Author: Steve

He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
         Two beings in white robes stood by them and said,
         “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
                  —Acts 1.9-11

Because we are sad.
Because with all those who cry to the sky
we are bewildered, and yearning.

We gaze
because something so dear and fine has left us.
We crane our necks—don’t we always?—
toward the face turning at the gate,
the bus rounding the corner.
We hold the rose before we put it in.
We watch the emptiness
where our beloved was
and we can’t take our eyes off it.

We’re not yet ready
to remember what we’ve learned.
But there is guidance in our longing.
This sadness is some of the miracle
that will raise us,
the loss that opens something,
the sorrow of what is taken
where we find what is not taken.

We are looking up
so you can find us,
the angels of absence,
to walk us through this new land
until we can come and go with grace.

                  —May 4, 2016

How proud we are
to distinguish
among our illusions,
preferring this over that,

how possessive
of the wind in our hands,

the dogs of our minds
barking after squirrels,
“I am not this!”
“I am not that!”

But the blood-red rose
unfolding in our hearts
knows better
and calmly rejoices
at the stone
that is also the grief
that is also the stranger
that is also God.

                               —May 3, 2016

You are not bearing a burden;
it carries you.

You are not crying out;
it speaks you.

They are not strangers
but bits of yourself you have not yet gathered.

The night is dark
but a path reaches out.

The trees here are still mostly bare,
their infinite fingers of resolute patience.
They are in no hurry. What will come,
will.

South of here it’s different, and farther north.
But this is here.

On some twigs the tenderest green
emerges, a different green, and fragile
as new things are.

Without yet the singing, buzzing and sweetness
they gather life in near-freezing wind, bare,
or nearly so.

Sap runs. You can’t see it.
Small things underground shift,
and something larger than all this.
Tomorrow is more open than the western sky,
moving.
 

 

Sometimes the wind that strips everything
is the strong breathing of a yes.

The river of life wears away your little island
and bears you somewhere fertile.

Receive the gift only departing can bestow,
the holy not in what is anointed

but in what is next,
the beginning beyond the silence beyond the end.

In thickest darkness is a door felt, not seen.
It gives.

Beside you in confidence
God is uncompleting the journey for you.

Lay your hand on the dark door. A voice
says, “Come, join my becoming.”

 

 

         
         One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
         When Jesus saw him lying there
         and knew that he had been there a long time,
         he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”
                  —John 5.5-6

Sometimes not.
We want to hang onto our hurt.
We’re accustomed to adapting; sanity seems odd.
Sobriety scares us. Wholeness intimidates us.
It’s uncertain beyond the prison gates.
There’s shelter in anger, in victimhood, in helplessness.
And how can we live without the pity?
What would life be like without the drama?

Do you want to be forgiven?
Sometimes not. There’s stability in despair.
You can get so far behind you don’t have to run.
You can get comfy in the doghouse.

And there is this: someone will tell you
it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.
Easier to stay paralyzed than to bring down the temple.

Sometimes the greatest courage is needed
not to fight monsters, but to live an ordinary life.

Do you want to be made well?
It will be work. It will bring on the unknown.
You will stand on new legs. It will hurt.

Take up your mat and walk.
He will find you.

 

 

         
         Those who love me will keep my word,
                  and my Father-Mother will love them,
         and we will come to them
                  and make our home with them.
                           —John 14.23

The Holy One is not a king on a high throne.
You don’t have to move your heart’s belongings
to the far-off city with gold streets.
God is not a destination.
God is a family. God is home.

The Beloved lives with you,
moves in with her plants and quilts,
a homemaker.

Beloved, you are my home,
my family, my belonging.
In you I can wear my pajamas.
No matter what happens to me,
how others treat me,
or even what I think of myself,
you are the warm, sold place I am safe,
I am free, I am myself, I am loved.
You are the family that includes me,
the beloved that know me,
that claim me as your own.
You live with me, make a home with me.
I am not separate or different.
I am one of us. I belong.

We all are. We all do.

 

 

         The apostle Paul, guided by a dream, went to Philippi.
         At the river some women had gathered for prayer.
         Lydia was baptized, and offered her home for Paul and his friends.
         Scripture records this: “And she prevailed upon us.”

The inner guide, the Teacher in us, follows a silent voice.
We learn to listen.

We go to new places and enter new experiences,
accepting not being “at home.”

We go down to the river: place or origin, place of flowing,
place of washing, place of gathering, place of prayer.

We are welcomed by women. We are dependent on women.
Scripture silences them, but they are leaders, they are heroes.

They are a community of faith and struggle, marginalized
but at the center of life. They are praying for us.

A seller of purple cloth, a strong woman, appears.
She opens her heart. She is transformed.

A woman’s voice within you speaks.
A woman’s voice within the Church speaks.

She makes a home for us. She welcomes us.
She is the temple. She is life. She is God.

The Transformed One, the Welcoming One
prevails.
 

 

         
Beloved Earth, I sit with you
not as a “resource” for me to use,
or an “environment” for me to occupy,
but as a friend,
a creature of God,
a living being.
You are Word given root and wind,
cell and sinew, mountain and depth.
Your seething, your burgeoning, your swirling
I dance with.
I am part of you.
I belong to you.
I live and die in you;
your living and dying is in me.
Your storms breathe in me,
schools of fish move in me.
Your diversity, your exuberance,
your teeming abundance
is my home, my body.
You are my teacher,
my mother,
my flesh.
Oh, Beloved Earth,
speak to me.
I will sit
a long time
and listen.
 

 

      
         This is my commandment,
         that you love one another as I have loved you.
                  —John 15.12

that is,
with tender attention
and stout resilience,
that is,
despite your blame and fear,
your betrayal yet to come,
your lack of repentance,

as I have loved you
when you were determined
not to deserve it,

that you love as I have,
withholding nothing,
excusing no one,

that you pour yourself out
for the unworthy,

as I have
pour yourself out
of your life
into eternal love
and as I have
rise
new,
perfected
in love.