Perhaps We Still Can Fly

Perhaps We Still Can Fly

(“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 1 Corinthians 13:1)

I can’t afford to walk with my head in the clouds anymore,
I can’t wait on angels to touch my brain and lips like I did before.
There is a straight-line path from my home to yours,
but I must take the road around to bypass private property and dogs
roaming outdoors from
one treat to the next; I might be next.
Although, I have befriended most of them. Perhaps I’ll show up
at your door with a pack of them. Your cats would appreciate
the confusion.

I walk the half-mile to your house. I hope you are not in pain.
I pick up your mail and walk it up your driveway. Today there
are three new prescriptions to add to the
dozens half organized and a quarter unrealized.
I’ll sit with you as we have dozens of times before.
We are old hands at this, we are experts on angels,
and yet the angels we’ve known are absent for now.
We are two angels with broken wings; with two wings
between us
perhaps we still can fly.

But I had enough trouble leaving my bed today that
angels were the last thing on my mind.
You were in so much pain today all you could think to do
was to fall asleep again in your chair after we
wondered how life leaves so many of us grasping for air
when we had dared to climb the heights for those who could not
find their way.

They never knew it, well very few anyway, that our legs were
fire whenever we found the summit at last. They understood it well,
though,
when we fell, when we stumbled, when we crawled like
the first amphibians leaving water for land.
We were not well suited for either. We wanted to be
of land and sea,
they wanted us to be Sunday’s constant surprise of
spirituality.

So, we wait on angels, don’t we? One calls you while I
visit today, your advocate from the V.A. She is kind, but too
slow from our way of thinking. We both know she is juggling
time, and life, and clients, and care the same way we juggled
questions about god. And they were impatient too, with our answers,
because we dealt in questions and not in certainty.

I should have shared the bread and wine with you today,
the blood and body of the One who is hidden behind our pain.
I will visit you again, old friend. And we will talk about
the picture on the wall; you clothed in vestments and
children with drops of joy on their heads.

Clipped Wings

Clipped Wings

(“If one part is suffering, then all the members suffer alongside it. If one member is honored, then all the members celebrate alongside it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26)

Someone had clipped the bird’s wings
and now he could not fly; not only for distance,
but for sheer folly and for time.
For more than a decade he simply hopped from
root too root underneath the trees where
the nests of cousins and brothers,
comrades and others,
settled in comfortably every Spring
and sang the songs that make men and gods smile.
He still could sing, but the tune never carried further
than the retaining walls around the yard.

Not only was his flight stolen, but the stumps of wings
were chronic wounds. He was not raised to be a stoic bird,
his voice was loud as a mockingbird. And time, and other time,
he wailed in his pain; a decade of catching the wind had been
removed from him.

At first the others, sorry for his loss, spoke to him from the
safety of their branches and offered sorrow, lozenges and prayer.
They would say he did not look in pain,
and that his wings were as beautiful as ever before. He wore
them high off his back as often as he could, but cried once night
shrouded him from the view of the mothers and their fledglings.
His singing stopped after no one listened anymore, but
crying, that awful sound that comes from a bird that is hurting,
cracked the midnight more often than the annual flocks imagined.

Each spring they began again, “How is your pain today? Have you
tried flying upside down? Have you tried seeds instead of worms?
And why don’t we see you at our morning gatherings to chirp at
the sun?” And then they would say, almost every day, for almost
an entire decade, “And we will pray for you.”

Agony takes its toll upon the most remarkable birds,
the eyes shrink to black, the legs wobble like toothpicks,
and the song is undiscernible as music at all. Then the soul,
the soul dries up like watermelon left on the vine too long.

Finally he squawked like a parrot, hissed like a rooster,
the pain had torn a hole where his heart had learned to sing.
This time the flocks did not even ask their questions,
but berated his attempts to sing of his grief. How does a bird
get over losing its voice,
how does it move past its wingless existence?

And occasionally, from the sky, a fellow flyer would hear his cry
and shout from above, “We are praying for you.”

For
ten
long
years
they
said
they would pray.

For
ten
long
years
nothing changed.

For
ten
long
years
he
longed

For visitors who would come and
take him under their wings.

Mother Wings

Mother Wings

(“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets. You kill with stones those men that God has sent you. Many times I wanted to help your people. I wanted to gather them together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you did not let me.” Luke 13:34)

I am willing,
I am ready,
I need healing,
I need hiding under
the mother wings of God.

When the mask of pain hatbands my forehead,
when icepicks stab my temples,
when every atom in my brain is unrestrained
and knocks against my cranium faster than the
clicking of cicadas,

I need a mother’s hand upon my brow.

I am fading,
I am waiting,
I need breathing,
I need bread and water
made my mother’s hands.

When the day escapes on my bed of pain,
when music shoots my thoughts inflamed,
when every friendship in my arc is unlisted
and no one knocks on my door, though I’ve insisted
I’m not strong enough alone,

I need a mother’s voice whispered in my ear.

The pain blurs everything; these words, the reading,
the vibrations of joy, the location of comrades,
until, though one or two occupy the square footage,
the world is a void filled only with the knife-crease splitting
my head.

I am stating,
I am crying,
I quit breathing,
I need prayer and medicine
made by a best friend’s hands.

I don’t care if they are feathers, or hairnets, or horsetails, or fingernails,
or silk, or satin, or gingham, or the Mass in latin or lingua franca.

Whether you speak or do not speak,

I need a Mother’s care when the world has been invaded by
avoidance and fiery pain.

Grace Extended

Grace Extended

“For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:15

It was the scariest day of the first twelve years on the planet. Greg, one of the three meanest playground bullies had “called me out” to fight after school. Barely 110 pounds, my slight frame rarely stayed upright in the face of the few fisticuffs I encountered in school. But, whether out of a momentary bravissimo or stupidity, I agreed to meet him.

Most times when I felt threatened I would recruit Don Irwin to walk home with me. Held back a year, Don was bigger and stronger than everyone in our class. Though he never actually fought anyone, we all knew the outcome of any attempted brawl with Don. But, for some reason, Don was unavailable on the day Greg insisted we meet around the block after school.

I bravely faced off across from him, hands somewhere hanging on the ends of my arms. Within the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings twice a fist crashed into my left eye and across my nose. Immediately I started to cry. It was involuntary, but they were tears, nonetheless. (Do not try this at home, but a blow to your eye will bring the inevitable tears.) I couldn’t see, I was embarrassed and petrified. Not only had he caught me full force, I was blubbering in front of the school bully; a far worse shame than losing a fight.

Greg took a step back while my mind reeled. I wondered if I should take a wild swing while he watched me grimace. The he said, “Have you had enough?” I knew to say “Yes” meant to admit defeat. But, not wanting to lose two eyes, I said, “I guess.”

“Ok,” he responded, “It takes a big guy to admit he’s lost.” Then we had a couple of other words together, he walked off, I limped home, and we never fought again.

Grace, right? I was grateful for Greg’s grace. No! A thousand times “No!”

But I have met many Christians who see God’s grace much the same way. We do not go so far as to say God is a bully. But we do say things like “I deserve the punishment”. Or, even when things aren’t going quite right, “I must have messed up pretty bad for these things to be happening.” And so, we see God’s “grace” in terms of a God who occasionally lets us walk away from a black eye that He has inflicted.

The danger of this idea comes out in how we treat others. There seem to be two streams of “Christianity” in America: one which loves seeing God’s grace given to more and more people; and another which uses the word “grace” but seems to be slow in giving it. So, if we feel God was righteous to rough us up before he gave us grace, we also feel justified to speak and act in ways that are not fully grace-full.

You’ve seen it, I know you have. Christians who share ugly reports about politicians they disagree with; or who will not listen to the stories of those in untenable situations. Sometimes we make assumptions about the poor or the disadvantaged. We want to control what people do with their food stamps or disability.

But, here is what God did. Let’s suppose we actually deserved a black eye. The Greatest News of All is that Glen is not God. Glen would have given us our black eye, then backed off saying, “you learned your lesson.”

But Christ, in His Mighty Grace, suffered for us on the cruelty of the cross! He triumphed over the violence and the darkness of this world, not by fighting back, but by dying. He triumphed over the ungodly union of politics and religion in His own time by showing that God’s Kingdom is one of love and servitude.

Dear ones, perhaps you have never fully understood the great galaxy of God’s grace offered to you. Perhaps you feel you have deserved the hardships, and that, once you have suffered enough, God will be nice to you. In Christ, God is here now. He is the One who has spread the mercy and grace of God across the universe like a perfume that anoints our every sense.

Once you realize how great His grace truly is, you will never again speak harshly against the poor or spread falsehoods about opponents. Jesus, in His grace, offered His very life so that, according to this verse, “as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

Experience His grace today. And, experiencing it, let it extend from you to more and more people!

All in my Head

All in my Head

(“…if by some chance they soften their hard hearts and make amends for their sins…” Leviticus 26:41b [The Message])

I meant to lose time, grow wings, fly high,
paint the sky of which the eagles sing
without the least pressure to rhyme their verses.

I meant to smile big, stand straight, hug true,
erase the blues and pain we blamed on fate
and finally trim the wick the exact quarter inch
which I was taught (more than once) would prevent
the candle’s tell-tale smoke.

I turn at every straightaway, look back and wonder what
is taking so long. The wings have not sprouted, the words are
pedantic, the help I promised is grim, and pain an excuse
that keeps me locked inside my own prison.

I miss every possible turn, the choices that might burn away
the rust and mould clinging to the slow-foot creep I call
my journey.

I can admit every misstep, I have, I will; I am willful
as all; why, when I desire wings, then, does the dust
not fly like a rooster tail when I leg the runway,
slight headwind and a clearday,
the tower giving me the ok,
but I never leave the ground; my old feet are leaden,
my heart saddened, and my tears over sins come unbidden
once I think forgiveness has healed me from the fall.

I will not forget Love, I promise. It rings like yesterday’s bells.
I will not cancel Faith, I refuse. It hides like the oyster’s pearls.

I must tell you the truth, the hope I keep dreaming,
the silence that still awakens me, has shaken me
so sleep is no solace, and day a harsh sentence.

It is all in my head, I know. That is what I dread.
Still, if I could grow wings…once more…
I would fly this time even though
I knew not what the flying was for.