Deconstruction

Deconstruction

(“I will create new heavens and a new earth. The things that have happened before will not be remembered.  They will not even enter your minds.” Isaiah 65:17)

His heart had been demolished while he
thought he was building a life.
Each belief was a brick in elegant courses around
a courtyard of worship and labyrinths.

He walked in knowledge, he spoke with power,
his words came easy, actions harder than dried mud.
He was water, he was pliant, he was weeping and he was
silent
too many times when he knew the truth had been
left unspoken.

But his heart imploded after the high-rise was vacant
leaving him useless for the corporation’s intentions.
It leaned across the expressway waiting for the wrecking ball
to finish the job before anyone else got hurt.

Though he bled onto the pages, and said he still believed,
he was sometimes viewed with suspicion
because he spread his damage across the table with
the wine and the bread.

No one asked him to leave, but no bandaged his wounds either.
He needed reprieve, he needed sounds of tears in the voices of his peers,
he ached for comrades, he begged for afternoon visits,
he waited until someone would let him know they
wanted him to stay. From far away he knew they did,
but not one sent a card amid the floods of grief on his
office floor.

So, before the silence became louder, he departed;
old wounds reopening like springs in the desert,
like sap from dead trees,
like maple from Vermont,
like venom from rattlesnake fangs;
he took the things he needed, heeded the sign that said
the shop was now closed, took his best and old clothes
to another side of the country.

Because he had partly been rebuilt, he deconstructed.

Entering a potter’s house, he watched as the master’s fingers
shaped the ceramic almost useful. But it was marred in his hands and
before he could start again

Our narrator grabbed the clay, the almost jar,
and slung it against the room. The heaviness smashed
the finished works on the shelf of the workroom; shards
piercing the air, the skin, the wheel, and again; he picked up
the largest piece of kilned clay. Iridescent, it gleamed of summer
green and
sacred blue. Lifted over his head, both-handed, he flung the
final piece and shattered it against the door that led outside.
It was there, surrounded by fragments, he knew his heart was
finished with the brickwork of the past.

And he started, slowly, like an aging painter,
to construct his real life, his true heart, his ever-self
at last.

To Tell the Truth

“Moreover, the Eternal One of Israel will not lie or change his mind, because he isn’t a mere human being subject to changing his mind.” 1 Samuel 15:29

Truth; perhaps the most foreign concept to most of us. We like to think we are honest and we want to come off as truthful people, but we usually spend more energy maintaining an image than allowing our true selves to be found out. That is why so many relationships lack much intimacy or satisfaction at all. We never are sure whether others are being “who they are”, and we spend the same amount of time buffing up what we hope people will think about us.

Thrill Us Alongside

Thrill Us Alongside

(“Then Moses prayed to the Lord, ‘What am I going to do with these people? They are about to stone me to death!’” Exodus 17:4)

Thrill us alongside our easy beliefs,
be the jester for our fear’s relief,
magic acts explode and smoke,
banquets of miracles or we will revoke
your prophet’s license here and now!

Presume the definition lives up to your own hunger
and every flower means zero if it cannot be eaten.
Measure goodness by your own myopia
and every lantern is a black hole on a sinking boat.

Tell us what will make us cry for the moment,
not what makes us brood over undone reconstruction.
We are ready to release in buckets full of emotion
our agony to spend the rest of the day
lightly playing like no neighbor hungers like me.

Fewer faces, decrease the spaces between the
Kingdom Come
and the words our tongues make our
world become.

Hunger, let it grumble in me for you;
pangs and fasting, let them answer on earth
as it always is in Heaven.

We might drop the rocks, bruise our toes,
before we ever again refuse another step
that refuses to see Father’s love that chose
our provision tomorrow before we ever slept

Today.

Any Room Large

Any Room Large
(“Jesus would not let anyone carry things through the temple.” Mark 11:16)

Take a shortcut through the prayer meeting,
carry your briefcase to Bible Study,
update your status, answer the next text,
all while footing past the quiet few listening
for their answers.

Why try to bash your business through the front doors of the temple?
Ignore some more the careful view that some have painted to let their
hearts soar beyond the work-day.
Why keep your phone on? Why update at all when Mighty Attention
draws you tirelessly to His rest.

Burn your smart phones on the next idol pile,
stop your talk of tomorrow’s deal, leave the invoices you carry
behind.
We are not fractions; the Universal Passion will not live
in any room large enough to house second loves and third.

Turn them off the next whisper you hear,
there is desperation that demands meditation
uninterrupted by the need to display your centrality;
you cannot be unconnected for a moment.

Disconnect the next instant quietness calls,
put down the deal to seal; do not trample
buoyancy with the weight of your importance.
You mean more to the Speaker Eternal than
the next caller to place the next order.

Take the long road next time,
stop hurrying through the House of Prayer,
take the scenic route tomorrow,
no more scurrying unaware

Of the worshipers seek the hope of
a single word undistracted by my parade
of self-importance.