Rock Wood Wire

Arms

2011-12-06T22:53:00.000-08:00

Shock of curly hair, braided,

hangs into tears.

All gall and fury, the baby

scrambles over her mother, leans in close

to the vacant face

and picks at the closed eyes.

Curled into typhoid,

Mama lies on dirt and meager grass,

the woman barely breathes.

Feel her fever.

Yanking limp arms, Baby bawls

and searches her blouse for a breast.

The husband sits stoically by, staring.

Baby never looks at him or lifts her hands

to her father. He has never seen

the universal gesture of upraised arms

that she, that they,

might be suddenly gathered

into his blindness and comforted.

Addendum: The mother was taken to a hospital (in Ethiopia) and cared for. The blind father and Baby were brought along. Who took them into their arms after that, Lord knows.

Hole and Heart

2011-11-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Black skinned Margaret, calls me Susie

as if I am family, takes me to her field. Rake and hoe,

she’s pried open the earth with hands and sweat,

taken the magic of seeds and planted half an acre.

I step through her verdant garden,

mud weighing down my shoes, while Margaret

whispers secrets about a stick, dry wood

slid in next to the seedling, poked deep into red dirt,

how a hole like that gathers water, a direct line

to the heart of the cabbage.

I laugh because I call myself Wooden Woman,

reaching out’s stiff and awkward, I glance over clean

white socks, mud gripped, filth seeping

into my bright orange shoes. And still

she grabs my elbow, ushers me into her home.

I smell her humanness as she shows me her skills,

school uniforms she sews—a business

treadled between sun and clay

of the garden. I wash my hands every day

how many times with sanitizer, combating

dirt and bacteria, parasites and illness, yes, I am

immunized, passport and ticket home around my waist.

Margaret is not afraid. She squeezes my hand,

roasts ground nuts and serves porridge, she

looks straight into my eyes, despite the drought.

Margaret searches warm soda bottles and fishes out

a Fanta to match my shoes. For Susie, she calls again

the childhood name reserved for my closest relatives—

as if all my knowledge and money were not pauper’s gifts;

as if the hole in her HIV positive life,

were completely filled to brimming

with my whispered thank you.

Half Way Around the World

2011-10-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

The tenor begins in the garden,

climbs the vine

to the birds,

And follows the hollow bones

of flight.

We call:

Higher! Go Higher!

Tomorrow morning I leave for Africa. We work with Spring of Hope International (www.springhope.org ) providing holistic community development. Spring of Hope International's goal is to empower our Kenyan brothers and sisters to lift themselves out of the discouraging and demoralizing shackles of spiritual and economic poverty. A privilege. A responsibility. Those two lovers holding hands again.

If you know my heavenly Father please remind Him of us as the spirit prompts.

Kenya and then Ethiopia (for a look at how others are helping). Gone for a month.

I will be back......

August 15th. Four days worth of words.

2011-08-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Words Switch Sides all the Time

Close your eyes and imagine a simple term

like water. Isn’t water good—after a thaw,

stunning, a rushing baptism of beauty—

but wait, doesn’t good signify a spar with the eternal

summer heat, when, as one-sided as the word thirsty,

redemption finally falls from the sky?

When I think of it, it is amazing we communicate
at all.

*

August 5. Just five words. FIVE.

2011-08-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

We pray.

Answered.

Perplexing perspectives.

July 26--More words than I intended.

2011-07-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

THE WAY OF PRAYER

Dreamily floating,

adrift

on an updraft,

a grocery bag catches

the car antennae, crumpling instantly,

then furiously flailing,

bicker and thrash, flogging itself

all panic against glass,

but it calms when I slow,

glide into the garage

it releases a sigh,

as if caught on a breeze

the gentle scent

of home.

Shhh…quiet, tiptoe

inside.

July 6. Six Couplets

2011-07-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

I learned snow:

a soft fall that builds up.

I learned dirt:

calling your hair ribbon mine.

I learned sun:

a beating down that makes things grow.

I grasp the tremble of beauty:

sitting palm to palm through months of cancer.

Giving came easy:

when everything had been taken away.

I learned love:

because you forgave me.

June 30. Thirty words.

2011-06-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

Child arise,

stir the glitter of motes

till sun turns red,

but gather the grey,

under your arm,

that amazing weight

measures pain and slows time.

It defines hope.

June 26. Twenty-six Words.

2011-06-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Pain

is a glass angel

directing the soul,

a glint of fire,

when the heel comes down...

small tinks scattered on the pavement…

so you stop.

One Stop Poetry

June 22. Twenty-Two Fleshy Words

2011-06-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Skin

completely

covers us with feeling,

a soft gauze to hold us in and

hold back small leakages:

both comforter and comforted.

June 21. Twenty-One Words.

2011-06-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

The heart

has it’s own nervous system,

developed before the brain's

nervous system—

a few weeks after conception,

heart cells beat.

June 19. Nineteen Words

2011-06-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine the river of the aorta as pristine,

a heartland, inside the swamp of body,

unpolluted enough for God…

June18. Eighteen words.

2011-06-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

We don’t have that many words for fire—

the hand and heart of light—

warming

consuming.

June 11. Eleven Words (the meaning of I AM).

2011-06-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

Water carries no history or future

Connected to thirst

Like God

June 7. Seven Words.

2011-06-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

Amnesty day:

Sticks and stones

are forgiven.

May 28. Twenty-eight words.

2011-05-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

Not just a license plate,

but how it shields the grinding wheel,

a father standing over his son,

the shadow of authority,

a bystander,

unable to prevent accidents.

May 24. Twenty-four Words.

2011-05-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

So perhaps love is this way: high pressure

then afternoon rain, the fresh smell of arrival,

forgiveness, like regret,

staying face up through the cloudy

ablution.

(link to Monkey. )

May 21. Twenty-One Words.

2011-05-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

Fear never burned

with disbelief like the mouse,

forced headfirst

into the wind,

flight without feather or faith

to catch himself.

May 18th. Eighteen Words.

2011-05-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Like a word misspoken, then taken back.

We call it morning, with coffee

so strong it needs cream.

May 17. Seventeen Words

2011-05-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

She

huddles

against failure,

curls into yesterday, despairs,

stunned

that she was Chosen

for this moment.

May 13th. Thirteen Words

2011-05-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Beauty’s indifferent to poverty, affluence.

My reflection floats on the surface

And wonders.

May 9. Nine Strophes

2011-05-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hoar Frost. You don’t need a picture.

Memory does it for you, imbedding words into being.

Yet there are also words with no visuals.

Abstractions like hot and smothered. Sigh.

How interesting that God describes Himself as the Word.

Covering both universe and nothing.

God’s name is not Word, He is Word.

But He has many names.

Is there any honor greater than being named?

Apricot tree.

Magpie.

Ice.

A name,

being invited in,

winning the draw, finally chosen.

You are.

Billions of dirt brown birds,

along with hairs and stars and sand on the beach

and ubiquitous shreds of plastic

gently rolling down a pitted street in Africa

… becoming something.

The Word says I will have a new name in Heaven.

Names, unpronounceable here

no doubt, but I imagine there

one syllable in every name

to be yes.

May 7 Mother's Day Weekend

2011-05-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

Emptiness

filled by likeness:

you in me.

I miss you Mother.

Marjorie Carey Brosius

(1927-2004)

May 5

2011-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Even a gull can FLY.

May 4

2011-05-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, please, no dogs.....

April 30

2011-04-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Crimson and loons on the lake,

ancient reflections calm,

wait.

As if her father called,

she turns from beauty

into fading light,

sapwood flexes,

a gap widens,

she steps through.

April 29

2011-04-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

Stars of sky fall to earth.

He holds in his mouth

the alphabet of her name,

one more

kiss,

engine of the mind racing

on gleaming tracks of love.

April 28

2011-04-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Truth,

never completely dormant,

late at night

calling, like a strange bird.

And gradual awareness—

There it is! Again!—

distant, sounding like a train,

insistent,

but easily ignored.

April 27

2011-04-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

She dislikes numbers:

a black hole with specs

like stars, continuously

sucked in, heavy, out of sight.

Except zero,

outside it all,

holding all possibility

like hope.

April 26

2011-04-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Eddie of corn snow,

ice sgraffito over a backed-up storm drain,

this crisp morning she decides

Beauty's consistently

somewhat out of place:

the stun of daffodils.

April 25

2011-04-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

His accent slightly foreign

troubled her.

"Don't forget My cross."

She heard "...crows."

So she fed them,

tossed them her trinkets.

Endless sacrifice

begetting love.

April 24. Resurrection Day: Jesus Saves.

2011-04-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

Death's pendulum stills,

guilt spilt from the hourglass.

Stalled

Defeated

Exposed. She weeps,

sweeping the love with her hands

uncovering wings in the sand.

April 23

2011-04-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

She pulled on dirty socks

in solidarity with the disciples,

who anticipated Monday.

Stiff, dry and salty.

Fishing again. Threading needles.

Darning holes.

April 22

2011-04-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

It's the way of stories, she said,

trouble angles in slowly

like night falling,

urgency

needles between the shoulders,

the hero's unaware...

April 21

2011-04-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

Deciding to lose

the parts of her she didn't like,

she minimized expression,

smiled without showing teeth,

then disappeared into nothing.

April 20

2011-04-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

Rescued from certain death,

her back straightened.

Now sinew and spine curl,

in light of salvation's terms:

surrender, even life.

April 19

2011-04-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

Dauntless, her spine curled,

trying to confound the irresistable

urge to grow.

Never mind everyone looked up to her.

April 18

2011-04-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Later that day she ran out of words.

Luckily, Silence had left tangible pauses

she could follow home.

April 17

2011-04-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

She saw it

and applauded raucously.

Even though twas perilously evanescent,

clearly,

Heaven embedded itself in earth.

April 16

2011-04-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yes--she is

a true environmentalist,

only removing deadwood

floating on reflective pools

of the eye.

(Matt 7:3-5)

April 15

2011-04-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

The concept of a calendar:

Days lined up in formation

"Now" always in the way.

April 13

2011-04-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

An impatient listener

every evening

he danced with her

long sentences:

marriage knot.

April 14

2011-04-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

No idea where to land,

in the not too distant future

she looks back.

April 12

2011-04-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

The serpent waits, calm

as the shore,

shimmer and glisten, calling
calling.

April 11

2011-04-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

She called it Answer

only because it presented itself

so elegantly.

April 10

2011-04-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

Coal or cloud,

she could never decide

which He was.

April 9

2011-04-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

THE FUTURE CAUGHT

ON THE END OF HER NOSE

April 8

2011-04-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

SHE SAW IT RIGHT AWAY,

THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCE

April 7

2011-04-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

SHE THOUGHT IT BEST

TO NOT MOVE.

April 6

2011-04-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

MOMENTARILY SHE CONSIDERS

HIS SWIFT SIGNATURE.

April 5

2011-04-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

CHILDREN PLAYING IN THE STREET

April 4

2011-04-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

SUDDEN TURNS, ATRIAL FLUTTER

April 3

2011-04-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

WORDS FOR WIND

April 2

2011-04-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

SHE RECONSIDERS

Na Po Mo

2011-04-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

National Poetry month. A frightening call to arms for the non-wordsmiths among us. Fear not.

Rules for play: A photo and caption using as many words as the date. April 1--one word. Easy peasy.

Lingoferous

Generations

2011-03-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

Two and a half and in the back seat, she sits, big girl style, on a booster seat. Her grandfather had called last night. He does not talk to her on the phone, only tells her mother he is coming for Lucy in the morning.

He was late. She was not ready. Her mother reached above the armoire, feeling for the bowl. Thumb and finger, she whirled it down to Lucy, who chose a giant creamy mum. Lucy drug the flowered headband over two ponytails to her neck and back up atop her forehead, the flower stationed over the right temple. She had loped down the hall in search of shoes.

Excitement lies somewhere between fear and love. Though the mind sees only the unknown ahead, the heart does what it knows is right and trusts if it has been good for others, one can lean into that blessing. It will surely follow them as well. He held her hand and led her out to the car and leaned in to help her with the seat belt.

The man has nine grandchildren. Keeping up with four children was incremental. Stages like stair steps were a navigable path. Now unable to keep up with birthdays, much less every day of their lives, he settles for doing the right thing: Wednesday at Mike’s Donuts. Yes, once a week, one at a time, donuts.

Lucy only knows she was chosen. She scans the back seat, props her legs against the back of the front seat. Grandad watches in the mirror. The large oval patch on her “good eye” forces the eye, which had a cataract removed, to continue seeing—not allowing the easy vision of the other eye to take over, effectively and permanently turning off sight to the weaker eye.

The man marvels at her nonchalance, how unaffected Lucy is by affliction, by what, for an adult would be a constant apology or vague embarrassment, at the very least a need for explanation to strangers. Lucy chatters on, narrating her morning.

Her jabber takes on the drama and inflection that story tellers use, pausing between words for effect and draaaaaaawing out verbs to gather anticipation. Her grandfather brakes and slows the car, gently, not wanting her to lose the thread. She scans the ceiling of the car and glances out the side window, saying the words exactly, occasionally kicking the seat in front of her, filling in the time it takes to drive to the donut shop with a complete rendition of Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

Not so the wicked!

They are like chaff

that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.

As they pull into Mike’s Donuts, Lucy finishes the recitation by grabbing at her seat belt to undo it all by herself. She closes the car door behind them and pulls on the old man’s hand as if he needs to be shown the way in.

Sign Language

2011-01-19T21:17:00.000-08:00

After swimming at the Y today, I shared the shower room with a small Chinese lady. We never spoke a word (but obeyed the locker room protocol of not staring; only casually glancing when grabbing shampoo or turning to rinse).

She might have decided I was tall. I thought her feet were small.

Later, while we dressed, she wandered back by the sink, stopping by the paper towel dispenser, softly touching the sides and front. Not wanting to move in too fast, I waited a moment and then walked over and waved a hand beneath the machine. She smiled as towels rolled out.

A few minutes later, dressed, she walked out. I watched her disappear down the hall.

Before I went back to pulling my shirt over my head, she appeared again. She smiled at me. And gave a little bow. I don’t know why, but I bowed back.

~

Hidden Story

2010-04-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

I used to write inside the dresser drawers. First on the white paper liner, later lifting the protection and coloring beneath. Dark smooth wood. I’d scribble green and red and blue and then close it away. A hidden rendevous with beauty. A hidden wrong.

The mind is a drawer of remembracnce...

...hidden stories that rub off on clean clothes, that seep subtly into everything—a cuff stained with a fleck of red, a blue tinge on your favorite shorts.

Occasionally, in just the right weather, the dresser shakes and the drawer rumbles open, the story flies out in a kite full of gestures, paper and colors against wood and wind, soiled sox tailing the tempest, truth diving and circling the syllables.

Listen. There’s more.

Now it’s your turn. Confession is a story with a line of sorrow, the updraft of forgivenss.

It takes two. An indelible connection. No matter how dark, how closed.

Breaker crushed shells, grit

So fine it tells a story:

Undertow. Life line.

Luminaria

2010-04-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

Light can be described both as a wave and a particle. Not one or the other. Both.

It can be dark in the light. And light in the dark.

*
In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Riddles.

Riddles in which we find truth.

Is there anything more full of light that the voice of someone you love?

Trails under the bark

Passageways defined by dark

Light softly spoken

Golden Rule

2010-04-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

I have only one word of advice:

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

That's it. That is the only flashlight you get.

Keep it in front of you. It will go well with you.

Everytime.

(it's only cliche until you do it...)

Forgive sweat and blood

Skin covers bone with feeling

Petals fall open

Answers

2010-04-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

Answers. Mostly not like a math problem, there are massively varied solutions. And those are the ones you actually figure out.

Look. Listen. Touch. Smell. Taste. Senses are hardly the right tools.

Memory comes closer.

Pain closer yet.

I'm not saying pain is the answer, just that we begin to understand different things when pain is involved.

And we still might not ever have the satisfaction of knowing the answer.

Thumb flipping pages

The leaves talk amongst themselves

Answers clear as wind

Grace

2010-04-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

A year ago, a good man died in Africa. Willis. We tend to speak well of the dead—memory does that—but in the end truth lingers. Willis was kind and generous. I hope his two young sons absorbed his faith and are bearing that fruit even now. And Grace. Grace, his wife, is living out her name. I think it is Grace that I admire most in this world.

Kneeling on pebbles

Clockwise circle the seasons

Best days: sky is blue

Marriage

2010-04-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Poles apart

Two merge into one

Sky lays down on water and ripples

Apple of the Eye

2010-04-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

A bit like the smell of motor oil, I relish the smell of printer's ink.

My husband actually likes a light smell of skunk. It recalls his uncle's ranch as as child, walking up the creek fishing and the barn cat that could not wait for the hook to come out before grabbing the fish.

Ever wonder what odd thing makes your reflection shimmer in God's mind?

Reflecting the heart

Backward upside down buffoon

Apple of the eye

Green Flash

2010-04-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

I've never seen the green flash. It's a sunset phenomenon wherein just after the sun slips below the horizon there is a flash of brilliant green.

And I must tell you that if someone said they had seen it, well, it would be suspect. It is just a flash afterall. Anyone could say they saw it and the world would be no different.

But still I wonder: is this instantaneous burst of color real--or is it just wishful thinking?

I tend to believe slow things. Rocks flattened by glaciers and Saviors that take three days to rise.

And yet there I am at sunset and staring through slow minutes...hoping.

Crane: midstream stock still

Scanning eons urgent surge

Green flash flips a tail

Christ Has Risen. He Has Risen, Indeed

2010-04-04T11:43:00.000-07:00

Old crows and rocks gawked

Wings and doubt over head flocked

Savior rose rose rose

Wait. You Just have to Wait

2010-04-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Saturday of Holy Week: waiting, waiting--being still, living with the horror for a whole day, waiting. And their waiting was not in expectation of resurrection. More like: so now what? How do I explain this? Perhaps I'll just quietly walk back down to the dock and see how my fishing boat is. Anyone want to come?

Corridor of death

Clouds run from the horizon

Crows fly single file

Cannon for Good Friday

2010-04-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

Tremolo: earth quakes

Glissando: law shifts on grace

Fermata: ripping

NaPoMo

2010-04-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Someone named it: April. And then National Poetry Month. NaPoMo our term of endearment.

Poetry—the art of choosing the exact and right words. Oh it strikes fear in the hearts of those who expect this means there is a right and wrong answer. And sadly these days, poetry illicits disrespect for hiding rather than revealing meaning, making the reader feel stupid. But it does not have to be so.

I propose progress as playtime. Begin with a small form: the haiku. Three lines of syllables five then seven then five. Think images. Think stark: nouns and verbs. Give one nod to nature and another to our humanity. Post your poem in the comments below.

One a day. Just like the vitamin. Who knows what good will come of it.

Frost. Clay. Rose. Each named

hair, star, grain of sand, sparrow

sought after, chosen.

Nothing in all the world means chosen, like being named.

The Beauty of Nature

2010-03-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

Grab a camera. Scan the world. What will you capture?

Beauty. Without even thinking, we search for beauty...

…if not classical beauty, then the beauty of the odd, the subliminal beauty of a curiosity or a fragment of human emotion. Click.

It’s remarkable isn’t it—a myriad of forms so present, yet beyond us, that beauty feels like God.

No wonder nature is worshipped. We look to nature for evidence of a Maker. The striations of an iris, a finger print, not just the way the smallest particles of dust can turn a sunset aflame, but that its crimson allure forces me to stop and acknowledge its presence.

Yet beauty does not in any way reach back to address our adoration.

And there it is: God never promises to be present in nature. Nature only bears witness to God.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

(Psalm 19:1-4)

I have friends who shun going to church. It seems the hypocrisy and annoyance of people gets in the way of their communing with God. Yet, I wonder if their experience of looking for God in nature can be like getting to know someone by staring at their picture—or reading about their attributes on Face Book.

I’m not saying that seeking God in books or the Word is without wisdom. Or that going out into nature is without value in focusing one’s mind on God. It just occurs to me that if a person wants direct contact with God…

… where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (Matt 18:20)

Interesting, no?
.

Dreams

2010-03-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

Writers talk about “suspension of disbelief”. In fact, it is the essential ingredient in storytelling, the ability to cause a listener to enter the adventure—to partake of a proposed reality without skepticism. No holding back.

Dreams have this genius. We participate in their reality no matter how birarre.

Falling. Flying. Elevators that go sideways, nakedness that goes unnoticed to a room full of people.

Dreams flawlessly slip from one reality into another; my newborn baby walks and talks while I urgently try to find the class I haven’t been to all semester. I am under water. Slowly, so very slowly, I inhale. The rules of this place are so completely apprehended that the mind no longer questions the laws: the reversal—inhale to exhale—must be seamless in order to breathe underwater.

In dreams there is no choosing to believe or doubt. Disbelief does not exist.

Yes, I am breathing underwater, if only tenuously. And well, it does not feel miraculous. But it feels like I’ve uncovered a new possibility.

Dreams. Could this be an odd template for faith...

… a persistent and birarre model for the suspension of disbelief?

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Renewal. The mind must be, not just trained, but re-newed in order to suspend disbelief.

Can renewal change the mind so it no longer depends on doubt to be the catalyst for courage?

Is it within our grasp to see things as God sees them? Wouldn’t that be perfection?

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. What do you think that means?
.

Choices

2010-02-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

Suppose you were able to see the end results of different paths that are offered you in life. Let’s say all your choices are based solely on the final outcome.

The most alluring choice, the one to which we would say, YES, I want to be THAT, the one that will change us for the absolute best, will necessarily involve pain. If fact, any result at all will involve pain. No pain, no gain. Tell me if I am wrong on this.

It is interesting to me how very many choices we do have in life. But the most painful ones often come to us as no choice at all. My young friend has arthritis, my husband has been dealt the C (cancer) card and I am torn between believing that the pain will be gain and scriptures that insist we can be healed.

What shall we call this disconnect—painfully healed?

Lewis again says, “It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to makes of us.”

Alas, we see in a mirror but dimly, and cannot see the end.

Hope alone is powerful…

…but toss in faith that believes God to be not only willing, but most powerfully capable and completely settled on my good, well, even with that invincible confidence, life is a wicked soup.

So, well—thanks, but no thanks to the easier route. This time. Daddy always said, "You won't remember this fine day, if we don't get stuck."

.

Perfect

2010-01-27T21:37:00.000-08:00

Be Ye Perfect...

Many people are bothered by these words. As C.S. Lewis says, many believe God expects us to be perfect, if not He will not help us.

A rather hopeless position.

Perhaps, as Lewis muses, He meant, "The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want less than that, but I will give you nothing less."

Help to become perfect.

Impossible comfort?

Umami

2010-01-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

Truth. It doesn't change. Sweet, salty, sour, and bitter equals taste. We get four choices plus smell, the great enjoyment multiplier of fine cuisine. (To qualify as taste, a taste must be detected without any other sense involved.)

Enter umami: Taste #5.

Defined as a "savory" taste, found in meats, seafoods, sea weed and various other vegetables and foods," one website says,"most people don't recognize umami when they encounter it, but it plays and important role in making food delicious."

Is that to say we don't taste it?

I've been thinking about describing the color blue to a blind man.

Or describing sweet to a man who has never had any. Words are impossibly inadequate. But we have honey. There is sugar.

There is salt. Bite that lemon. Chew up that Tylenol.

Umami remains illusive as the blind man's blue.

Yet they say it is the heart and soul of delicious.

MSG is the golden child of umami.

Umami enhances other flavors. It's the thing in cheese that enhances wine. The part of oyster sauce that makes stir fry---what? . Indefinable, indescribable.

Noteable.

That is something.

But there is nothing new under the sun.

Fire

2009-12-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

Fire is the most magical thing I know.

Careful, it is hot. But you can run your finger through it without being burned.

Evanescent, it cannot be weighed or quantified except by where it has been and what it has used for fuel.

It gives blessed heat....

...yet burns and disfigures irreparably.

Even as it does so, fire is beauty embodied.

Deeply desired, fire is profoundly feared.

Did I say it is orange? And blue. Green. Red. Any color at all, depending...

What is it about a flame that makes us stare?

The Holy Spirit has been likened to fire.

Still we are no closer to knowing either one.

Recycled

2009-12-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

it is

little

skinny.

But

it has

good bones...

er...rocks

& wood.

Have you noticed

wood is good

both

dead and alive?

A kind of Knowing

2009-11-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

Forcing bulbs—a deception, I should think. Making a plant think (if plants can indeed think) summer is back.

But who can resist hovering over brillant red red red at the far end of the produce department? Uh-huh, they are in the basket and home. Let's call forcing a small luxury.

Forcing. Nothing more than a little manipulation, perhaps.

What is it in a plant that knows the way the world turns, its face always following the sun? Not exactly sentience. Definitely alive. But not smart.

I put them in a bright indirect light—south facing sun. The winter sun is low enough to fill the room. Still, I've never seen a tulip open that wide, wide, wider, as if by doing so there could be enough light in November for a tulip to survive. The petals dropped after two days in exhaustion.

We are currently on the wrong side of the solar sytem for tulips. They knew.

No wonder you cannot force a bulb two years in a row.

Birthdays

2009-11-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday--it's the most universally known song in the world.

When we arrived in Kenyna two years ago, finally lying in bed after an exhausting couple of days of flying, wafting through the open window came Happy Birthday being sung in three part harmony. Indeed this Kenya was a strange place--everything from mosquitos that can kill you to roadside stops by the military. But my welcome was Happy Birthday. Universal thankfulness for the miracle of being alive.

This past week was the birthday of Augustine. Augustine thought great thoughts that we hand to each other without ever knowing or really caring where that particular wisdom came from.

"Love is the beauty of the soul."

Today I'd like to stand on the shoulders of Augustine and sing Happy Birthday and give you another little gift from him:

"God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist."

Think on that for a lifetime or two.

Religion and Politics

2009-11-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

I've heard it said that if you mix religion and politics—

you get politics.

True? Why is that?

Stillnesss. Glory.

2009-11-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

Not just amazement at the everyday eye of a poppy, or the flash of glass-green as a wave breaks; not merely saluting blue—the infinite cover over us—but the power of beauty to arrest even the most important activity.  Like no other, beauty forces us to stop.

A lovely woman.

Water falling.

A perfect baby.

There is stillness and inevitable staring.

A blind woman’s hand feels the words, and then pauses...

Oh, the perfect irony that the blind can see beauty

or that stillness can shout the glory of creation.

What kind of God creates a curiosity like beauty—ineffable, untouchable, unaffected by us and yet, at times, made by us and then destroyed by us?

Can beauty be so fragile as to be destroyed? Or does it merely slip from view?

Try to imagine a world without it. Ahh. Beauty: our greatest comfort.

The Love Affair

2009-10-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Who can tell if this photo is sunrise or sunset? Did God cause the contrails to form so they would exactly follow the power lines? Does it matter? How do we know anything without mulling it over between us?

G K Chesterton once said, "Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."

That one can actually be emotionally in love with God is noteworthy. Exciting...

but perhaps prone to being tempermental. Rather flighty. Downright fleeting on occassion.

Perhaps what Chesterton is suggesting is the need for a change of our attitudes, our motives—something more personal. The most personal it can be—a love affair.

But doesn't it seems a bit presumptive to jump straight to love affair? That kind of closeness is the fruit of time spent together, the culmination of sacrifical acts of love.

Time and sacrifice happen with or without such emotion as is in a love affair.

So is it necessary or even good that one seek to make religion personal? Or will that religion, in an of itself, become personally meaningful in the doing?

I had a professor once say that the surest way for a poet to fail is to set out to write a love poem. He said, write about relationship, the acts, the images, and leave it to those who read your words say, "Ahh, it is a love poem!"

Sunday Sunrise

2009-10-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Fog.

It is cursed for hiding things.

Blessed for taking off the edges.

And beauty stands guard over it all.

The Apple of Your Eye

2009-10-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Just a little thought today.

Apple of your eye--literally in Hebrew means: Little Man of the Eye.

Easy to remember believers are the apple of God's eye. Our little man reflections in the great eye of God. Uncompromised attention, loyalty and protection.

"He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He kept him as the apple of His eye" (Deuteronomy 32:10 RSV)

No requirements. Love.

Anyone that close to us will, by default, also be reflected in our eyes--a rather passive exchange, wouldn't you say?

"My son, keep my Words and treasure up my Commandments with you; keep my Commandments and live, keep my Teachings as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart." (Proverbs 7:1-3 RSV)

God's reflection in our eyes looks like the law?

Must

2009-10-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

“In holy ways there is never so much must.” – Thomas Merton

Holy ways are a mystery.

But must, I know about must. Ohh the Obligation. Demand. Compulsion. Ought to. Should do. HAVE to. FINE!

I must do the ironing. Surely, Thomas, there is some value in forcing the will to iron out the waves and wrinkles, in making all things smooth, while venting about the trial on the phone to a friend.

Perhaps the holy part of which Merton speaks is thankfulness. The one ingredient that turns “must” into love. A thankful heart yearns to please. I worry about faking this. Stuffing all the frothier emotion.

I also find it interesting that the Lord’s Prayer, our template for prayer, does not contain a thank you.

The posture of that prayer is a submitted and rather emotionless reflection: thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Take away emotion from the word must and you have indifferent integrity. Can that be holiness?

.

Numbers

2009-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Jack Gordon calls it “free” because that’s how old he is. More than two but less than four. Numbers have always been something of an anathema to me, if only because they are so non-visual—five what? Seventeen what? And once I know what, I am so much more interested in that. 58 sparrows in a bush (but you can only see 14). How many are invisible? All the numbers are invisible—but a bush full of birds…

And then there are those numbers that are extraordinary, yet troublesome. Take that number 3. In my world this is an eternal symbol of God, the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 3 in 1. See what I mean?

Number 3 somehow leaves number 2 out altogether, and hooks up with 1, not making four, but rather just alienating number 2. The way kids do when the play date is a threesome. Someone perpetually wailing because they are left out. And then, to make things even more difficult, those who are hooked up together actually become 2 and the first number 2 becomes 1. One all alone. All alone.

CS Lewis in his book Miracles, describes being friends with two other writers. He liked one of the gentlemen better than the other and the one troublesome friend was perpetually hogging the conversation and time with the gentleman he preferred. In these situations it is hard not to wish the troublesome person away. And if that person happens to, say, die—it might at first seem in a small way like a boon.

And so it happened, but to Lewis’s dismay, he found the one he wished away brought out things in his other friend that he could not. That now, there would be no possible way to bring out these things because the essential ingredient was missing. Great loss. A loss greater than 1.

Think how sideways Golgotha would have been had either of the two hanging beside Jesus gone missing.

Essential then is each 1. In fact, vital we are, each to another. Shall we say, one needs one another.

Mostly I like ones. They come with names, not numbers. And they make faces at me on the bus. I love those two ones below. They are trying not to do three with me, their Auntie. Too late. We share some genes. Wait till I give you the low down on what love does to numbers...

The Unknown

2009-09-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

There are two types of knowing.

First, things I know that I don’t know: how to say plum blossom in Chinese or how to make notes drop like pearls from the piano, or why my mama died of ovarian cancer.

These are more like limitations. Ignorance acknowledged.

Then there are the things that I don’t know that I don’t know. Unknown unknowns. Not even possibilities. A whole sky of darkness surrounding something just as tenebrous.

Searching all night for an unknown absence is not only futile, but why would I be out looking in the first place?

As a naïve art student, an art professor told me to mix red and green paint, I had not ever in my life considered the possibility of grey. GREY! I had not been looking for grey. Yet there is was. Pure neutrality between the bright stars. Knowledge. Oh had I only known! Painting shadows will never be the same.

The unknown unknowns—black ice hiding on the road. Innocently taking your foot off the gas, who knew anything else would happen, other than slowing down. The desperate and horrible wreckage of what no one had reason to consider…

And yet there are other unknown unknowns. Goodness that arrives unannounced—sudden enlightenments that retain so much mystery they can only be called miracles.

.

Molecules Bump

2009-09-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

My husband tells me how molecules bump together. That rock I toss in the lake shoves out a ripple that doesn’t stop when it reaches land. Bump against nudge, it continues through the densest bedrock.

Around the whole world it goes, eventually arriving back smaller but persistent like memory.

I’m thinking about words and the rhyme “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

The impact hits me every time I read it. How can something so true be such a lie?

Of course, no one tries to be an irascible fool, blurting out blatant untruths. No, it’s the double entrendre. That other meaning you forgot to think about. That sarcastic edge you didn’t realize was hiding under the period.

Think more, talk less. They say body language speaks the loudest of all. Ah yes, who can forget that first kiss! But so little of our lives take place in person.

Bending Water

2009-09-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Water bends over the edge toward the next thing in its path, the way my man gets on a plane and flies to Boise. Absence: a kind of free fall.

No longer able to hold tight, to touch lips, time and space fill the days and nights. An interjection of sky between us takes the watery way our lives flow together and turns everything white.

He tells me white water is the most dangerous kind. A body can no longer float in turbid water, the base of a waterfall being the easiest place to drown. He says you have to crawl along the bottom out to where it clears.

Bubbles gradually rise toward Wednesday, when he returns.

Impossible Nothing

2009-09-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

Jesus had just been asked by the disciples why they couldn't cast out a demon.

He tells them ..."because of your little faith...if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you."

Nothing will be impossible for you.

I've always imagined that to mean I actually could move mountains, that it is in the realm of possibilities for a believer.

But. What if Jesus meant that if anyone has true but small faith it will soon be impossible for them to DO nothing—

that having even small faith means it will be impossible for me to see need and DO NOTHING.

Have you felt that way? Someone else has called it being ruined. Something breaks inside and you can no longer stand on the sidelines. Faith breaks the heart and NOTHING never looks the same again.

No more giving up. No more doing nothing.
.

Cheeto Fingers

2009-08-16T22:29:00.002-07:00

Someone gives you some Cheetos. Soon that salty orange reside covers your hand. When my children were small someone prophesied over me saying that one of my children will be a preacher. I licked that salty residue off my fingers for years, now and then sticking my fingers back in my bag of memories and testing the truth of what was given me.

My sons are now grown, they are engineers. All three of them. My daughter married a children's pastor--who I have assumed to be the revelation of the words given me, all the more because I do consider him a son.

Until today. It's not that my daughters husband isn't a preacher or that I haven't heard my oldest son speak in church before now. Today was a moment of realizing I do not have to squeeze my world to make prophsey fit. If it is of God, it will be literally true.

So pop another Cheeto in your mouth and lick all the orange off your fingers. That was my oldest son Daniel preaching today.

.

Looking At the Sun

2009-08-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

How do you explain sudden healing? It was a mere sermon illustration, a picture of Michelangelo's sculpture of David in all his nakedness.

Without warning a long held hurt—something about how the church views art and how the church treats artists—falls away. Not just OK, no more worries. A ragged wound miraculously smooth, as if it had been a stone turned in the tides for a lifetime. No rough corner or uneven edge, something I now want to hold in my hand and feel again and again. A marvel so rare.

This is not about forgiveness, it is about unexpected love, the extra moment of eye contact that brings you to your knees. Looking at the sun and not going blind.

.

Time Change

2009-08-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

Time is change, nothing else.

Time is the endless possibility of change

and the crushing inability to remain the same.

Licking that Popsicle changes

a summer day. Changing the mind

is less visible, but more

monumental, shall we say

eternal? Lasting change,

what is that? God

does not change

because God is outside of time.

When belief and time vanish

will the fixed end of change

be I AM? I AM, is that

statement a Name

or a warning

that choice and change

are only temporary

miracles?

Choices

2009-07-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Beige gloves, and turquoise scrubs, she carries a generic spray bottle marked with a Sharpie: rubbing alcohol. The syringe contains an inch and a half of gem tone blue-green liquid. We are told there is a vein on the inside of the back leg she can sometimes find without shaving. No more than five pounds, the cat is easily pushed on her side.

A Persian cat’s fur is fine—so fine that it easily mats, the tangles cinching the skin tighter and tighter as it grows. In desperation, a few months ago we had her shaved, keeping the fur long around her face and feet and tail—the look of a lion.

The vet sprays a stream of rubbing alcohol down the inside of her leg. The cream point fluff that remains on her leg is immediately transparent, the purplely vein clearly visible. A rusty red towel had been given us to lay her on while we wait. Notably used, faded. Down on his haunches, my husband’s trying to get Puddin’ to look at him; he makes a little sound in the back of his throat that she used to answer. Once again standing over her, he bends closer and gathers her into his hands. He puts his face down into the mane. Inhales deeply. Two, three times.

Sorrow can be looked straight in the face only for small moments. He turns steps over by the sink. Looks at the paper towel holder, the way he would read and re-read a cereal box in the morning. Eager for a distraction he puzzles over a white piece of plastic on top of the apparatus, then reaches up and touches it. The whole front of the machine flops open, revealing the twisted and complex inner-workings of something as simple as drying your hands.

We laugh.

Then the door opens. The vet is kind, kindness looking like slow movements and the sort of smile where lips cover the teeth with the downward turn of resignation that will wait or continue— whatever we need. She says it’s an anesthetic, just a little first to take the anxiety and then an overdose. Sleep. Then sleep redefined.

Within a second or two Puddin’ tips her head sideways as if she suddenly needs to lay it down.

No one really knows when life stops,

how death can happen with eyes open. We both try to pet them closed.

That I had scissors in the purse I call My Abyss, was surprising and not. We clip fluff from the top of her head and off the end of her tail. A beginning and end I’ve left it on the dresser wrapped in a tissue. What do you do with the remnants, the thirty seven pictures I took three hours ago. Tomorrow. Two years from now.

Mercy and killing, I’m not sure how to put those words in the same sentence without trembling. One person insists it’s severe grace. Another, mere convenience.

Soweto Slum

2009-07-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Soweto Slum in Nairobi Kenya.

Some noted differences: American poverty involves more stuff, albeit perhaps, broken, useless, cheap trappings. Litter of old sofas, hulks of defunct cars, not so much garbage, no open sewers. Soweto is not cluttered with the discarded. Garbage and sewage excepting.

Three closets the size of home. We poke our paleness inside--an acceptable variety of voyeurism to Kenyans, even the poorest Kenyans value relationship. We are asked to sit in a windowless room the size of a closet. I hope that is what I am doing, the relationship thing. How is this different from staring?

The boys below haven't noticed us. Sliding down the steep incline on their butts employs certain survival instincts that they will abandon to chase after us calling , HOW ARE YOU HOW ARE YOU HOW ARE YOU HOW ARE YOU?, tortuous choruses like bird-chatter. The question follows us like shadow.

A little market.

Round and red and familiar as the flies that cover everything: hunger. Our gifts were bread and Bibles...

...for the ubiquitous thirst.

Wash the laundry, cleanse the soul. Very clean clothes...

dry in the stench. Certain people collect buckets of raw sewage from each family as a kind of employment. Dump it in this river. Clean redefined.

Faith sits down for the day. Thumb and first finger press on the tear ducts.

Universally prayed by the women (AIDs widows): job, work, employment. The children that have followed us stand at the doorway watching, waiting for us to stand before the throng again begins the chant, the unanswerable pester, HOWAREYOUHOWAREYOUHOWAREYOU?

Play happens anyway.

See that sign--MERCY OF GOD COMPANY--stuck in a brook of raw sewage?

Mercy me.

Please come in...

...to where giving everything will only be a drop in the sea.

Never enough to do anything but hope on this day bread and a Bible are a good thing.

.

Flying

2009-06-15T08:15:00.001-07:00

We take flying for granted. A magical act suspended in the steely strength of physics. Oh, that it could be without steel and combustion. Except then it would depend on me, wouldn't it? Think of the exhaustion of those poor birds migrating from North to South America. Or London and Ireland. With my sister and neices and other school mates and parents. Let me tell you--it's wonderful in a million ways you wouldn't expect. Please let it be that way for the birds as well (not pure instinct).

I have a bad habit of immitating the accent and speech of those around me. I sit wuith Kathy from MinnesOHta and in no time I am talking MinnesOHtan. Still haven't lost the yeahyeahyeah (said quietly as both agreement and as listening sounds) or calling water WAH TAH from the Kenya trip. Forgive me ahead of time for whatever embarassing twang I bring back from the Isles.

More on Kenya when I return two weeks hence.
.

Hospital

2009-06-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hard to say exactly what a trip to Africa does to the heart. A blade of understanding, thin and keen, slips into the chest. The autogenic movement of the cardiac organ is all the momentum it takes to sever the wide wilderness of all I think I know. A panic of blood separates itself from the usual routes, all but invisible to you...

.

A hospital. Those who should not wait, tarry too long in coming. My camera intrudes like a knife. Makes permanent both hope and despair.

Doctors and nurses smile and work hard, doing what they can with nothing and with God.

Meals, laundry, these are the patient’s family’s responsibility. There are two nurses where there should be twenty. But there is palpable optimism. Is it those ever straight backs that make the difference? Backbone.

Essentials: respect. Everyone is given respect. Prayer. Everyone wants prayer—even the Muslim man. I thought to mention only God by name in my prayer, I knowingly left the word Jesus out of it (even though Muslims call Jesus a prophet). I dodged around in my brain amidst the prayer trying to catch wind of the Holy Spirit, trying to be conscious of the authority given me, In Jesus name… I punctuate the prayer. It couldn’t be helped or stopped. Lord, what does this mean? To him? To me?

We are not expected to wring our hands when we see want.

Here they do what they can, dutiful stewards, diligent servants, in an imperfect world.

They trust the Spirit for the lack. Give a cup of cool water...

to the poorest of poor.

Tis the only reason I don’t bleed to death from being there.

.

Not perfect grace, grace perfected.