Month: April 2019

Has what you love not yet
fallen to ashes?
Or can you still cling?

We all have different treasures,
soon to be relics.
What is common is loss.

In the marketplace of sorrow
We all have the same coin. 
Buy nothing. Give it away. 

We seek that other fire
that needs no fuel but us,
Refining, not destroying. 

“My body broken for you”
and risen again
in hearts that burn and are not consumed. 

Grant us the grace of those we love
who are not yet ashes. 
Teach us to love while we may.

   —April 17, 2019

You who are weary,
who have been doing this a long time,
you who struggle to keep going,
You are still going!
You are amazing!
You who don’t think you can go on:
I salute you!
You can go on, if you slow down
before you tire yourself too much.
You have the energy within you—
just find your right pace.
You who run through pain,
through self-doubt and crazy voices in your head,
you are amazing.
You who don’t feel beautiful,
who are falling behind what you hoped,
who aren’t doing your personal best,
I salute you.
You are going on! You are doing this!
Even you who step away,
whose path does not lead to other people’s finish line—
you are doing what is in you to do.
You are amazing! I salute you.
We are all doing our best.
And you who cheer your neighbors on,
who don’t give up encouraging, appreciating,
celebrating—you are amazing!

Look at us do this remarkable thing!
How can we not cheer each other on?

   —April 16, 2019

         “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat,
         but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail;
         and you, when once you have come back,
         strengthen your siblings.”
                  —Luke 22.31-32

How deeply you believe in me!
How graciously you offer this kindness in my weakness.
How you see me not as my brokenness
but as the one I am becoming.
You are with me already on the far side of my faults.
You are already resurrected without my failings,
and draw me up with you.
I soak in your deep love;
I let your hope become me.
I die and rise in you.

   —April 15, 2019

         “Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat,
         but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail;
         and you, when once you have come back,
         strengthen your siblings.”
                  —Luke 22.31-32

Beloved, I give you myself,
ripe and unripe, dappled and incomplete,
dead and raised.

I wave my palms,
         and yet I mean you harm.
I receive your body and blood in love,
         and I collude in your suffering.
We spread our cloaks before you
         all the way to the cross.
We cry for justice,
         feeding on the labor of the poor.
You are my highest treasure,
         which I will deny.
I will learn from you,
         then put you on trial,
         and not examine myself,
         and forget how never you judge me.
I promise my faithfulness,
         and I betray.

And yet by your grace I will come back.
Beloved, sift me, and redeem the wheat from the chaff.
Receive my broken, ill-fitting pieces,
bless them with your grace,
and mend me. Make me whole again.
Take my little faith with you to the cross;
in your dying let me die, and raise me new,
so that not with flawless piety
but with a widened heart, ripened by death,
I may strengthen my siblings.

—April 12, 2019

         Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,
         “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”
         He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent,
         the stones would shout out.”
                           —Luke 22.39-40

The stones they didn’t throw sing “Mercy!”
The five smooth stones chant, “Trust.”
Stones from the well where the woman met him
sing of the deep living waters.
Stepping stones and stumbling blocks murmur, “Grace.”
Jacob’s pillow, dream stone, offers its luminous silence.
Tablets of stone shout “Attend.”
The stone the builders rejected speaks of One Who Cares.
The stone that never became bread says, “What is.”
The stone that was rolled away says nothing
but rolls away from every grave
praising and praising and praising.

   —April 11, 2019

I will wave palm branches today.
Yes, I know they will be burned tomorrow;
I know my praise will turn to betrayal.
My hope will vanish into terror.
I know my passion for justice will be swallowed
by my lust for safety.
I know.
But I dare to trust my fickleness will be redeemed,
and is already.
I dare to believe now because I can,
even if later I will recant.
I dare to call for justice
though I myself will delay it.
I dare to have joy, even before the disaster,
because I know I will have joy again.
God has already blessed my brokenness,
transformed my evil, conquered my death.
This is my faith: that in the face of my sin
I rejoice.
In the face of evil I have hope,
in the face of failure I am confident,
in the face of death I live life.
How revolutionary, to rejoice in the face of despair!
Mortal, flawed, inadequate and doomed,
I wave my palm for the Beloved.
And the Beloved smiles.
Hosanna in the highest.

   —April 10, 2019

         “Go into the village ahead of you,
         and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt
         that has never been ridden.
         Untie it and bring it here.
         If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’
         just say this, ‘The Beloved needs it.’”
                  —Luke 19.30-31

My dear one,
your heart, your time,
your prayer, your imagination,
your faith and your doubt—
I need it.
Your thoughts, your voice,
the way you treat strangers,
I need it.
I need your presence
where there is hurt.
I need your risk in loving those
who are hard to love,
your vulnerability in caring for what is heartbreaking,
your hope in the dawn long before dawn.
I need you to convey me into the city,
to bear me into people’s hearts.
You, donkey-plain,
ordinary and waiting,
you are what I need.
Listen:
I have sent my servants
to untie you.

   —April 9, 2019

There are millions
of microbes living in you,
living beings you can’t see.
I wonder how many other
creatures of God as well,
how many spirits,
and how many gifts,
how many living prayers,
how many songs?

I bet they know to do things
we can’t imagine,
have powers we don’t have without them,
beautify us in ways we’ll never see.
Alone we would be lone indeed,
but together what courage we have!

I bet each of us with our billions
can be amazing.

Let’s astonish the world
with our dancing.

   —April 8, 2019

Leave the noise of the traffic of ideas.
Ignore fear’s nicknames for you.
Desert them.
Find an empty place.

Naked trees bear witness without speaking.
Silence falls
among sparse grasses like light.
The sea breathes in and out.
A single bird descends overhead.
Only God can say your name.

This deserted place won’t tell you who you are.
Listen to it.

___________________
Weather Report

Silence,
deepening throughout the day,
as the world sinks into the mystery
that spoke it.
Chance of light, with partial darkness,
both holy.

   —April 5, 2018

 The poor you always have with you;
         you do not always have me
                           —John 12.8

         I was hungry, and you fed me.
                           —Matthew 25.35

Beloved,
where will I meet you today?
Give me faith to go beyond my pity
for some imagined “poor;”
for now, in this moment, I have you,
not in some heavenly dream
but in this world, before me,
hurting, humble, disguised as one of me.
Give me the urgency of the moment,
faith in impending completion,
passion to feed you in your hunger,
to accompany you in your pain,
to anoint your wounded feet, now
here in this place,
before it is too late for you
and for me,
now, not in another life time.
Beloved, where will I meet you in pain today?
I am ready.

—April 4, 2019