Their Repeated Words

Their Repeated Words

(“So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a such a small fire!” James 3:5)

I should have noticed it before but the people I know
who have the most impassioned and bombastic prayers selcom
sought me out for coffee or lunch.
I always wondered at the lengthy prayers of the silky voiced
elder who never said much in the end.
It only took a few words to
sting me in the heart. It only took the smallest spark
to burn what was left of my dignity.

It goes without saying, though, that I have dropped words
like bombs
unaware myself. Did I really tell that poor mother to
try to give a little bit more than she had? Did I really tell
that single father that families are a mom, a dad, and kids?
And all I knew to do was apologize for something that hit him
right between the eyes. My words were lobbed thoughtlessly
and were received as heavenly proclamations.

I’ve learned that silence is the best choice when struggling
with what to say. I’ve recruited the unspoken to speak for me.
And yet, letter by letter, I compose these words on the page and
wonder
whether I should restrain my forays into streams of consciousness.

More than once people laid their hands on my head and tried to
drive away spirits and demons that caused my depression. But
no one imagined the harm of constantly leaving the impression
that I should just get over myself and submit to their graduation
of spirituality. They had answers for everything and nothing changed.
They had words to describe every eventuality but no time to
spend in exploring the world right outside their doors.
Our bubbles, our echo chambers, brought more shame than
healing. Our words were swifter than wasps and landed
with their stingers between our eyes. No one modified their
language. They only excused it as an attempt to make me
feel better.

I’ve sprinted far away from the run-on sentences that tried
to enforce voices that could not hear the damage their repeated
words had done.

With the Tongue

With the Tongue

(“With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God.” James 3:9)

Another day I might have ignored the comment,
another time I would have kept my peace.
Another day I would have slept through the thunder storm,
another time I would have caged my words.
You didn’t know the races that person ran,
you didn’t pay attention to their struggle and pain.
You just ran your tongue over your incisors, sharpening
your sentences to slice them whole. You memorized
the hymns and high songs,
and spit out invectives like tiny missiles across the
face of the target of your disapproval. Your aim was
off-center and your poison spread around the room.

The mouth formed the words moments after you
thought them. You didn’t look close enough to see
that the victim of your aspiration was another
re-creation of the Divine you loved to sing about.
You tamped down like a foot destroying a rose,
destroying the image that would have beautified the moment.
You doubled-down your unsacred sound moments after
How Great Thou Art, and Amazing Grace. You scattered
the light you could have shared across the floor in the
faintest phosphorescence.

God doesn’t need your compliments, God isn’t looking
for your slippery accolades. But God is waiting for you to
inhale and find the words to reverse the damage you did
to his creative artisan. You are just a crock of clay,
and so am I, inhabited by the Spirit, we should be
shining without looking away.

The Native Tongue

The Native Tongue

(“If God calls something permissible and clean, you must not call it forbidden and dirty!” Acts 10:15)

Scratched beneath the surface of that papyrus
were more ink stains than suspected. Did they
exist before the words were recorded;
did the mean anything for us?

Smoky air imitated fog all morning,
wildfires blazed a dozen miles from here.
Breathing was not optional,
and outside the soot settled on late summer
windshields.

Cantilevered like bridge-work, the tiny sentences
were sandwiched between famously old and
nouveau linguistics. For the life of me
I could not decipher the language.

I think it was Vietnamese. The ladies in the
salon
mentioned my name with ease. I appreciated the
English.
But they natively conversed with each other;
they did not interpret their private conversation.
I saw a patron, red in the face,
whisper that they should have learned our national tongue.
I did not know we had one.

I wonder what language they spoke on this continent
two millennia ago. I wonder who patrolled the streets
listening for unconscious violations of the law.
We lack what we offer, and we offer so very little,
we wonder why they aren’t just like us. We wait
for a conversation we can understand, and, until then,
demand our words become the native tongue.

But the aboriginal conversation only shows us the
mirror, our bespoke reflection underneath the moon.
Take a moment, erase the lines, substitute the commas
with a breath to fill the space. We are not so
different, our languages merely vibrations pushing air.
We live in the fusion of traditions we have forgotten,
the motion of the waves
takes us toward the shore; the patter of
childlike chatter can elicit a smile again.

Us Pause

Us Pause

(“I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I’ll join them in worship and praise to you.” Hebrews 2:12 [The Message])

As the word went round the circle, mouth to mouth
the quotes and opinions spun; each word hastily proclaimed
like a king or prince or monarch on the run. We were quite
glad for the stories and judgments laid down, for they reminded us
how different, how silver, how shiny we have become. No one
has opinions any more, no estimates or guesses; just a rockslide
of well-worn facts without footnotes; leaving no argument
available for the person cradling coffee alone, silent
at the next table.

We know too much, we echo the findings of our favorite
hole-puncher,
and stutter grain-sized worship that falls upon the carpet
to be vacuumed with the mud and dust later in the afternoon.

Oh Christ, our Love, our Pioneer into our uncharted souls,
Your silence is more eloquent than our flappery, aglow with
patience while we predict the next planetary virus will wipe
out the worst of them-not-us.

Oh Son of Man, our Song, our Conductor into concerted whole,
Your song over them, over us, over all, breaks our hearts,
numbs our tongues until we’ve learned the chorus so well
we no longer tell unrestrained stories to back our cause;

You, our only option, have given us pause…

To begin the ballad sweeter and deeper from front
to end.