First Love

“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!” Revelation 2:4

It was a great organization, full of people who worked hard and never gave up. Even when money nearly ran out and people told them they were foolish, they kept working toward their goal. They wouldn’t put up with evil people. They held the line in regards to moral behavior. Committed to the rules of their founder, they knew that a little leaven can destroy an entire batch of dough.

Reasons to Celebrate

“Remember this month as a time when our sorrow was turned to joy, and celebration took the place of crying. Celebrate by having parties and by giving to the poor and by sharing gifts of food with each other.” Esther 9:22

There was a 5 year old girl with eyes as round as saucers and her 7 year old sister with her blonde hair with French braids. There was a young teenage girl, quiet and shy and her mom. They could be twins if they weren’t mom and daughter. There was a set of twins, one married a little over a year to her man who carries the heart of a donor within his mid-20s chest. The other twin, a single mom, has seen her life take a full 180 degree turn for the better in recent months. There was a grandmother who has struggled with drug use, but her face reflects both her past, and something new within. And there was veteran who walks with a cane; the result of a broken back in service to his country. A man who would give away all he had to help those in need around him.

My Introduction

My Introduction

(“So he handed over everything he had to Joseph and didn’t pay attention to anything except the food he ate.” Genesis 39:8)

If I could introduce you anew to my self
I believe I would take the chance and offer the true.
Time has passed and, with each year the misunderstandings
multiply until
you and I
are left behind by the scars words marked upon redwood
picnic tables and
summer camps. We held hands.

If I could tell you, without fear of abuse, that I have loved
every person I’ve met. I regret my mouth, sometimes my youth,
in unwitty stupidity,
poked fun at a grimy sore I had not seen. He was such an angry
man
and I loved him for the pain he still carried from his first love.
I never looked for social motivations; psychological motives
are a guessing game for me. I am no scientist
and never looked for clients, only friends. Nothing else mattered,
their pain, their pursuits, diluted aspirations or cast-iron stains.

To a few I gave my heart; not lovers, but a simpatico few
I assumed
would treat it gently, having seen the maze of scars.
Because some wore their spike as they walked across my soul,
because a few wore a mask I did not recognize and tore at my spirit
like a cat with tissue paper,
fewer know me now, and my tree has two, maybe three good limbs
with leaves that may sprout in the spring.

I once loved a study groups and discussion panels,
walks in the Oakland hills or wandering book shop aisles
filled with old ink and early editions. Mostly tattered in
bins on Telegraph in Berkeley; sometimes Los Gatos;
they are the friends who, giving them my spirit, have never
wiped their feet upon it pretending to clean up my mess.

Some leave me lonely, some with horror and pain,

but, having begun the story, I am always certain my own soul
will not suffer at the hands of fiction inscribed by genius. Perhaps
turning each page,

I will walk, once more out of that space between odd and even
and let a trusted one peek within my heart again.

If I were an author, I would say my private time is all about
creating the next world that, exposing everyone, exposes none.

Laughter Travels

Laughter Travels

Laughter travels around the hills, up and down
the ridges and through the valleys. It reflects off
granite walls and fills the meadow with sound;
no one can know its source, for wherever you stand, you are
the center of its radius. The laughter, like atmospheric pressure,
clears the clouds and opens the sky to new possibilities.

Laughter packs no baggage, free and improvised. It is the only sound
that babies do best; unspelled and landing upon the ears like
the rainbow on a clear sky. Does their angel tickle their fancy?
Does light find its way within the child’s cheeks? Do circles
amaze her blinking eyes? Do waving trees greet him with
their limbs?

Are we the funny ones with our faces screwed up like
an old clown’s wrinkles? Are we the silliness that ignites
the chuckle, and joining in, we cackle and gurgle more
self-conscious than the tot whose face is flooded with
tears and snot by the end of the spasm that carried us all
into a forest of elves and fairies whose language, I am convinced,
is that same as babies, and exercise quite regularly their
laughter and mirth.

Hilarity lifts the weights with more power than serious convention.

And try as we might, every face in place to recreate the moment
her giggle multiplied itself up out of the windows, across the neighborhood,
past the island that sits in the middle of the river and across the state line
to Oregonian hearers who swore they heard a new bird unsung before.

Try as we might, after conducting each experiment and checking our computations,
we never discovered the word or touch or face or insect or shape or color
or smell or any other. Perhaps, and this is our favorite thesis,

when she laughed, she laughed at nothing at all.

Beyond Words

(“This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9)

How do you describe the endless distance of space which we call the universe? How do we fathom the long arch of time without end or beginning? How even do we understand the infinite smallness of the miniature sub-atomic particles of which the entire world is made? It takes volumes to even learn the language used by those who speak of such things.

The Path of Love

“This is the teaching you have heard from the beginning: We must love each other.” 1 John 3:11

One of my least favorite phrases is, “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” Don’t get me wrong, the dislike probably has more to do with my inner psyche than the words themselves. But, on some level, it seems they usually come at the end of an argument where two people not only will not budge concerning a subject, but also attach some judgment about the other person based on that opinion.

Tiny

Tiny

(“But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Nehemiah 9:17b)

Tiny things, visible but overlooked; soft coos,
babies sleeping in the quilted corners of our playroom.
Tiny things, heard but so submerged; round eyes,
mothers gazing at the miracle dozing underneath the adult hum.

A mom who found the man who would love her,
A dad who found the woman who never gave up;
Nine mingled children, a pair of twins included,
sing like they own the earth, play like they have all day,
love like rejection has never pinched their delight for attention,
and run to hug,
and run to hide,
and run to lay aside today’s trouble for another
chance to laugh like every day is Christmas day.

I know those families; rare. I love those couples; repaired
by hope and elongated breaths between the questions that measured
the path like mile markers up the steeps and down.

Tiny things, thoughts soak the eyes and the cheeks; soft asides,
trouble is not the enemy, conquered by hands’ light touch.
Tiny things, words painted, each name a circle; round crosses,
enclosed and warm, the fireplace glows, the moment creates

A Christmas day fond of the first; children and unlikely
parents in love and loved beyond measure.

Tiny things, like babes in the straw, changed our images,
our dances, our carols and our wintry reasons for the day.