Wrapped Around Hope

Wrapped Around Hope

(“For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.” Hebrews 8:12)

You could not have timed it any better,
the fates aligned, and the angels faced the
future with their eyes as fierce as tigers.
Too many gave up taking themselves all
too
seriously.
We live with pain, pounded by the past
and fooled by the future. We look for answers
to manufacture gods in our own image.
Signing on the dotted line, we expect to be
charged with misdemeanors and felonies,
admitting our criminality, feeling like guilt
with shame running down our chins. We hoped
we would be better by now.

We memorized every misstep,
memorialized each sin.
We sat on Santa’s lap knowing we would
never deserve what we’d asked for.

Still,
we wrapped ourselves around hope.
We tried to elope before the wedding began.
We tried to leave early from the annual board meeting.
We wanted to hide away because people always save
the harshest words for the conclusion. What we need
is benediction;
what we hide are the contradictions that drive us
into undercover dungeons.

Yet,
the light is washing away the cobwebs,
the morning is inviting the lost and lonely,
the afternoon is singing songs set free,
the evening invites a quiet contemplation.
And the angels turn their faces toward the
sun as we watch them glorify the one who
opened the skies for us well before we gave up
all our vices.

Gifts of Consolation

Gifts of Consolation

I don’t have to wait until I hear your tears,
I don’t have to put it off one day to
console you with the gifts I have already
set aside. You don’t have to wait
to hear me say
that I would do anything to keep the
world from sneaking up on you like
careless serpents in the sand.

I would take your anxious shivers into
my own nervous system,
I would punctuate the fears with music
that sounds like a dozen madrigals singing
between the fine lines of loss and quantity.
I would remind you how laughter can
dry the raindrops that sheared the air overnight.
I would assign your name to the best
accomplices of mercy without an explanation.
You would breathe easier; you would see
the meteors cross the late night sky. The
falling stars would remind you that beauty can
pierce the darkness and bright eyes shine
best through the spectrum of tears.

I wish I could tell you I know how the dice will roll,
I wish I could predict the uncertainties of hikes down
uncharted canyons.
All I know is the water still flows after the
overnight fever dream,
I know the daylight will warm your hopes
like pearls adorning your face. I know, even
though it seems little is left, that the wine is
still in the cup,
the bread still on the hearth,
and children giggle while parents watch
their unambiguous play.

Freedom is Nothing

Freedom is Nothing

(“And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” Luke 17:4)

Freedom is nothing like the fortresses we build,
it is an open plain,
it is streams winding,
it is easy moments between noon and afternoon’s
breeze.
I’ll never excuse the hurts,
but I’ll forgive them.
And we can talk this Thursday evening
on the phone or on my deck.
We can unload the shipments of sludge
we’ve dug up from the past and
joke that we ever were all that serious.
Freedom is nothing like the theology we float,
it is God-in-us,
it is Christ forgiving,
it is the hardest labor between scars and therapy’s
change.
Nobody told us we could bottom out
so we didn’t talk for years.

I tried to revise the history,
I tried to say it never happened.
I wanted the day to transform the
memories that held my brain hostage.
You wanted to know there was nothing
left to be upset about. We wanted
freedom;

We wanted nothing more than untitled poetry
to hold us up between the storms. We could
laugh for ages
once we understood how mistaken we both had
been.

Freedom is nothing like the chronicles we read,
it is unrhymed poetry,
it is words waving,
it is written so well that the future can read it
like cuneiform characters in stone.

A Trilogy of Geese

A Trilogy of Geese

(“No servant can serve two masters. The servant will hate one master and love the other, or will follow one master and refuse to follow the other. You cannot serve both God and worldly riches.” Luke 16:13)

A trilogy of geese scratched the sky
spiraling above the hilly landscape.
They circled a field of mown alfalfa
and landed in the middle of the sheaves
left out to dry.

He walked the same path and looped the
ground on asphalt along the farmer’s boundaries.
His feet knew the way as he watched
the brittle sky wink away the morning dew.
His eyes had faded,
his arms listing to one side.
He saw them and wondered where the
rest of the flock might be.

I need more moments when sun and birds
meet overhead. I need minute miracles that
account for only seconds of my time. I need
my pockets stitched where I used to store
my coins.

The three geese didn’t answer his questions,
they only raised his intrigue about
the origin of things and what his
spindly thoughts were worth. His
pockets were empty, and I think he
finally liked it that way.

The Smile Stood Sideways

The Smile Stood Sideways

(“Then he carries it back home. He speaks to all his friends and to the people that live near him. He says, ‘I have found the sheep that I lost. So come to my house and we can all be happy together.’” Luke 15:6)

The smile stood sideways climbing up his face
like a flowering vine, like hibiscus, like morning glories
following the sun. The music overflowed above
the neighborhood fences and filled the street
with anonymous dancers celebrating like summer
had arrived weeks earlier than expected. Even the
babies twirled.
No one refused the invitation,
no one remained alone.
No one made up excuses,
no one showed up full-grown.
When the lost are found our aging
reverses its course and we giggle like children
when a favorite friend walks in the door.

The day was one shade darker until the missing one
is found. The day was nearly done with its light,
fading as the sun began to take its rest. But
we
could not stop the search, we would not until
we found the one we loved, isolated from
all the others we loved. Our hearts were
troubled until we found her, caught between
yesterday and a hundred weeks of looking.

We exploded in joy, a full orchestra of rejoicing;
we carried her back and called everyone we knew.
There are smiles so broad they sit sideways on their faces
because love has completed its journey home.

Now We Are Us

Now We Are Us

(“But when you make a dinner, ask the people who are poor, hurt, lame, or blind.” Luke 14:13)

The places are set,
the invitations were sent weeks ago.
We once were clowns who only hung out
with the circus. But the sun came up like
no other months ago
and we canceled our subscription to the
magazines
that fashioned our disease. We only felt
comfortable with
people like us. We set the places
mindfully,
hoping for new conversations to open
the sky, new songs to answer why we never
thought of this before.

We were awkward at first, finding our words,
slaking our thirst, watching the door for the final
few to find their seats unrehearsed.

We hoped for inspiration, the kind you get when
you climb a mountain higher than the birds fly.
We hoped the air would clear our minds,
the breeze unfreeze our brains from ages of
sitting like mirrors around unstable tables.

We hoped they felt welcome.
We hoped to dispel some of our unconscious
biases lately starting to give us pain.
We hoped we knew their language,
we hoped we spoke of the face value
of beauty all around the plates set out for
anyone who would come.

We were them
once,
now we are us.

The Breeze Can Turn

The Breeze Can Turn

(“There are those who are last now who will be first in the future. And there are those who are first now who will be last in the future.” Luke 13:30)

The breeze can turn the day around,
it can move flags and leaves to their own devices.
The earth turns and the winds swirl
and we try to predict it all with instruments of sound.
The sand hill that you built your life upon,
no matter how high up the cliffs,
will not stand when the winds of time shift.
There are fewer days than when we started,
fewer moments to freely pursue the dreams of
salvation. You’ve fattened yourself like
a calf for the slaughter and do not realize
the days are racing forward.

Step down before
it is too late,
stand on the loaming ground before you fall
from the top of your precipice. Carry your
proclamations under your coat,
turn your speech around,
you’ve got more to confess than the
limits you’ve put on yourself. Failing
to flourish, you just pretend your boxes
are filled with more money than you can count.
Go look again,
the mice have eaten half of it. The rest are
necessary to pay your debt to humanity.

Poverty might look good on you. Poverty might
turn your words around. I’d befriend you
if you spoke honestly. I’d share a meal with you
if you lay down your presumptive power and
eat slowly the supper made by humble hands
born across the border.
The breeze can turn the day around,
if only you will listen to the wind and let
the Spirit fill your vacancy with the
cries of the walkers only wanting a chance
to work in the sun.