Hope for the Broken

“Moses told this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.” Exodus 6:9

There are few greater joys in my life than my three children. Though they all are now grown and out of the house, the memories of their childhood and the relationship we have as adults combine to give me great delight. I loved watching their first steps as babies, and their first steps into college, family and careers. I am grateful to have three loving, yet very different children.

More Placid

More Placid

(“The smoke from the incense went up from the angel’s hand to God with the prayers of God’s people.” Revelation 8:4)

The air was stirred from placid to startling darts, turning direction
upon the compass; fully cold from the northern slopes, to the dry east
and dust, pivoting around to come up the south, a full-torque push from
industry’s center with smoke, to the final quarter, spitting sand and sea water
from the west. Assuming to know its pattern, the wind would reverse, traversing
the paths it had just forged.

It had been silent to begin the day. The river glass, the breeze as frail as
the elder’s dying gasp. Though midwinter, the sun pretended itself fully ablaze,
and many left their coats for single sweatshirts; to begin the day.

The coffee walked up and down the short main street, the bitter brew
sweetened my mild and foam, left it’s fragrance like a specter; with happy
conversation about children home from college and a year, now over,
breath is held for what the new will bring.

But late afternoon, like the loose foam of skim milk, fingerling clouds pointed
toward the dying sun, and, having begun, thought to take it in their grasp, to
tackle the fiery orb before it settle past the ground. Downstream forty miles
you would have seen the reinforcements, the low, dark gray the meets the
blue-white ocean’s horizon.

The storm would break in before the coffeeshops closed. It swirled around
old stand apple orchards, ripping winter’s branches and tossing them toward
the lean-to barn a hundred yards away. Twisting or straight, the winds invoked
the short circuit electricity from cloud to ground, the goliath spark with the
timpani shudder shortly after.

There was more fear than actual damage, though the damage done was
damage done well. A sniper storm which took out its mark and left others alone.

Holed up with candles after the transformer went down, people played Monopoly,
huddled in assurance, and found few ways to quit the shivering pets. Some prayed.

I have never seen the smoke, but I know the aroma. It is like the young lover’s
envelope,

sealed with a kiss and spotted with perfume. How Heaven must rejoice at
the petitions of love His people send; troubled or serene, on angels’ wings
the request arrive before spoken. And like the moment the letter is sent,
the anxious heart, once darted with apprehension, finds hope’s best dream
has slowed the nervous pulse and replaced it with an atmosphere
more placid.

Days of Dawn

Days of Dawn

The lonely poet who sought with words to
sift truth through images waits for the ice like dust
to dissolve as the days plays on.

Some days, like Hugo described, are dawn from
beginning to end. Others, though, long past noon,
begin with the setting sun and end just the same.

He used to write profusely with pen, never scratching out a word,
never editing his thoughts for fear of discovery. He wrote to
be discovered;
he wrote to mine hopeful treasures and hold them to the light.

He wrote with broken emotion, he wrote of the night light
reflecting the silky hair of his brunette first love. He wrote
of death, “an ode to Jimi and Janis”, before he had lost even
a relative or close friend. He thought he knew, or could uncover,
what the rivers meant that ran just below the surface of reflection.

He composed unrhymed verse and rhythmic prose, twenty or so
stapled and offered to aunts and uncles Christmas and birthdays. His
critics never breathed.

And then he was silent for two decades or more, busy, it seemed,
with speaking the lines others suggested would pay better than poetry.
He liked Berkeley, college and town, but spent his life on prairies and
rivers learning rural winds. Buildings and pavement were the wind-rows
of his youth and air like asphalt.

He took the pen again midlife, excuse the metaphor; for he clicked the
letters processed into words, leaving the pen behind. Lines were neater,
and words more legible this time.

He writes alone, and wishes his topics were more bouquets and wine;
but this is his cheap therapy, the unedited motions of hurts over time.
He writes alone, and yet is loved more than he knows…and he knows
he is loved; but that river still flows under the sound of words he
was taught were proper. He still wants to discover

Who the writer is within, and why the river is so quiet this time of life.

Against the Bias

“He will certainly correct you if you’ve been secretly partial.” Job 13:10

Were you ever the teacher’s pet? Or were in you a class which had one? Or maybe you grew up in a family where one child was favored. We may view these as harmless choices based on common interests, but through Scripture God continuously admonishes us about showing partiality.

Table for Two, Please

(“Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20)

A long-standing discussion starter is the question, “What person, living or dead, would you like to have dinner with?” Sometimes the question asks for the “top six” people, or asks you to put together a dinner party from five to 10 of your favorites. When asked as a poll question, Jesus Christ invariably ends up in the top 10, usually in the top five.

A Little Power

A Little Power

(“I know what you do; I know that you have a little power; you have followed my teaching and have been faithful to me. I have opened a door in front of you, which no one can close.” Revelation 3:8)

She stumbled, famished and fatigued, not because
she was weak, but her strength had been used
following the narrow road which lead to the craggy peak
where the storehouse of favor was kept.

Yet others, starting later, insisted she stand on her own,
thought her eyes were hollow, her breath shallow and
her heart
pounding so loud it echoed off the circuit of judges
around her.

She could barely turn her head, let alone keep her children fed,
and left her home years ago to follow a dream she hoped would speed
the promises that hard work pays off in the end.

But, for a season, her legs forsook her, her sight blurred and
silence stirred where once the music sent her dancing on her way,
this day and the next, closer to the summit, further towards the crest
where she would show them, finally, that she was as strong as
all the rest.

She was not near death, though she might have welcomed it;
instead she felt every unspoken thought, every backward glance
that suspected she indeed was like
all the rest

Who live in cardboard houses and pay for groceries with stamps.

She had started alone, the crowd carried each other’s weight,
she was on her own. And upon their offer of help her eyes brightened.

Just the thought renewed a moment’s strength until…

They requested, kindly of course, that she be tested for drugs and
the tendency to cheat because they had their numbers in a row,
and they were tired of paying for the poor who seemed
to always buy more than they needed.

No one remembered words about giving two coats when asked for one,
a second mile following the first one,
and freely giving for we who started later, in our vigor,
had freely received, after all.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

(“To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.” Revelation 2:7b)

Without a table of contents we sometimes circle the day,
a striped tiger stalking our prey, a confused schoolboy
hoping the bully away, a groggy philosopher tilting a new
thought he remembered casting away.

There are too many fences laid out like mazes following
the fall line,
then creeping around the hills in topographical outlines.

One fence-line wraps around the next and higher,
each step closer to the green crest where Manzanita grows;
from there you can see the how the cows have precisely marked
their level paths around the hill.

I was asked once; no, challenged. I was challenged once in a letter,
a question really, meant to be an assault, asking me if, according to
words Jesus’ spoke, whether I had “eyes to see and ears to hear.”

The writers assumed I had gone deaf, I think. Blindness had blackened me.
And, if asked at the time of their writing, what tree paradise might bring me,
I think they would consider that hidden knowledge, and go back to listening
better and
seeing
clearer
than comrades, brothers, or best friends who sat at lunch for hours.

I only listened, didn’t I? You described her, didn’t you? The love, your first,
your darling, who was beauty itself to you. Though I never met her, through
the tears at lunch, I understood why you loved her. And I could see the glow
that made you love her madly.

I skinned my knees beyond belief when you and others briefly questioned
my hearing.

But it’s alright now, time has stopped the bleeding, and the tree is ready
for me to climb. I know you believe I’ve been restored, done the hard work,
fallen more times than possible, yet here I am still in the running. Of all
the ones who questioned my vision,
none confessed their own circles the kept them joyless. It was a puzzle,
that the heard so well, saw so clear, but spoke so sad at the joy of spring.

But it’s alright now, the spring has dawned unheeded. The parallel shafts
didn’t ask permission to bathe the crest of the hill with golden light.
It’s alright now, I’m lost in the circle, I’ve learned the hands that, one
reaching left, one
reaching right,
forgets the circle of straying. Instead
hand on hand, we open the light between us,
left/right holding left/right, we move clockwise around the room
the Round Dance, intertribal and lively.

It’s alright now, I’ve found the movement that suits me,
the music I longed to hear,
and paradise’s tree seen clearly now. It’s alright now, old friend,
we might have been only sleeping.