyrinth
of loneliness…
most days.

I am the new one at this bar where most
are infused with healing poison
to kill the rebel cells that turned traitor
on the cancer patients’ bodies. They visit monthly,
sometimes weekly and call the barkeeps by name.

Me, I’m only here for a headache, and it has been 90 days
since I drank from the newest elixir claimed
to turn my brain around.

One of the angels set my table:
a bottle of water,
a package of trail mix,
blood pressure slightly high,
and a polished steel frame that will hold
the long pour that will keep me there a
half hour or more.
I have never had such attentive mixologists before.
Another angel sticks my arm with a pin
and leaves it there waiting for my cocktail to begin.
Then the third hangs my hope on the frame,
a premix in a plastic bag flowing from above me
into my veins.

I should add (for the reader some years from now)
we are living and breathing in a pandemic, and
I am not the only one isolated these days. The angels,
they all wear masks, as do their patrons, to stop the spread,
and get ahead of this virus that outsmarted most of us.

I could not see the angels smile; they could not see my crooked teeth,
but I watched their eyes sparkle and the third one had curls that
bounced slightly when she talked:

“How long?” she asked. It is what everyone asks. And I tell
her I am starting a baker’s dozen of years now. Her brow furrowed,
her breath suspended like a dream that lasts moments but
is filled with twists and plots and a-list faces you never remember.

“13 years?” she asked. It is what I wonder too. And I tell her
“yes”
while I recount my work history, my retirement, my fear of displacement,
and my desire to visit Ireland someday. And then I say

“But I did take a trip last year.”

II.

And recount my fortnight with the sunshine of my life,
my Anika, my beloved granddaughter, my bubbles, my
too soon growing up girl in the north country, to help
her mom and dad

Go to Asia.

We dropped the parents at the airport, Minneapolis, 15 above.
I borrowed my son’s coat and boots and thick socks and gloves.
We drove back home to plan our 14-day adventure.

We would eat sushi and pizza,
Papa would cook once or twice,
we would eat ice cream and noodles.
Ani would take me to see the sights
on long adventures in the basement with
flashlights, laundry baskets and Hamilton
on the playlist.
We got snowed in on the weekend, a Mid-March
blizzard caught us by surprise.

But, to the third angel I said:

My ten-year old Ani, my smart and sweet one,
took dance lessons downtown and I stayed while
she and her friends practiced in cohorts. There
were arms and legs becoming machines,
twirling hair and flowers made of magical things.

And then it was time
to show what they had rehearsed. Each
troupe in the studio performed for us; whirled
and turned, interpreted the score for us.
I sat in a chair, Ani sat on the floor with
a dozen dance mates.

But two, maybe three performances in she
looked back and up at me, noticed a chair next to me
and slid away from her friends to join Papa for
a while. Of course I smiled.

But then, one of those moments where time and the divine
meet in such warmth that the space between now and then
becomes so thin there is little difference;
in that moment she laid her head on my shoulder and
I don’t mind telling you,
my pain became amnesia. Oh, and she may not
have noticed,
but Papa cried tears that day,
and is tearing up now just telling you about it.

III.

While I was speaking, angels one and two
joined the third angel listening to my story.
I had finished my draught some time ago
and I wished they could make it a double.

I am not nearly so talkative most days,
but today was one of those yes days,
an amen day,
a day when the angels would not depart until

I finished telling my story.

Mutters and Utterances

Mutters and Utterances

(“Some magicians think they can wake Leviathan. So let them say their curses and curse the day I was born.” Job 3:8)

I was wondering when your divination would show its hand.
When the mutters and utterances under your breath
would cast their obelisk shadows across the land.

I cannot say what I wish I could. The lake is full of fury,
the river a crease across the countryside. And every moment
that looks darker than the last
is prophesied to be the final event on the calendar
that you think you began.

How many births must there be until
people give each other room to breathe.

The hospitals are riddled with shrapnel and blood,
and yet we lock our doors to the innocents for fear
there is a magician hidden among them. And Jesus never

Enters the doors of churches who do not open theirs.

It feels like a million years of crying, each birth preceded
by twice as much dying. Can I ask you for a hand before you
dismiss me from your sphere? Where did we learn to put
predetermined circumferences around our circle of friends?

I wait too long now. The songs lie dormant in an age so far gone
that the tears follow my wrinkles from the corner of each eye
along the creases in my cheeks. The weeks pass and summer slips
by; a brief breeze of someone I once knew by name.

When grief finally erupts from its deep springs, the mourning
over losses (years of love, missed endearments) obscures the sky
and I hear my papa cry, “you make a better door than a window.”

These days (no lie) I would rather sneak out of the way
than take the lumps for discovering what I had always wished

To be true.