Upon Their Brightest Days

Upon Their Brightest Days

(“All Jerusalem should praise you, our Lord, when people from every nation meet to worship you.” Psalm 102:21)

I should be strong, less old, less likely to ache my way downstairs;
but it seems, I know not why, You, O Lord have made me old much
before my time.

My father slouched like an octogenarian before he reached 60,
and shuffled so much that sparks of static electricity constantly
tingled from his fingernails.

You, Lord, live forever, never a doubt in my mind. You are ageless,
from predawn to afterglow, over and under the bridges and tunnels
we use to connect yesterdays to today. You invented time before
time existed at all. You will never die, never having been born,
and will wrap time in a ribbon, intersecting every moment in
a beautiful bow at the end of days.

Please don’t cut my life in half, do not make me walk with a cane
or hold my head in agony over pain that will not escape. I do not
know
how to talk to you, though I
know
you will allow my cries, my fist in the air, the resounding of it
from skyhigh to pounding on my table. I do not know how to
make demands
on the Judge of All, the Writer of every Ordinance from sky
to canyon, desert to delta. Alpha to Omega, You include all
that there is, and my pain, my limp, my lately ailments must
be a portion of all You include.

You, Lord laid the foundation of the earth,
painted the vaulted ceiling of the sky.
In the beginning You started it all; Love laying brick like
a king building a castle for his princess.

But I still remain the same, with these ailments that nail me to my bed
until midafternoon,
the pangs that shoot through my head like a sniper laying the crosshairs
across my temples.
I only feel the hot lead and never hear the bang.

You, Lord, investigate this tragedy,
report back to me, if it is likely to
yield an answer that gives me back the half
that has been stolen from me.

Yet I know You can never change,
Yes I know you are always the same,
Each friend, each relative, every voice that cries
for You
whether pain or praise
finds You closer (at the end of the length You have measure)

Than they thought upon their brightest days.

FirstBorn

FirstBorn

(“The first-born, as firstborn, already belongs to God.” Leviticus 27:26b)

It wasn’t quite the backdoor
where we snuck into the mansions bright,
but it was nearly the same as burglars
catwalking within the farewell night.
Once we thought we would earn it,
we catered to the high hands,
recited our profession upon center stage
to prove how well we had learned it.

Afraid we were second-class, middle-born,
or diet-free substitutes to the real thing
we disguised our fears with cellophane tears
and kept on climbing the crags past noon
until sunset,
and blackened our faces to skulk into
familiar dwellings, hoping for acceptance
at the dining table, even as unnoticed guests at
next morning’s breakfast.

But You surprised us all!
For those ready for it, it felt like
no surprise at all.
And perhaps that is why
so many others miss it,
so used to living after the fall.

We belong like FirstBorn, such an old way
of viewing things, all things being equal and all.

But God’s Son, the firstborn among many children,
integrated us who once belonged to no one in particular,
harmonized our songs that more than once deferred
to the next man with a banjo.

Before long we hummed dances and spent our late night
securely feeling right at home. Backdoors were used for
going out and in at cookouts, block parties and fireworks
displays sparkling freedom that never needed to check
immigration status.

The adoption was ratified; our lifelong hope to belong,
given full status before which the entire universe longed
to bow.

Days and nights are now the same, comfortable and
ready to find something better than the next warm meal.
A meal indeed, but more to the point,
a family to share a breakfast with,
all complete.

Generous or Unfair?

(They said, “The ones who were hired last worked for only one hour. But you paid them the same that you did us. And we worked in the hot sun all day long!” Matthew 20:12)

“The ones who were hired last…you paid them the same that you did us.” “That’s not fair!” Those three words are among the most common from toddler to teen. Adults find more sophisticated ways of expressing the same sentiment, like filing lawsuits. Or the threats thereof!

Boasting in the Lord

“Boasting in the Lord”

 (“Christ Jesus…became for us divine wisdom and righteousness and holiness and redemption, so that as has been written, ‘Let the boaster boast in the Lord.’” 1 Corinthians 1:30b, 31)

Have you ever noticed someone who simply can never be wrong? Suppose a friend misplaces a book they were reading at your house. He calls you up and says, “I know my book is over there. I’ve looked all over my house and in my car. I even opened up my dog’s mouth. It’s not here, so you must have it.”

Without Using Big Words

"Without Using Big Words"

(“He sent me to tell the good news without using big words that would make the cross of Christ lose its power.” 1 Corinthians 17b)

I had accumulated too many marks for my misconduct;
demerits handed out over the course of a lifetime.
Though I wanted to argue, I wanted to complain,
I wanted to say, with the eternal chorus, “It’s not
fair” to the teacher who heavy-handed me my
red-checked marks.

I deserved the blame, had whited when I should have blacked:
I was censurable.
I could find no occasion to mis-explain my absence from
truth when the evidence stared me straight in the eye.

Still I was convinced a small group, faithful only to those
happy about my failure, my fall;
a cabal meeting behind closed doors. I was merely a
rag doll of words made up by a marionette.

I wanted to deny every charge spoken against me,
stomp my feet until they could hear my red-faced anger;
I found no voice, language or philosophy capable of
making it clear, a speech so high and mighty they
would have to look it up in a dictionary:
Grandiloquent, and proof I had studied well.

Haply (it was not joyful), my schemes fell below the bar,
passwords cracked, an alphabet scattered on the floor.
I was undone, guilty, the regretful one;
Compunctious, I crawled blindly to find pity
after my cornered performance of faked inequality.

Mercy and Power richly meet; a committee, a strategy
beyond mind or muscle. All immoral, I stood with
more red-checks than I dreamt possible. And cried
where the linoleum puddles the tears between my dirty feet
and the bloody holes in His.

And I felt, I cannot say when-who, but surely, the
mercy that made me reject every argument about my
innocence;
and accept, happily, the fate that lately made me see
white x’s where the red-checks once made me
wince at imperfection simply stated.

I was gravel and ash, now, with a dream after the waking,
Commencement is now a day launching me loveward,
a new word I cannot construct that combines every utterance
that loaded my guilt, my back breaking, onto the back of the
LoveWard, his heart aching,
taking it, tears and cruel gashes, to Death where He, I and
my red-checks also, died at once.

And still, I do not know how-why, but I know
Who.

Fill their Faces

"Fill their Faces"

(“Fill their faces with shame, and let them seek Thy name, O Lord.” Psalm 83:16)

Those who have filled the ditches with their opinions,
making the jobless into jokers begging;
Those who have filled the minds
with mythology
that the poor are riddled with lazy bathtub rings;

Those who have taken lives not belonging to them,
planted doubt in the corners where one once believed
and rose with the morning to conquer with joy,
and concur with mates who loved it like the sun,

Beaten with words that bestowed question marks where
exclamations once broke the dawn;
Those who spoke them
into the corners never noticed the
shivers that began, the tremors of their hands,
once the synapse was rewired to make them
prisoners of their intentions,
(kidnappers of their impressions)
and left them to lie upon the dictations of
black versus white typed upon vellum; narrow columns
of distrust. Dusty spellings, and tears smearing the
letters and colors others had impounded.

Fill their faces with red, (not from dread, like they
filled the faces before), but from personal shame,
let them take the paintings out of the frames,
run their fingers over the strokes, smell the fresh-paint
(the aroma of verity’s obsession),
until the infusion of laughter and tears,
red blood and blue notes, pink mayflower and
violet alfalfa convince the typeWriters the world

Is fuller of Godly creation than their
constitutions and bylaws can
ever contain.

Narrative and Neurons

“And we will tell (God’s teachings) to the next generation. We won’t keep secret the glorious deeds and the mighty miracles of the Lord.” Psalm 78:4

In their book, “The Humanizing Brain,” James B. Ashbrook and Carol Rausch point out that when we are born, our brains consist of billions of nerve cells, or neurons, but they are mostly unconnected to each other. Some connection are made naturally as we grow, like those that help us to walk. But many other pathways develop uniquely, reflecting the culture, family habits and beliefs we learn. As our experiences change, we actually grow new neural pathways.