A Blank Slate

A Blank Slate

(“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20)

I’d like to believe I am a blank slate.
I’d like to think I’m ready for the writing on the wall.
I’d enjoy the chance to talk in private the ways
I preside over public speech.
I’m ready for the old instructions to be rewritten
on my heart.

You were lying by the side of the road, a
castoff
of better times. Nothing in your pockets and
nowhere to go, you canceled your subscription to
unhelpful words of painted pain.

I’d like to believe I’d give you a chance.
I’d like to believe I’ve read the situation well.
I’d enjoy the chance to enjoy an open door
before I closed it for the afternoon.
I’m ready for the completion of the courses
I signed up for free.

You were worn out, a castaway who once
believed
in basic rhymes. Your mind was crawling with
nowhere to go, so you sat on the side of the road
and waited for--and waited for--the mail to arrive.
Words on paper might transform the vagaries
of time.

I’d like to write on the whiteboard of your heart.
I’d like to think you could read me like an open book.
I’d enjoy the chance to show you something
more than recited dogma, to serve you something
more than leftovers and crumbs.
I’m ready to accompany you through the shadows
others had left behind.

Springing from Within

Springing from Within

(“But if someone loves God, it is certain that God has already known that one.” 1 Corinthians 8:3)

Suddenly the air was clearer, the skies without fear,
the echoes without terror. What we were used to hearing was
war muted by the long lines of melody played over the
top of the clouds like a violin motif inviting us home.

We felt it like love streaming in tropical dreams,
like a mother’s nickname for her newborn child.
We simply sampled what had been offered from
eternity past into late night conversations loosened by
a couple of glasses of wine.

How lovely is the handiwork, the sculptured horizons,
the landscapes of brilliance and the offers of peace
on earth. Why we had ignored it made no sense to
some who had hummed that tune from their earliest
breaths.

But for others those days gave way to harsh assessments
of diving expectations, adopting overbearing stances
like brick walls disguised as fences. But some refused
to let go of their notions of liberation, their images of
deliverance. For them every heartbeat was another reason
to sing the most astounding of songs. Eyes upturned,
their hands were full to share the food and warm words
to the onlookers simply hoping for something better than
hyper-critical evaluations of the crowds.

They knew the jargon but found it empty. They
used to use the same language too. But, astounding,
and alarming, the moment their hearts had turned the
old dialect was found wanting
and empty on the scales of exuberance.

Now, where once there were armaments of warfare in
the names of their god
they found and sang and walked the ground like
pilgrims and nothing more. Their nothingness was
turned to cantatas of simple tones that toddlers
could learn and fill the rooms with unqualified love without
judgment. A new song of emancipation springing from within.

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.

If I Sit There Silently

If I Sit There Silently

(“We do not know how to pray or what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us with sounds that cannot be put into words.” Romans 8:26b)

What’s it to you if I sit there silently
while someone wails at the back of the room?
What difference does it make if my songs are wordless,
and I play in a minor key?
I used to think it was spiritual,
now I think it’s just mischief,
to stay one minute longer in prayer
than the ones who sweat for an hour.
What’s it to you if I’d rather hear
the air sing like wind than
repeat another verse of a brand new hymn
that begs for attention, that grovels like sand?

Once the noise dictated my definitions,
once the clock measured my piety.
Now the silence I always welcomed
welcomes me. I’ll sit with you in this
loneliness; I’ll picture that face that crafted
yours and
count every reflection a prayer,
every tear holy,
every laugh a prophecy,
and every raindrop the beginning
of a sacred dance.

What’s it to you if my notes are
indecipherable?
What’s it to me if I don’t remember
pronouncements well?
What difference does it make if I
still limp after a thousand voices have
declared me healed? What difference does it
make if
I’d rather be invited to a meal?

Once the miracles distracted me,
once I had to see ice burn and flame.
Now the morning fog welcomes me to
capture the name that has
been perfect in me day one until
the final benediction.

Someone to Blame

Someone to Blame

(“The Lord's acts of mercy indeed do not end, for His compassions do not fail.” Lamentations 3:22)

The troubles came out of nowhere like
the rain that hides behind the mountains.
Creeping hands of clouds loomed over the crags of
unconsciousness
and suddenly
we were drenched with invisibility.
Everything we could not see gripped us
so eyes that once saw clearly beyond the
eastern day
blinked away allergies and smoke.

We thought we knew it all,
we thought we knew cause and effect,
we thought the evil get punished,
we thought the righteous were without defect.
So why did it come to our town,
our holy little amendment on the river?
Why not upstream where the pollution
started, why not underground where the less polite
were hidden?

Our backs ached, our brains burned,
our hearts stopped when the power lines went down.
Once in a while the fog lifted
only to remind us what we were missing.
Still it seemed to all of us there must be
someone to blame. Someone had misspelled
the same day over and over again.

But above and below, while we sheltered at home,
the robins still sang, the dogs still pranced,
the children still played, though everything seemed to be
left to chance.
Someone hummed walking along the river,
someone looked for frogs on the bank.
Others slowly ate their lunches on picnic
benches wet from dew and rain.

It was not deliberate, but in the renewed silence
of water upon water
(the ions of joy and photons of vision)
we learned to breathe together again.
We saw again. Fireflies
lit up the night.

A Star Will Come

A Star Will Come

(“I see someone who will come someday, someone who will come, but not soon. A star will come from Jacob; a ruler will rise from Israel.” Numbers 24:17a)

I have lost friends along the way like crumbs falling off
a white chocolate scone. Some are buried by time,
faces fading from memories. The first time ever I
saw your face
is how we listened to each other’s’ movement. But,
the last time ever I
saw your face
we ate burgers at Denny’s and talked shop.
Some are time’s possession.

Some have dropped at latest weakness, with each
new mistake I make
new heartbreak unwraps the comfort
of ageless friends who now are better than
I ever was. I have no defense, what they have heard
(or observed) is probably true. Although, one thing
I would note,
that what they hear is not
all the truth.
Some are my transgressions.

Some I have left in other states, though
part of the same Union,
too many state lines make for loss of breath
for people at our age. The hurdles have grown,
the route is longer. So from Baltimore to Minneapolis,
Chicago to Dallas, Sacramento mostly and
the East Bay I love; I’m in a corner that no one
passes through on the way to another.
Some are my vacations.

Some have left me like children turning over a rock
lying atop nearly melted ground; and having found
ugly bugs, earthworms and slimy colonies of
we-should-have-known, and having thrown the
stone in disgust at my feet, discuss my biography
like book clubs chewing through chapters.
Some are my repentance.

Some new have entered my breakfast routine,
though I am slow to open anything beneath my
wrinkling skin.
I carry my failures where no one can see,
but believe me, they are my closest companions
(when I know they shouldn’t be)

I cannot wait for someone to come,
a star on the horizon, a scepter over my scars,
when my sins and your sins,
my memory and your assertions

Are the zero-sum of the next step,
while listening to some vinyl like we used to do
all summer.