expectations

I thought it was a roma bean

and it tasted horrible

I thought it was a lima bean

and it tasted sweet

I thought it was a magic bean

and it gave me a stalk

with angels ascending

and descending

and I prayed for grace 

to climb with no expectations,

but to know and love Him more,

to receive each bean as a gift,
each gift as a seed.

let it out

Today I found a journal entry that reminded me of a time I was bawling so hard it felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out.  There were two people there praying with me and they kept saying, let it out, not into the air but into the side of Jesus.  And so I did.  I let it out, not to be dissipated into the universe but directly to Christ.  It is not often I feel so strongly that my words are going straight to the Divine Ear that is closer than the mouth that cries them out.  Often I imagine all these filters, films, barriers, the requests traveling through a maze, half of them getting lost in translation, getting lost in the mail, lost in the midst of a million prayers rising up.  But if the next words on your tongue were heard by the Creator of the Universe, the Sustainer of all Things, the Lover of your Soul, and you knew that you knew that He was listening, what would you say?

Say it.  

witness

The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but power. -1 Corinthians 4:20

I recognized this scene, saw it a hundred times both in great and terrible films: small factions begin forming beneath the street lamps, confronting each other with a crescendo of discontented, indiscernible words, attracting more people, more voices, more syllables taptaptapping into some ancient nameless hatred, hardening hearts, arms raising arms, until the irrevocable bang, the scurrying, the body of the best friend left lying still, lit by indifferent and unnatural light.  

There was yet no bang, but the air quivered beneath their anger, staggering like a boy bearing a weight too heavy upon his shoulders.  Emerging from my car, I met friends emerging from their house, concerned about the violent shouting that shook the air.  I put my shaking thumb on the nine of my cellphone, and in the moment I felt purposeful, powerful, whispering with my friends on the porch about what to do, thinking to myself whatistherightthing, the smartthing, the bravething, the christianthing.  And then suddenly one turned her back upon our caucus and then the other glanced at me before she too turned her head, and I was left alone, my arm hanging impotent at my side.  I did not understand.  I did not know what I was supposed to do, and I did not know what they were doing.  Why would they leave me without telling me where they were going?  Why were they walking closer toward the angry crowd, their backs straight, jaws set?  I do not want to be a part of the gawking masses, I thought.  I will respond as I would a tantrum from a child; I will not give this event credence with my eyes.  And yet I was the child, the one feeling abandoned, caught in my own emotions even as the world screamed its own pain at me, begging me to know suffering larger than my confusion, abandonment far deeper than a twinge.  

And when I did look I saw my friends standing as statues on the skirts of conflict, different from the others in their silence and in their stillness.  And then a third and then a fourth emerged onto the sidewalk, and until then, I did not know compassion could set one’s eyes like flint.  And then I understood that they were standing there as witnesses, the pillars of a roof I could not see, offering protection in a way I had not yet thought to provide.  

Soon after, the police arrived, and forty youth scattered into the shadows.  My friends returned; we retrieved the cooler out of my car I let them borrow for a camping trip; there were goodbye hugs, and I drove home to a peaceful cul-de-sac, the kind of sack stuffed full of my dreams of ending poverty and theories of justice and the role of the church, untouched and untested, pristine in their verbiage and powerless in the fight.  

I do not lie to you; the morning of this incident, I was in Norwood with two of these four friends talking about what living the gospel looks like in our neighborhood, how a core message of the good news is that we are not abandoned.  I distinctly remember getting up on my high horse about a sermon I heard about how the core of the gospel is not “do the right thing” and how it feels like so many in our church view it like that.  And yet, in the situation I describe, that is exactly the mindset I responded with.  I did remember to pray, but part of me wonders if that is not an extension of the what-is-the-christian-thing-to-do mindset rather than allowing Christ to truly live in me.  I know at times it might seem like a small difference from the outside, but I have truly felt the radically different nature in my life and have been privileged to witness it in others along the way.  I think there is a time for talking about what the gospel/church is, but there is a time for leaving the caucus on the porch and learning how to watch and listen and intercede.  Lord, have mercy.

As a side note, this is the sermon I referenced about how the gospel is more than doing the right thing.  Most of the sermons on there are excellent including this one.  It is from the Anglican church I belong/ed to in Wheaton.  Anyway, perhaps something to listen to while you are cooking for your neighbors. :)

http://www.churchrez.org/sermon/i-am-the-way-the-truth-and-the-life/    

libation

The flock of clouds witnessed him from above

manifesting destiny with a shovel, a glove,

a bag of seed, barrels, grapes, a trelis of rope,

yet it was not in his blood to bear the hope

nor pain of this rugged coast.

He was born beneath another banner’s song, beside

another sea, and contentment can be pried

even from the rugged hands of a happy man

whose breath and back still tend a land

his heart has not been called.

And so he rode a train of metal boxes east

along a metal scar, wheels grinding on the piece

of mind that churns still faster than the gears

and turns the soiled decade into a sapling year

of hard and unplowed births.

Hard as concrete screaming by for miles outside

the city gates, vacant lots, a thousand vacant eyes

attached to empty hands still full of strength,   

and through his pane, he plots a garden’s length

beneath the howl of gray.

A year has come and past and parking lots remain

yet lawns are sprouting squash and cabbages and grain.

A strong and pretty girl kneels beside him planting seeds;

they have a secret chicken that they hide from the police,

and he is learning how to laugh.

The flock of city clouds whisper from above,

“All of us are migrants looking for a land to love;

we are but a vapor, a momentary mist

growing gray and heavy until the blessed bliss

of giving ourselves away.”

worth it

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” -Jonah 4:9

I worked hard to glean that first harvest, puncturing my skin on sharp thorns as I plucked tiny lonely berries lingering in the back, the purple tips of my fingers shaking with the strain of my reach.  For a girl used to finding berries encased in plastic beneath florescent lights, finding food growing in the middle of the woods still took me by surprise.  I remember the first taste, tentatively putting one pustule of one berry to my mouth, unsure of its name, of its potential power to kill or make me an indentured servant to intestinal demands.  As the sweetness filled my mouth, I simply did not care and swallowed the whole berry, scribbling “I am eating wild berries” inside my journal on the off chance a family taking a Sunday afternoon stroll found my unconscious body lying on the trail.  But surely nothing this sweet could be harmful.  Berry after berry found its fate between my teeth, past my tongue, and down my throat.  Statistically, my pleasure decreased with each one, but each down to the last worth the effort, paying the thorns directly with blood and sweat, no intermediaries, no HR administrators doling out my tuppence nor checkout clerks with scanners and vacant eyes.  Two weeks later, marks still linger on my body, pale skinned ghosts of scabs gone by.  And unlike most times when the body bears proof of its memories, they are reminders of delight, mine and God’s as He watched me like the blue sky peaking through the canopy of shifting green light as I savored His unexpected gift.  

This evening, I went back to that patch armed with knowledge of the berries’ names (wild black raspberries or, if I was feeling more formal, Rubus occidentalis), and an assurance that they could do no harm.  I found them with little difficulty and rejoiced that the berries that were once so small had tripled in size.  I greedily popped three berries in my mouth, hungry not only for their sweetness but also their sustenance.  I realized immediately they were different, less flavor and even bitter.  I was sure of their identification by their location and leaves.  I was also furious.  I had been looking forward to this berry feast all day, planned my gratefulness in advance.  Curses upon this fruit, I thought.  Curses on the seed that bore it, the sky for giving it rain and sun. Curses on its capability to so deeply disappoint, to remind me of all the times I try to re-enact a good thing and it falls into bitter little pieces, to embody what it is like when something, someone looks the same and in that looking makes promises he did not intend to give or keep.  Two weeks.  Two years.  Things change, he said.  But can I live with the reality of the second, not wishing to remove the first?  Can sweet and bitter dwell together in the same mouth without curses, only blessing, blessing the coming and the leaving, blessing the scars that linger still?

This post sounds very personal, but it is actually a little made up.  The berries part is all true, but the part about two years is not true.  It is mostly drawn from an experience I had when I was little when I played this really fun game of stuffed animal war and then tried to re-enact it and it was really lame.  That felt like it would be harder and less relatable on some level.  Not that I haven't had my fair share of heartache/ "things change" kind of pain, but it's not exactly so simple as I made it out to be!

two poems on the resurrection

And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us. -John 1:14

Love

For three days,

the word lay like

a stilled tongue 

inside the mouth

of a lightless 

tomb--

blood-soaked,

eyes rolled back

like a stone,

like the word

stone, lifeless

until breath

and breather’s 

meaning

filled the law

of love and death’s

clanging symbols

with risen flesh.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Joy

An angel folds

death’s shroud

in joy and trembling,

as He unfolds

the three-person tent,

 raising it up

like a big top, 

to be seen by all

that we might come, 

Allegria Allelulia,

to make our dwelling

inside of Him.

let me

Oh, let me be a bird

nesting inside

your neighbor’s gutter,

let me be the bastard child

of your brother’s pool boy,

let me be a ring upon your

dentist’s finger,

that I might catch a glimpse,

a mumbled word,

a shadow of a fringe 

of an alleged rumor

of a love

that will not let me 

go.