You lack one thing;
         go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,
         and you will have treasure in heaven;
         then come, follow me.
                  —Mark 10.21

You lack one thing.
What is that one thing
Jesus knows you need
to lay your hands on
and set out to the curb?

What impedes your headlong rush into God’s arms?
What treasure weighs in your pocket,
what railing do you cling to
even as you long to leap
over the tiny abyss between you?

Surely your riches, but more.
Your expertise? Your approval rating?
The despair that enfolds you
when you face the fright of the deep unknown?
The familiar failure that nestles you,
hides you from the risk, the ask, the new?

You won’t find it reading this.
Go sit in silence and listen for the beckoning.
See what arises to stop you.
Then lay your hands on it, my friend,
tie it down and walk away.
The one thing you lack
is your freedom.

―October 10, 2018

         My complaint is bitter;
                  God’s hand is heavy despite my groaning.
         … I would lay my case before God,
                  and fill my mouth with arguments.
         … But on the left God hides, and I cannot behold God;
                  I turn to the right, but I see nothing.
                        —Job 23.2, 4, 9

How could God let terrible things happen?
OK, get it out. Say it.
God, you’re a failure.

God can take it.
They’ve heard worse.

Now, what do you mean “let things happen?”
Should there be no suffering? No mistakes? No freedom?
Should God control every little thing?
No? Only the ones you choose?
Or by some obscure formula?
Only if you’re good enough, or pray right?
Please, don’t go there.

Stuff happens. Germs happen. Earthquakes happen.
Evil happens. People who hurt do awful things.
You know, don’t you, God does do something about that.
God has sent you to heal, to do justice.

But who do you think God is anyway? Some guy?
God is not a person. God is Love.
Not just a loving person, but Love Itself.
The Divine Energy, the Heart of All Things,
not some guy at a control panel.
Love manipulates nothing but changes everything.
Love is the gravity, the light, the Oneness,
the air in which everything unfolds.
Even loss. Even evil.
Your very anger at God is God, loving, longing.

When you look and can’t find God
you’re looking for a guy.
Stop. Look for Love.
Love isn’t “somewhere.” Love is,
weeping, singing, pouring forth in the darkness.
Let even your rage be love.
Let go of complaining about the darkness,
and let the light pour.

   —October 9, 2018

Rage and sorrow choke our throats.
The gladiator gloats
over his victim,
hand over her mouth again,
memory opened like a vein,
the sacred profaned,
her pain is yours,
(the crowd cries, horrified, for more),
this kind of blood
spilled like guts
and swept aside,
another crucifixion,
another woman’s word:
This is my body.

The tender wound is scorned,
is disbelieved, and not received, unheard,
consumed without grace.
The sleek deny their own humanity
and hers,
aggrieved, feign victimhood,
and wield their sword.

Who made this memory the bread of hope,
who poured such courage into this fragility?

This sacred blank,
this muted word,
each stifled cry, is heard,
is heard,
and earth resounds.
This is the Christ cry,
uttered and received by God,
every wordless sigh of broken hearts,
where cries the agony of God,
the wrath of God, the hope of God.

Bread is blessed and broken,
body of the vulnerable one
who suffered for our sins,
in whom the witness lives forever.

We are not silenced.
Unbroken lines of martyrs sing us on.
The bread nourishes.
Even as we mourn and rage
we rise,
we speak.

―October 8, 2018

         Shall we receive the good at the hand of God,
         and not receive the bad?
                        —Job 2.10

Blackberries ripen on their stalks,
gathering the summer into their goblets,
swelling their many-globed breasts
with purple sweetness, each little black bead
a dark universe of goodness,
and their thorns, their claws are sharp
and will seize your arm and not let go.
It will hurt to glean these luscious gifts.

A friend told me yesterday how I had hurt him.
It pained me to hear, and I rejoiced to hear,
to be able to mend things.
Every part of the story belonged.

We spend so much of our lives
not in our lives but in our wishing,
choosing between form and color
but not choosing the life before us,
parsing out the parts we like
and the parts we don’t,
bending over our workbenches
with our tweezers,
pulling out the little satisfactions
from among our judgments and desires,
our monocles blinding us to real life
and its marbled pain and wonder.

The adjectives are in our heads
but life, unlabeled, passes before us.
There are no parts.
Our judgments are another life, not this one.
Real joy stops dissecting and reaches in.

   —October 5, 2018

         Whoever does not
         receive the reign of God
         as a little child
         will never enter it.
                        —Mark 10.15

Not as: cute, innocent, pure.
More like: vulnerable, at risk,
powerless, weak and unsure,
easily overlooked,
worth little to the Empire
(will you be this?),
last to be counted,
first to be hurt.

As a child, awkward, still learning,
always a beginner,
necessarily open,
dependent, reaching upward,
needing to be led,
willing to be carried in arms.

As a child, uncomprehending
of what it has taken
to save you.

As a child, beloved
without your having
made yourself so,
fiercely beloved.

   —October 4, 2018

          Let the little children come to me; do not stop them;
          for it is to such as these that the realm of God belongs.
                        —Mark 10.14

The realm of God does not belong to those who earn it,
only to those who receive it as a gift,
who are willing for it to be given away,
who know it exceeds their grasp,
who have seen others enter ahead of them,
and have not complained,
those who have no title to it,
who have no status, no standing.
Not the cute innocent ones we have in mind,
but the ones we have overlooked and excluded.
God has given God’s own dominion away
with the most love to those we have forgotten.

The Reign of God is the everyone-ness of life.
It will not happen by thinking of yourself.
To enter the Realm of God
give it away.

   —October 3, 2018

         “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them.
                        —Mark 10.14

The little one in the refugee camp.
Let them come.
The one in church, squirming.
The one having a tantrum:
that one, too, is holy.

Why is it hard for you
to let the snotty kid
be in line in front of you?
What are you thinking?

Le them come
to the Christ in your heart,
the child playing, pure of joy
and full of beauty.
The child wondering, asking,
gazing without opinion.
The one crying, feeling deeply,
profoundly present.

The child within you,
seeking, coming home,
the child just now waking,
the child in you who is small,
who is awkward and unsure,
wounded, yearning,
with open arms—
child, come
and be blessed.

There is only one child.
Let them come.

   —October 2, 2018

Before the neighborhood
this hillside was wilderness
where I used to play.
I wish I had a picture.

After the paint job I wish I’d taken
a Before picture to lay along the After
to marvel at the difference.
It’s always after the remodel,
after the fire, the new addition,
that we wish we’d thought to get a Before,
sometimes to remember and sometimes
because we don’t,
but now it’s too late.

Friend, now is the Before.
Notice this now, while you can,
because it won’t be this way forever
and whether you rejoice or mourn
you’ll want to have noticed,
to have been here.

   —October 1, 2018

The summer was warm, and autumn is late,
the dooryards still green, the harvest time waits.
The first hint of orange occurs to some trees,
the first thoughts of gold to spend,
but they haven’t yet committed to turning.
Some leaves they let go, but not many, not many.
The full blush of autumn is not yet upon them,
its funeral, its pyre, its riot, its feast.
The reds and yellows are still coiling their springs,
embryos of generous abandon. They are faint
among the confident greens, but they’re there.
It will take time, but time will come, and the changes.

And I,
I walk through these woods, ripening, and I know.  
Already tomorrow smiles in me, glowing.
A single tree, fearless, throws its beauty to the sun. 
Apples redden.

   —September 28, 2018

Some days I feel like a Pulitzer winning novelist
whose manuscript has been eaten by beetles
and whose typewriter has been thrown into the sea.
I feel like the greatest husband on earth
in the Alzheimer’s ward trying to pick out my wife.
A world class musician who’s just had a stroke.
A holy saint trapped in the body of—well, me.
A prima ballerina on crutches.
I feel extraordinarily gifted,
and unable to live it out.
Whether it’s luck or fault or fate matters not.
The crutches are real.

But I am a prima ballerina,
and I am resolved,
even with these damned crutches,
to carry myself with grace.
Some odd divine intent prevails.
I am still a saint; so I am resolved
to live with a shred of kindness showing.
In my corner of the world,
even if this is all in my head,
that’s a noble calling,
and, when I can pull it off,
God being in it,
something of a miracle.

— September 27, 2018