We Sanitized the Whole Place

 

We Sanitized the Whole Place

(“Uphold justice and righteousness. Deliver from their oppressor those who have been robbed. Don’t mistreat or do violence to the alien, the orphan, or the widow, or shed the blood of innocent people in this place.” Jeremiah 22:3)

We sanitized the whole place before you came,
scrubbed the pews,
resewed the red-white-and-blue,
and made certain the aisles were clear of the
gum the children bring in on their shoes.

We never knew exactly how you wanted us to keep up the place,
dark wood, ancient tongues, plenty of parking, words projected on the wall.
We never completely understood how to control the masses,
the untrained, the languages, the odors and the hoodies,
the certain and the rookies.

Believe me, we made sure the alcoholics found their place,
the dealers too, and the genders that would not keep their
assigned designations. We know what to do with
alcohol and drugs and sex.

But, I hate to confess this, we never mentioned the immigrants
(only to tell those Vietnamese hairdressers they ought to learn
our language).
We stopped for the homeless like we stopped on Route 66
for a handful of curios and sticks of jerky. We pulled away
quickly before they identified us and asked for a ride.
(We would be glad to bring them for church if only that had
a street address.)

Where would you have us hide our halo? We keep it shiny
to make the world know we are wholly different than
the domestic violence we watch on tv. God bless America
and leave the rest of the losers out of it,
John 3:16 notwithstanding, the world is our world
and we will love it as we desire.

We do hand out candy at Christmas,
deliver turkeys on Thanksgiving eve.
But to bleed for a user who lost his keys
and locked himself out of his car during our November feast;
that is an interruption, that is going too far. (Here,
have some mashed potatoes please.)

And one last thing, our carpets are stained from
coffee we allowed in the sanctuary. Would it be okay,
Would you mind very much, if we spent a few thousand dollars
to clean it up? (We might even hire an undocumented or two,
if we can convince them they would be happier worshiping
up the road somewhere.)

Excuse me please, but I need to watch my favorite evangelist
tell me I could be a millionaire and that Jesus was the richest
guy to walk the face of the earth. I’ll have coffee with someone
at McDonald’s and do my penance just before lunch.

It Has Been a Slow Death

 
It Has Been a Slow Death

(“…as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” 2 Corinthians 6:10)

It has been a slow death I know,

From

Circles on a carpeted floor,
sharing cups of 7up and
crumbs of sourdough in makeshift
remembrance

To

The names I have heard you call
good men and women
who were once the all
you proclaimed to love.

And now I feel the death all around me,
the demons of power arcing above the towers
that once called us to joy (the soul’s sorrow,
the spirit’s release),
that once called us to mercy (the word’s story,
the gospel’s free speech),
that once called us to believe (the child’s trust,
the riches unleashed).

And now I see the black figures swinging swords
and aiming nooses, surrendering the peace for
a withered podium of power. And now I hear
the funeral song and I cannot endure

The divorce

Of the ancient faith from its ineffable source,
the crucified one, the suffering Son,
the one acquainted with grief.

I have died today as well
and do not know which world to enter.
The worst abuse, like stripes on a weary body and mind
has found its endgame in the final clod of dirt
tossed upon the casket of my once
vibrant faith.

From the ground up, from deep within the earth,
poor again, having nothing but the me, the seed,
the pleading for life beneath it all,
something still breathes that was smothered.
Something still reaches that was buried.
Something still sees that was blinded
by the shuttered standstill of sight trained
in only one direction.

Something breathes…

But today is one gasp away from
diving beneath the mud and blankets
and never venturing out again.

When the Signboards

 

When the Signboards

(“Jonathan thought as much of David as he did of himself, so he asked David to promise once more that he would be a loyal friend.” 1 Samuel 20:17)

When the signboards are empty with letters
scattered on the ground
I wonder
how many words
we have forgotten.

If I mailed you my heart as a postcard,
a simple white bit of cardboard,
would you question my sanity or intentions?
Sadly it is me
whose nerves are shot.

I do not want to waste your time,
still I look for days when the sun shines
on the picnic tables by the riverbank
and dream of long conversations (you
remember: the teenage angst, unbroken faith,
the questions that came with age).

Will you help me turn the pages again
without asking why I am no better
than the last time we talked?

Besides, I have seen words and dates
inscribed on granite where George Washington
surveyed the rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania.

When signboards spread big lies with
their letters
I wonder
how may promises
we have forgotten.

The Winged Rode Each Wave

 

The Winged Rode Each Wave

(“But she answered and said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.’” Mark 7:28)

The rains would not blow past us,
easterly and swift.
The days simply wrapped us in
bogs and mud and mist.
There were birds that pecked upon the earth,
taking their chances between squalls and raindrops
to find life where no one else looked
to feed their babies whimpering in their nests.

They would not be denied (though we humans
stayed inside). The Master of Water (seas and oceans,
lakes and rivers, clouds and rain) seemed to prevent them
from gathering a to-go meal for home.

The rains settled, dully silvered in the air.
The rains ganged up on the unsuspecting ground,
(though the snow from a week before should have
been a siren of things to come).
The puddles overflowed, the rivulets flowed from driveway
to side yard
to the burn pile from autumn awaiting the flame.

The wind rounded the corner, up and then down,
the Columbia exerting its will on congregants waving their
distended arms, a parade with nowhere to go.

But the winged rode each wave, songbirds soaring like
miniature birds of prey. The backyard was dotted
with sparrows and robins
who would not take rain or snow
as an answer
but met each moment on its own terms.

Something Turned, Something Shifted

 

Something Turned, Something Shifted

(“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17)

He wished to have anyone,
anyone else all to himself;
he was starving for presence,
hungry for acceptance and so
he stood with holy reticence and waited.

Once he had prophesied from stages,
now he stood where he once had memorized faces
and counted their names carefully. He was so
grounded his feet rarely left the earth. And every
annual report would attest to the numbers and
members that underlined every word.

Now he stood where he spoke so much truth and
was amazed that so little happened at all. The
attendance spiked, and everyone liked him well enough.
But the stuff of heaven had too little grit in it for him
to sit on panel discussions about growing numbers or
training soldiers.

He was tired. His soul felt weighted with the stones
upon his chest
that held him in place, magnetized to death.
And from that position there was no escape,
no speeches, no teachings, that would release his
hands and feet
from under the concrete poured around his soul.

The day ended with everyone knowing the pain that
crashed from his body to his brain. And the long night
began
after the audience all went home
and left him alone
to face the wordless dark of stars a million years old.

Something turned, something shifted. Like
monarchs roosting in the cedars,
like sparrows returning to Capistrano,
his words, he felt, were coming home. But they
were
not his words,
they were their words. They were conversation
without answers, dialogue unscripted, hearts and breath
in a dance of winged butterflies in play. He did not
know what to say
when the silence came. He waited. Everything between
the farthest star and the core of the earth
surrounded the moment in lightness and aboriginal atoms
shared by everyone in the earth, the universe.

And there was darkness, and there was light, and God said
(as if the Spirit hovered between and within everything)

It
Is
Good.

More or Less Precisely

 

(Anika Sage Phillips)

More or Less Precisely

for caring health workers and my beloved granddaughter Anika

(“All of God’s promises have their yes in him. That is why we say Amen through him to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20)

I walked into the room and sat down in the maroon lounger
ready for my quarterly cocktail of headache juice.
Something in my brain broke 4,470 days ago
(more or less precisely)
and now I visit the infusion bar for another
in a long chain of failed remedies. The pain
in my head
runs in front of me most days,
digging a rut, a labyrinth
of loneliness…
most days.

I am the new one at this bar where most
are infused with healing poison
to kill the rebel cells that turned traitor
on the cancer patients’ bodies. They visit monthly,
sometimes weekly and call the barkeeps by name.

Me, I’m only here for a headache, and it has been 90 days
since I drank from the newest elixir claimed
to turn my brain around.

One of the angels set my table:
a bottle of water,
a package of trail mix,
blood pressure slightly high,
and a polished steel frame that will hold
the long pour that will keep me there a
half hour or more.
I have never had such attentive mixologists before.
Another angel sticks my arm with a pin
and leaves it there waiting for my cocktail to begin.
Then the third hangs my hope on the frame,
a premix in a plastic bag flowing from above me
into my veins.

I should add (for the reader some years from now)
we are living and breathing in a pandemic, and
I am not the only one isolated these days. The angels,
they all wear masks, as do their patrons, to stop the spread,
and get ahead of this virus that outsmarted most of us.

I could not see the angels smile; they could not see my crooked teeth,
but I watched their eyes sparkle and the third one had curls that
bounced slightly when she talked:

“How long?” she asked. It is what everyone asks. And I tell
her I am starting a baker’s dozen of years now. Her brow furrowed,
her breath suspended like a dream that lasts moments but
is filled with twists and plots and a-list faces you never remember.

“13 years?” she asked. It is what I wonder too. And I tell her
“yes”
while I recount my work history, my retirement, my fear of displacement,
and my desire to visit Ireland someday. And then I say

“But I did take a trip last year.”

II.

And recount my fortnight with the sunshine of my life,
my Anika, my beloved granddaughter, my bubbles, my
too soon growing up girl in the north country, to help
her mom and dad

Go to Asia.

We dropped the parents at the airport, Minneapolis, 15 above.
I borrowed my son’s coat and boots and thick socks and gloves.
We drove back home to plan our 14-day adventure.

We would eat sushi and pizza,
Papa would cook once or twice,
we would eat ice cream and noodles.
Ani would take me to see the sights
on long adventures in the basement with
flashlights, laundry baskets and Hamilton
on the playlist.
We got snowed in on the weekend, a Mid-March
blizzard caught us by surprise.

But, to the third angel I said:

My ten-year old Ani, my smart and sweet one,
took dance lessons downtown and I stayed while
she and her friends practiced in cohorts. There
were arms and legs becoming machines,
twirling hair and flowers made of magical things.

And then it was time
to show what they had rehearsed. Each
troupe in the studio performed for us; whirled
and turned, interpreted the score for us.
I sat in a chair, Ani sat on the floor with
a dozen dance mates.

But two, maybe three performances in she
looked back and up at me, noticed a chair next to me
and slid away from her friends to join Papa for
a while. Of course I smiled.

But then, one of those moments where time and the divine
meet in such warmth that the space between now and then
becomes so thin there is little difference;
in that moment she laid her head on my shoulder and
I don’t mind telling you,
my pain became amnesia. Oh, and she may not
have noticed,
but Papa cried tears that day,
and is tearing up now just telling you about it.

III.

While I was speaking, angels one and two
joined the third angel listening to my story.
I had finished my draught some time ago
and I wished they could make it a double.

I am not nearly so talkative most days,
but today was one of those yes days,
an amen day,
a day when the angels would not depart until

I finished telling my story.

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

 

I Wish You Would Walk with Me

(“And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.’” Mark 5:34)

I wish you would walk with me, I wish you knew me,
I wish you would walk to the unseen city with me.

I cannot see it yet, though the crowds chant its name.
I have watched for its gleaming alabaster piercing the sky,
I have heard the words shouted like a hundred spears
to drive demons away.

And twelve years with the same unknown pain has
slowed my pace while others went ahead on their own
pilgrimage. My courage sinks as I see them disappear
across the hill-spotted margin of the trail.

My face is not disfigured though my brain is tangled like pasta.
My eyes are not darkened though they burn like fire.
My music comes slower, my voice has no power,
my days are on rewind, my nights project images
of ghostly winter trees, fingers snapping when the ice
weighs them down.

The detours are as lonely as the singular path I have walked
for decades. I bring up the rear, or turn back, or aside and
can only be reminded that I have cried in wishes, sometimes
in faith that misses the point. And the pain stays; one of
the few companions
that are not afraid of the unheard words I long for.

I wish you would talk with me, I wish you got me,
I wish you would listen to the silence in the dark with me.

I wish you would hear me or heal me. I wish you would
keep me company.