With Canopies Keeping

With Canopies Keeping

(“If then your body is full of light, with no part of it dark, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its gleam.” Luke 11:36)

And in the forest with canopies keeping the furled smoke
of a hundred distant campfires just above our heads,
the gray shadows and crackling soot divided the
aspen boulevards and made addresses hard to locate
nearing the last light of day.

There was no fear, no threat, all was contained except

the misguided insistence that kept many from finding
the ring of friends sharing stories and passing songs late.

The smoke stayed well past sunset, and the whole forest was

the same tuxedo black of the shadows just hours before.
But in that heaviness of night forest air is the sweet breath
of pine scent and summer smoke. And though late among
the upright stands the night itself seems to reign, the
evidences of life are magnified; a crackling twig or
a hoot owl’s call are french horn and percussion close by.

And in the darkening night that might turn another away,

the campfires, like lighthouses among the woods, catch
the wanderers’ eyes and lead them by human voice and
eventual affection.

Every circle with friends and new ones warming, is not
simply an invention, but evidence of redemption; a fire
and a song with a final arc of friendship to wanderers
in the night.

The Mighty Chord

The Mighty Chord

(“The apostles left and went from village to village, telling the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:6)

There is a mass of loneliness nearer may heart than
any other definition or silent wanderer; just like the furthest planet
in a solar system of dustless ions. A planet
because the loneliness is not empty; it is tangible;
a hardwood enlargement of lead-weight emotion
with gravity so strong that nothing stays long but
is boomeranged into its own orbit across the outskirts
where longing and time rarely cross.

It is what I write about because it is wound about my being;
and so many ask when the flowers will appear in my poetry,
the hearts and forests, the hope and choruses of love.

And usually, once someone has noticed the sadness in
each letter on the page,
I force the petal of a rose between the stanzas. Yet it
wilts between the writing and the reader. I was made this way,
because that space, so heavy and so empty, has always been the
first phrase of the next thing I thought or wanted.

And yet, I’ve been asked by the One Friend,
in some way, with some convincing tone,
to lay the good news down like the hook; “The next sound
you will hear is a mighty chord of 9 grand pianos finishing the song.”

I’ve been told He fills me, but my gut feels empty,
save for the solid mass of longing where the loneliness has
made its home.

I once thought there would be a friend, maybe two; and
I watched Joan Baez celebrate her 75^th birthday with friend
after friend after friend, sing their duets with her. I thought there
might be a duet started early that stayed for the last encore.

But the ones I wanted near the end, half have turned their backs,

moved down another road too difficult to navigate now. So I plow
down the path the same way I began, almost convinced that friendship
is not worth the time I took to get it from beginning to banned.

The weight stays nearer my heart than any can imagine. Lonely.
It’s true, I’m a forgiven man, and a healed one, too. But time has
robbed me of the hugs

While space has subtracted.

Come near, please, only if you know there stands a weight between
your good intentions
and my lonesome heart.

On Post Office Walls

On Post Office Walls

(“Yahweh said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they tell you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them.’” 1 Samuel 8:7)

We cannot survive on silence,
the space between molecules gives us
nothing better than the missing pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle.

Have you ever seen one of those posters hung
on post office walls, or stapled to a telephone-pole?
The picture is a wide-smiling woman, business-casual,
and glad to have been photographed. “If you want to
enjoy your life
like her” it says, “Call the number below.”
You’ve seen them, I know you have. And along the
bottom of the poster tags are cut like a dozen tiny tickets.
Tear one off and take the phone number with you. Only,
this one, the one that caught your eye, the one that might change
your life,
has been stripped of every tag with its magic number.

God, we cannot hold you. You are worse than water to grasp.
We would pull you down like a string on a kite; we would
tug the tail of your coat until you recognized our smallish face.
But we only grip nearly weightless mass as the air passes
between our fingers.

We cannot populate invisible planets. Even if we could touch
without seeing, each step would be dread, not seeing the green, the yellow
or red. Hopscotch would be impossible; prodigals would never find
their way back to the homestead. Most frightening would be the
demagogue who said only he could see.

We do not want your Second, your Administrative Assistant.
We cannot live on mere representations of the only thing
we really want to know. Nations beg for rulers; democracies are
the worst. We expect the one who says she knows you best
will make it all comprehensible; the one who says he’s closer
than the rest…but both remind us of

One of those posters hung on post office walls.

A Christian Dad Sounds Off on the Lies About Transgender People and Restrooms

(Shared from "The Good Men Project: goodmenproject.com)

A Christian Dad Sounds Off on the Lies About Transgender People and Restrooms

Bruce Pagano is a devout Christian with strong principles. He respects those of his faith with whom he may disagree. He has a tough time, however, with those who deal in complete falsehoods. That is what he sees in today’s current discourse. He tells us why.

—

If you had to explain it to someone from another country, what would you tell them appears to be the biggest issues facing our country? Our economy? The millions of people who live in poverty? Our hard broken justice system? The fact that a crazy misogynist has grabbed the GOP nomination essentially unchallenged? Nope, nope, nope and nope. Oddly, you would likely be closer if you said our biggest issue, especially within the conservative Christian camp, is whether a person should be able to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Realistically this has been a point of contention and debate in one form or another for quite a few years, with instances like bakers refusing to make cakes for same gender weddings, the push to legalize same gender marriage, local government officials refusing to execute their civic duty when it comes to issuing said marriage licenses and a myriad of other rights that members of the LGBTQ community are working toward gaining. And in all that, Christians have been some of the loudest voices of opposition.

The Slow Descent of Years

The Slow Descent of Years

(“During those days He went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” Luke 6:12)

I have cried, I know You have seen it;
as autumn brings the slow descent of years.
Please (it is my ego’s petition) let me reach the end
with more than a sparsely sown field. My muscles
no longer ache,
I am in too much pain to use them.
But my soul has never hurt so deep while I wait
for just one more year of abundance. Battered
sometimes by words and reversed rhymes that
I never did see coming,
my hideaway is barely 12x12
and my prayers a shorter measure.

I have never loved You more, and yet,
in this final turn, though cheered on by many,
the blows I’ve taken over the years have left a deadly
scar I protect by letting the phone keep on ringing,
moving my mouth while others do the singing,
and resigning myself to my final fate; I wanted to
end better than this.

So, will You go to the mountain for me?
And, if I perhaps found the strength to hike halfway,
would You still meet me there? Would you show me
how to finish well, fill my swelling soul with so much more
than the mourning over memories?

So will You stay by the fountain with me;
though, like the Samaritan woman, I do not find my way there
till well into the afternoon?
And yet, I need you sooner. Certain of fewer doctrines,
and certain of no other options than the grace You
wooed me with, and the grace that will

Lead me home.

The First Place

The First Place

I heard the first place we went was undiscoverable,
they were caverns I had never seen, fissures in the granite
where glaciers had retreated. But now we stood
halfway up the slope like the spine of a giant whale
and we whispered the world between the breaths we took.

I would go farther, see the summit, but the damage done
over years of abuse
and self-styled announcements
has left me panting far below the treeline.
New wounds only irritate old wounds
and now I doubt all will be smoothed over
by the time I’m asked to deliver my final address
on the state of the world
and my place in it.

If you could supply, by grant or by inheritance,
I would comply without counting the dangers.
You know how sad I’ve become, you know my fingers
are crooked and my throat is bare. You know best,
besides the one sweet harbor of my years,
how far the crest of the stars has fallen from me.

I wanted the first place I went was out to sea,
they were trenches deeper than mountains, the wounds in the planet
darker than soldiers’ tears. Now I want to last, please,
at least until
I see the fire fall just once more. Until hose crying for aid,
lie on the ground and watch stars dance like before.

I want to know You have walked through the door
in your humblest theophany (you are the poor, the sick,
the aging, the abused) and we have gladly welcomed
the glad parade from here to home. 

Shine on Us!

"Shine on Us!"

“He will cause the bright dawn of salvation to rise on us and to shine from heaven on all those who live in the dark shadow of death, to guide our steps into the path of peace.” Luke 1:78b-79

I am sure many of us have had the same disconcerting moment. Something wakes us out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night. We may have been in the midst of a vivid dream full of images and people that seemed as real as the waking world. Those few moments between reverie and reality can be extremely disorienting. Perhaps it was bright daylight in your dream and you cannot figure out why it is now so dark. Or you were halfway through a conversation with an old friend, awaking to wonder how the conversation ended.