O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem

(“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.” Micah 5:2 NLT)

Each year we are reminded that something extraordinary took place in a small Jewish village over 2000 years ago. Though it is fairly evident that Jesus was likely born in the spring, our winter date for the celebration has taken hold over time, and here we are; twinkly lights, the crunch of snow, bundled up carolers and all.

Stuck in My Head

“Each of the four living creatures had six wings, and their bodies were covered with eyes. Day and night they never stopped singing, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the all-powerful God, who was and is and is coming!’” Revelation 4:8

Are you a person of habit or routine? I know I am. You could set your watch by my regular trip to the Post Office when I pastored my first church. I would drive the half mile into town, go to the PO Box, smile and greet the others retrieving their mail and head back to the office. On the way I stopped at a convenience store to pick up my second cup of coffee for the morning. Tuesday through Friday that was my routine.

Opening Night

Opening Night

(“And the men, in great awe of the Lord, offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.” Jonah 1:16)

Unsuspecting of anything sacred among us, we set our course
as if we have rehearsed each unmet morning promised by evening. Only
upon when tossed like eggs for an omelet upon surges higher than our
expectations
do we look in the holds and find our hopes have been sleeping wingless
upon our customary passage.

We play the causes like actors trading ad-libs, making up line upon line
from goodwill to malevolent behind the transom, behind the curtain,
and wait for the applause to validate our one-line wit with which
to wrap up the world.

They keep telling us the music is in the rests, and the magic is
in the pauses, the drama in the unspoken moments when breath
sits like haze upon the frog-pond; but we are quick to the trigger,
uneasy with a world enriched by our erased dialogues.

By now opening night should have passed, the clapping, the laughter,
the happy timing we were after, finished and set before the chosen few
like a child’s drawing on the fridge. But too few knew what it took
to finish (starting so brilliantly) a study in hard work and cake frosting.

Rest and depressed, sometimes we are left with only the pages
of the script
left in our hands. No one to read all the lines, 6 actors reading 9.

Stepping foot now, I hope the silence means sacred, and even the
exhaust fumes from the highway behind me, remind me, holy. The
script reads the same today.

On Replacing the Images and Shadows

On Replacing the Images and Shadows
(“Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches. Christ-conquerors are safe from Devil-death.” Revelation 2:11 [The Message])

The metaphor looms behind me, rising over my future,
casting its shadow into years one or two, multiplied ahead.
The analogy was not pretty that pretended my language,
nor the simile like anything that would dress up an unshaven day.

Days went without new words to replace the ancillary version,
secondary visions pretended the whole. (Weaklings cry and
you cannot trust anyone) and I refused to cry around anyone
who could not cover my losses.

The shadows follow, they are what mothers muttered and fathers
replayed
until we knew nothing of the mountain breeze, and drank only
of mirages.

But You, Metaphor and Meaning, replace my images, the
gray men and women who populate my ethic,
and literally, one soldier at a time, they are dying,
replaced, line by line, by the paradigm of a Word
fleshed out, hungry like me, and bruising just as easily.

I cannot ignore the poetry, the verses unrehearsed perfection;
the humanity, the divine unrefined connection
between a hill in time to my present unrhymed attempts
at following something better

Than a previous shade; death remade (ha! Unmasked
pretender) breath unfrayed (HoSanna
uplifted) life arrayed (He’s undone
our afraid)

Seek Good

“Seek good and not evil, that you may live; so shall the Lord, the God of hosts, be with you, as you say.” Amos 5:14

It seems like the simplest thing. To stop and consider the question, “What would make a better world?” Wouldn’t we all answer with something like, “People doing the right thing in every circumstance, as much as is possible.” I know that people may disagree over what may be the “right” thing in some circumstances, but those differences don’t seem to be the chief source of our world’s ills.

The Center

“(Stay) right at the center of God’s love, keeping your arms open and outstretched, ready for the mercy of our Master, Jesus Christ. This is the unending life, the real life!” Jude 1:21 (The Message)

It takes true skill to stay within the circle of someone’s love. We may continually question their motives, or doubt our own appeal. Either way, we find ourselves setting traps for the person, testing whether their care is genuine. Or we push them away, as if to prove we were never within the reach of their love.

And Most Remembered

And Most Remembered

(“These are the stains in your love-feasts, as in your company they shamelessly gorge themselves; rainless clouds they are, carried along by winds; fruitless autumn trees, twice dead and uprooted.” Jude 1:12)

It was true, the banquets often lasted too long,
but not from verbose speeches and lengthy awards;
it was the people who would not leave for love of
a place to call their own. Their own homes damp,
their kitchens ravaged by dust that settled upon their poverty.

It was true, the banquets never solved the source of heartaches,
but they reminded (the bread with the wine) each diner of
the better time now within the refuge, inside the comfort
of unlocked protection and embrace. Their own faces
showed the joy at the tables and bounty in their voices.

It was swift, the aroma that switched from pleasure to scorched,
but the beginning of the overdone courses was slow to come out of the dark.
They hugged as well as they had at first, smiled the same gritty teeth,
but hazards implied their overheated eyes lusted authorship,
(their songs, their recipe, their work, their cutlery)
and might take the whole kitchen home unless applauded properly.

It was true, there were fewer at the tables after the fruitless left,
the clouds that mimicked showers, the dead pretending life;
but the joy rose higher, the wine flowed freer, the bread was
shared unhindered

And most remembered why they came.