I Tried to Lasso the Wind

I Tried to Lasso the Wind

(“The wind blows wherever it wants to. You hear it, but you don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going. It is the same with everyone who is born from the Spirit.” John 3:8)

Yesterday I tried to lasso the wind,
it refused my invitation, ephemerally slipping loose
and, so softly I hardly knew it,
kissed my cheek with a whisper.
Yesterday I tried to catch my breath,
it was far behind me, hiding beneath the yellow brush blossoms
and evaporating into a field where rabbits play.
Yesterday I tried to dictate the Spirit,
she refused to obey me, cooly uncoiling her
love power so quietly my voice lost its authority.
She beckoned me to a place in the middle of the river
where the mainstreams flow. I decided to go,
having decoded her intention to vivify everything mortal
with eternal notions of change.  

You cannot control what you do not understand.
You cannot understand what you refuse to hear.
You cannot hear with your ears filled with orations.
You can only follow the glimmers that are so small
they reflect the hummingbirds’ wings, and fill the neighborhood
with songs so good that old men come to listen.
We learned to stop trying to capture the tunes that
came in the afternoons and only celebrate the reprieve
they brought from working with sweat on our furrowed brows.

An Artifact for the Future

An Artifact for the Future

(“At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic.” Exodus 14:24)

The ground in front of us tilted and almost melted away.
We hadn’t counted on anything stopping our campaign,
we hadn’t planned for any opposition.
Just like that we were in the dark again;
the wind was dusty and the sky was gone.
The water nearly swallowed us up and the
morning fled like a dirge underneath our feet.
We had conceived of a quick weekend operation,
a short foray into the jaws of destiny.
We did not expect to come home so wounded,
to return with so little to result for our time.
How could we anticipate this scattering, this
chattering after training so well?
We called on our gods, we devised our sacrifices,
we practiced our prayers and were certain we
had been heard. We could not lose.
We could only win.
We planned on kissing our wives when we returned,
but we were still recovering from the frightening
thunder that came from nowhere. We thought we
were impervious, we thought we could win anywhere
with the help of our gods and our technology.
But those we enslaved escaped; we were meant to
bring them back. They became invisible and we,
confused and dazed, decided the time had come to
retreat. Everything we believed had become an artifact
for the future to unearth. We did not look forward to
giving our full report.

A Patch of Sky

A Patch of Sky

(“…so that you may know that the earth belongs to the Lord.” Exodus 9:29b)

I looked up at the patch of sky above me;
I looked out at the swatch of green before me.
I saw clouds pulled across the blue with kite strings;
I saw myself imbedded in a shadow box of early afternoon breezes.
Sometimes it goes without saying that certain stories need to be told.
Sun or rain,
the words can be heard in whispered portraits of the day.
A doe crossed the road just beyond the cemetery
and disappeared into the stand of trees and brush.
She didn’t know I saw her. She sauntered like it
all belonged to her.
I walked toe to heel hoping to get closer to the
next one that crossed my path.
The air was thicker today, and I heard the
blackbirds say there were still hours to stay
in the middle of the afternoon.

Joy Unaware

Joy Unaware

(“Because they were wondering and questioning in the midst of their happiness, he said to them, ‘Do you have anything to eat?’” Luke 24:41)

We couldn’t believe our eyes though we looked
closer than the center of the target. We thought we were
seeing ghosts. We cried with tears in our eyes,
we cried with joy overwhelmed by surprise.
We thought we were looking into the sun,
we thought our eyes were blinded by the sight
of the center of the universe. We were castoff to the
edges of the earth. We were on the precipice between
laughter and accidents. Descending the stairs of sorrow
we were astonished at the brightness of the way. We
finished the interview and waited for the doors to open
when we saw the face that was as alive as a window full
of reflections. And that is all we thought we saw. But
we knew by the countenance that shined through, we
had walked with him through the waters and the blue
solitary skies. He had stilled the storms we thought nearly
swallowed us whole. We had watched him die.
Did I mention that joy overtook our sight? Did it
occur to us that things we never dreamed of might
swoop in and catch us unaware? We would share our
meal with him, we would watch him join us and,
corporeally speaking, our joy would slowly transform
into trust.

Songs for the Road

 Songs for the Road

(“So the people believed. When they heard that the Lord cared about the people of Israel and had seen their suffering, they bowed to the ground and worshiped.” Exodus 4:31)

Listen, the story is coming. Give heed to the words that
contain the seeds of your liberation. There is an announcement that
is no longer fantasy. It is not vanity to think that the divine has
given you an avenue of escape.
Open the envelope, break the seal,
read the news that announces the days of sorrow are over.
See the signature, hear the voice, recognize the penmanship,
breathe the perfume. Let it remind you, let it make you dream
while you are still standing there in the sun. Let it transport you
to the next day that describes the reasons for your pain.

List the ways you have heard, catalog the moment you
understood that tomorrow, though the same as today,
will bring reminders that you have been understood. The
message
was timely.

The sweat had left trails of salt down our
brows and cheeks. We checked in on our children every
time we had a chance. We looked past the horizon in hopes
they would not suffer our hardship once they were grown.

We thought we might perish in the sun. We thought we might
grow extinct, but unsure of the exact moment in time.

We heard the words and fell on our faces. We listened
longer than we had before. We were seen; we had been noticed;
our silent soliloquys had stuck in the mud. We built an altar
and loaded it with every prayer we had ever uttered. We
grasped every syllable and molded them into shapes of
angels who had been following us all along. We kept
quiet, though, saving our songs for the road, saving our
songs for the road.

Execution Hill

Execution Hill

(“Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.’” Luke 23:34a)

We pretended to walk across the river,
we made fun of the way others swam.
We filtered our sarcasm through a dozen
courtrooms filled with hungry spectators.
We expected a show, we expected to know
how the day would end and why we held on so long.
But we let loose of our story and demanded dancing
from a one-legged dog. We were not cruel,
just vastly misinformed.

We never expected the sky to storm from noon until
three, we had been told to expect sunshine on our sublime faces.
We were informed that we were born for this;
we believed it like a phone call from the government.
But we put our trust in iron, we put our hope in blades
of steel; we outsourced our future to magazines full of powder,
to derisive wars of words. We nailed the truth
to the wood.

We followed the dark procession,
we were there for the show.
We had nothing more to do that afternoon
than watch the slow execution of a trio of criminals,
(or so we were told.) We had heard the stories,
and met a few fellows who said they knew the
man in the middle
from an encounter along the road. They were
convinced they were healed. They were convinced
he didn’t belong hanging naked in front of the world.

We didn’t expect him to speak,
we expected little from him at all. He saved
those fellows along the road,
surely he could save himself like a king on a throne.
But we heard, quieter than the breeze, and loud as a
man innocent by degrees. It was forgiveness he eased
from his throat as we watched his life ebb away over those
hours.
It didn’t matter if we knew beforehand, now we knew
exactly what we had done. We stopped our talk and dice games,
and lost our exuberance for parades to execution hill.

Just When Everyone Else Is Walking Away

Just When Everyone Else Is Walking Away

(“But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” Luke 22:69)

Empires are threatened by authority that wields its power
like dying. Rulers rage at the gentle grace that sits upon
the face of those who have learned, at the sharp side of the spear,
that military parades are the antichrist in a world desperately needing peace.

The Son of Man, the human one, the person no one understands,
will always be the one brought before courts with made-up charges
from the cream of the crop.

The accusations fly and Satan laughs and dances: That man told us
to stop paying taxes.
That man is misleading so many people of our nation.
That man says we shouldn’t give anything to Caesar.
That man says he is a king!

The empire implodes. The purveyors of propriety pull their hair,
the strong men grab their whips to teach a lesson or two that the
Teacher
needs to learn.

They thought to sit him down and shut him up,
they encouraged every false claimer to speak up,
they needed charges, false ones, accusations grown of
discontent and jealousy. They needed to rid the nation of
this threat to their good way of life. Follow this man and our
whole reason for existence could be ruined. Mute him;
forever.

You will never see the power of the divine until you
contemplate the splintery stake upon which Jesus sat.
You will never understand the dream of God until you
study the way the Son of Man ruled from a cross meant for
shame: humiliation: death: In those moments you may receive
illumination that God’s power is not like human kings who
write out executive orders to rid the land of more uneasy people
of color.

God’s throne is not golden, it is not gilded in precious jewels,
it is not at the end of a royal carpet with warriors holding up
the corners. God’s throne is among the jesters who know how
shame can bring rain that washes all the dust away. They are the
ones who started to tell the truth when kings thought they must be gods.

No one ever knew, and many still do not, that God is no king, but is
a servant. That the Son of Man is not a destroyer, but a giver. And
it is time to know kingly edicts can only come from crosses of pain
that remind us that we have been forgiven again and again. And the
Son cries, “Father forgive, for they have no idea what they are doing.”
And the jesters dance just when everyone else is walking away.