peaceable kingdom

As a child, I used to be surprised and hurt that animals did not come closer. I constantly dreamed of little chickadees resting in my hand, squirrels perched on my shoulder, fawns nuzzling my cheek, but today with Anna the cat on my lap, longing for my touch, I am amazed that she trusts me at all. "We've killed your kind by the droves," I want to tell her. "We slash and burn your homes, we tie you up to work our fields, we eat you, turn you to glue-- why should you trust me?" And yet, as Scripture teaches us, all of the animal kingdom groans for the kingdom of God to come, for the princes and princesses, sons and daughters of God to be revealed. They hold no grudges, but I am not surprised that they are wired to run at the sound of my steps. And yet, here on my lap, nuzzling my cheek, is a first fruit, all fur and purr, of the peaceable kingdom.

 

These are not the rantings of a vegetarian animal activist, but just a musing of gratefulness and wonder that there is a life so other than me that lets me love it up close. Wonder too that God would allow His creatures to be subject to such frustration, would even call us to smear their innocent blood over our front doors, slit their throats at the temple until their life rushed out over our altars and we understood the cost of sin. And even now in factories, living in their own feces, or dying in polluted waters, being hunted to extinction, they display in graphic ways the cost of our sin and in doing so point us to the slain Lamb.

 

As I hold this cat, there are tens of thousands of chickens, bred too fat to walk, who are pumped full of chemicals that enable them to unnaturally survive their tortuous environment until they are slaughtered.  There, waiting in cages, they groan on my behalf, waiting for me to be revealed as glorious, spotless and pure. How is that fair? The answer is it's not, but this is the grace God gives to us through every living being, through the creation we were called to steward as a gardener but have plundered as a thief. Today during church a toddler suggested that we pray for giraffes. We laughed, of course, but it is no small thing.  Even on the African plains, the giraffe is my close companion in longing. Call me crazy, but my hope is that one day I will get to apologise to her and to God for the part I've played, and she will lick my face with her long black tongue. Until then, I will enjoy my cat and listen to the birds sing outside my window with wonder and delight.

onion

 

There was an old woman

who was greedy and cold

She was mean and she was spiteful

with eyes full of scorn.

And she lived by herself,

for herself, in her mind.

And she hated the world

for its dirt and its grime;

And she hated the world

for its dirt and its grime.

 

One day a beggar

came hungry and poor

and she beat him and bruised him;

she hollered and swore.

Yet as he turned slowly

from the house to the road,

she threw him an onion

and quick! slammed the door;

she threw him an onion

and quick! slammed the door.

 

Now the woman grew older

and one day she died,

as she sunk down to hades

an archangel cried,

"Grab hold of this onion

I have in my hand!

It will lift you to heaven

for Christ was that man;

it will lift you to heaven

for Christ was that man."

 

So children, listen closely,

our tale is now told,

love's not just a feeling

a warmth in our soul.

But love is an onion

that grows in the dirt,

its roots deep in heaven,

its roots deep in earth;

its roots deep in heaven,

its roots deep in earth.

 

 

This is a song I wrote based on a story that was based on a fable found in The Brother's Karamazov which might have been borrowed from an even older tale.  Below is a link to the Karamazov excerpt.  It has a different emphasis but is brilliant.  It's good to reclaim the art of storytelling.  Part of me is afraid of fables--what if people think that an onion is the path to salvation?--but this is fairly ridiculous.  Jesus loved telling parables that gave glimpses of the truth, while not explicitly addressing every theological implication.  On the other side, you have people who scorn fables because they do not reflect "real life."  But sometimes I think we need stories with obvious morals in order to reflect what real life really is when our lives feel a bit muddled.  So many stories now are about muddled people who are wandering through the muddled world.  I suppose we need all kinds!     

 

 http://threekeywords.com/quotes/top-posts/the-onion-a-fable-from-the-brothers-karamazov/  

joy

Teeth chattering

rattling cold bones

of a hungry throng

straining to hear

some hot word

trickle down

rumor of some

Man they heard

used to speak

a long time ago.

For years she waits

blue-lipped, cracked

hands tugging

at the sleaves

of a thread-bare faith,

until He came,

like an open flame,

close as a coal

held to her lips--

 

Come dance with me

my love, my lover,

my beloved lovely one--

be wrapped in robes

of my rejoicing, in life,

in light, in song.

homecoming

Scrape me small, O God,
   across your great
      mercy; your terrible
    and tender hands
       pressing down
            upon my hard heart,
               clod of clay
            crumbling through
                 wire crosses
                     of a seive,
                    baptised again,
                          with every
                                  tiny
                                         yes.

do not grind

Do not grind your mind
   on the failures of the day;
  you will only sharpen Death's
        voice, lies whispered
           so soft and high,
             only the dogs can hear.

finding my stride

Today, on one of the prettiest days autumn has given us so far, I went for a run in the park.  At .2 miles I felt completely spent.  Considering I am supposedly training for a 10K, this wasn't very promising.  I pushed on however, racing against the clock and keeping careful track of the .1 mile markers which seemed to come every mile or so. 
About a mile into my run, I ran past a particularly lovely vista, a field full of purple flowers and yellow leaves, framed by rolling hills and brilliant orange autumn trees.  As I ran by, I saw an overgrown side path, leading not past the scene but into it.  And so deciding that I was not making very good time anyway, I decided to follow it.  Occasionally, because it seemed the thing to do in such a beautiful place, I would even lift up my arms and spin or take flying leaps, "wasting" precious energy that could have gotten me closer to my perceived goal. Though beautiful, it was hard work running that path.  As I ran I had to lift my legs high in order not to trip in the tall grasses.   The path circled around the field and eventually brought me back to the gravel trail, which suddenly felt easy to run in comparison. 
It's fun to fill out a phrase in the doing and living that used to be only conceptual.  Today I discovered that "finding your stride" is a real experience, one that I've never really had before as a runner.  After my extra-curricular journey, my body found a rhythm--my legs, my lungs, my arms--and I ran farther than I have in a long time with relative ease.  It felt amazing, and it was wonderful to be able to enjoy creation (including my creaturely self) in a way I just couldn't when I first started my run.
I won't spend long drawing out the metaphor.  For now, it is sufficient to say that it is always worth it to accept God's invitations to take the path of joy, even if it is the longer route or even if it ends up being more difficult than you imagine.    
   
At the end of my run, I saw an old man and an old woman holding hands just beginning the trail.  He was leaning on her for support and cradling a chicken in his arms.  I'm not sure where that scene fits into my allegorical journey, except to say that mystery always has the final word of every metaphor.  And that is the way it should be. 

a poem morphs and boils

Faith

perhaps i’m tied 

to superstition 

with strings 

of childish hope, 

but tell me-- 

in your grown up

intuition--

is purity made

of soap? 

this isn't terrible, but the smugness of the rhyming question with no real meaning bothers me, so i change it.

Self-Righteousness

perhaps i tied my

self with strings

of rotten rope

and the purity 

i paid for

is a flake 

of dirty soap.

Too easy.

Perhaps

perhaps the strings

of telling, 

perhaps the children,

perhaps the flakes of hope.

i let it fall apart in hopes it will reconstitute itself

A Joke

a rotting intuition

walks into a bar 

of soap.

it doesn't.

Hope

perhaps a string 

perhaps the truest thing I've said, but not a poem

A String

..............................................

This could perhaps be genius.  But, alas, it is not.  But it tried.  Sometimes it's best to walk away and cut your losses.  I suppose God writes straight with crooked strings.  So maybe He could even weave this rotten poem into His purposes and for His glory, but I don't see how.  What happens, cosmically speaking, to bad art?  I don't know.  Does it all burn?  What is left of it when it is all boiled down?  What happens, cosmically speaking, to bad theology? to childish philosophy?  to our superstitions about art's ultimate meaning?  A string of hope indeed.  All I know is that purity is not made of soap, nor man for the Sabbath, so I better get some sleep so I can be up in time to teach Sunday school to the children about the fall of man (true story).  Last week we made Adam's rib out of crumpled white pieces of paper.  One child cried out in true grief at the lameness of the craft-time.  My idea this week is to give them a clothespin (representing themselves) and have them wrap it with a string that reminds them of the way God clothed Adam and wraps him in His love, even after he sinned.  A string.  Sin.  Bad art.  Covering.  Welcome to my raw mind.

To redeem this post I will close with a Charles Spurgeon quote I found today about covering.  I pray you will dip this post into a silver bath.  God bless.

"I would, brothers and sisters, that we could all imitate the pearl oyster. A hurtful particle intrudes itself into its shell, and this vexes and grieves it. It cannot eject the evil, and what does it do but cover it with a precious substance extracted out of its own life, by which it turns the intruder into a pearl. Oh, that we could do so with the provocations we receive from our fellow Christians, so that pearls of patience, gentleness, long-suffering, and forgiveness might be bred within us by that which else had harmed us. I would desire to keep ready for my fellow Christians, a bath of silver, in which I could electroplate all their mistakes into occasions for love. As the dripping well covers with its own deposit all that is placed within its drip, so would love cover all within its range with love, thus turning even curses into blessings. Oh that we had such love that it would cover all, and conceal all, so far as it is right and just that it should be covered and concealed...

Do you want an example of it? Would you see the very mirror and perfection of the charity that beareth all things? Behold your divine Lord. Oh, what he has covered! It is a tempting topic, but I will not dwell on it. How his glorious righteousness, his wondrous splendour of love, has covered all our faults and all their consequences, treating us as if he saw no sin in Jacob, neither perversity in Israel. Think what he bore when he came unto his own and his own received him not! What a covering was that when he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." What a pitying sight of the fearful misery of man our Lord Jesus had when holy tears bedewed those sacred eyes! What a generous blindness to their infamous cruelty he manifested when he prayed for his bloodthirsty enemies. O beloved, you will never be tempted, and taunted, and tried as he was; yet in your own shorter measure may you possess that love which can silently bear all things for the elect's sake and for Christ's sake, that the multitude of the redeemed may be accomplished, and that Christ through you may see of the travail  of his soul."

   

Worthy is the Lamb.  Goodnight.