Words, words,
analysis, paralysis,
and the real needs of many
are displaced and replaced with swirling,
ever changing,
news coverage.
Money spent,
reputations rent,
as all of these Solomon moments,
as all of these vacuous comments
suck oxygen,
abandon needy.
Words, words,
agendas, careers,
all being built and / or destroyed
while bridges crumble and enemies rail–
imbecility, futility,
furious words.
Known by many but known by few—image, identity, purpose twisted together, carnal and spiritual, an alienating stew,
feeling just as alone in a group as alone; and I thought
You would be enough, but . . .
The rants and rails of pundits are as unsettling as personal attacks. It is just like with lawyering where winning is more important than proving what is true. And
strangers take sides, and friends take sides, and what takes shape is a pulling and a tearing, and
I feel caught in the middle with no solution,
no resolution, and all of this when I thought
You would be enough.
And playing church stopped being an option, but I thought being more real would have less pain, but
the ragged edges of human spirits with or without acceptable doctrines is just as bleeding hard as playing the game and hiding the differences behind smiles and “God bless you’s,”
skirting round the edges of maybe relationships, and here, I thought
You would be enough . . .
But my need bumps up against inability to change how people feel, how people act,
how and whether people care—and the weight of emptiness haunts me in the night when I search the ceiling for release,
for answers, for a place to belong, and
I pray that with all of this,
You will please be enough.
———————————
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. ~I Peter 5:7
Many things you fear come to pass, but
most don’t; and
since you never know which will or won’t, it makes more sense to fear none. But
my Pollyanna is more my Puddleglum, and
my optimism quotient is tempered by what is truly possible on this broken planet; so
how does a glass half empty gal have faith without feeling like it is more about wishful thinking and cooked up certainty?
How to live in the real world with real faith when real is often reeling with the now and the what could be? Yet will I praise Him.
***************
“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” ~Matthew 6:34
Is it just another day, another ritual performed,
a chance to wear new clothes and serve festive meals,
a celebration to mark our days and orient ourselves in a new year?
Is it just another obligation,
a compartment to fit in all the praiseworthy things
we ought to feel,
hope to feel,
about One so distant, so long ascended?
Has the burning in our hearts been quenched by familiar practices
and institutions?
Has the finger-in-the-side-faith lost its exclamations,
replaced by programs, distractions, and holy soundtracks?
Has our communion in the garden become commonplace
rather than ablaze with revelation and intimacy?
Oh, God of the resurrection,
God of the unruly and easily sidetracked,
burn within my heart this day.
Renew this shabby faith, these tattered shreds of almost belief,
with an obsession,
a knowing,
a persistence,
and an urgency to love You,
to love the faltering, the lost.
To be the Kingdom person you suffered to make me
is my Easter prayer.
Does your faith-life even require Jesus?
Got the maxims memorized.
Got the rules down.
Is religion more your bulwark than relationship—
behavior and image more important than face-falling service,
open-hearted devotion to His worthiness?
Has purpose surpassed person?
Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate this substance-hoped-for idea.
Are we a scattered and lost flock, devoted to a text but without a message?
I think I would rather falter on a rough road than walk resolutely down a worn and wrong path,
stuck in a form of obedience . . . but without a desperate, clinging trust.
My will is contrary to my dedication;
my rituals supplant my connection, offering a form without reality.
Am I so right-on religious that as a Christian I can do this thing without Jesus?
*****************
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. ~Psalm 51:10
I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.
~Romans 7:19
It should be a law:
No cutting of trees, please.
No desecration of life-green foliage and climbing limb.
No mauling of shade-makers and wind-shakers.
No abuse of fruit-bearers and dream-catchers.
There should be a law:
No buzzing.
No chopping and chipping.
No axing of sap-runners and dirt-catchers.
Soil-gripper, life-framer.
Back-leaner, air-cleaner.
A hider of seekers,
Guardian, sentinel, standing at attention.
I am not a tree hugger per se, but there is a certain sadness to see
oxygen-givers and long-livers
hacked down for who knows what.
Plant a tree, not a parking lot!
————————————
(Upon the “murder” of two beautiful trees!)
When light fades to black, and the chill comes,
when horizon and foreground meld to one, and minutes tick by slower than day;
I find myself alone with my thoughts—the rest of my world sleeps.
Invisible,
intangible,
dream streams of past, present, and never weave spells of narrative in my restless mind.
If I could make sense of it all, I could justify my tossing and turning,
my drifting and drama, but it all seems just a colorful exercise in nonsense-making—
so real,
but so not.
And I rise more weary.
I have done superhuman things in my dreams, but wake in silver light
as ordinary as when I went to bed.
And my dreams grow larger as my world grows smaller.
And my rest grows weaker as my need swells.
Are you in the visions, evanescent wisps, circling in cerulean night,
or is my unsettled soul strangled by the diary of a life housed in three pounds of flesh?
*********************
Isaiah 26:3 (ESV)
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
I heard your whisper in the wind, and
I leaned to listen; but
my lisping voice rose rough and rasping, replaying all the shame moments,
the named moments—over and over,
owning their bite.
I glimpsed your face in the greening breeze of spring, and
I opened my eyes wide to see and be seen, but
the haze of doubt drifted down like a curtain, so I was unsure of what was there; and
blinking long and hard only tired my eyes,
my heart,
my will.
I put my knee to ground in weakness,
convinced that my limping life would never be anything more than this,
that tears would ever flow; but
you met me there
where
words are soft and
light is clear and
belief is birthed from unbelief.
*****************
Be still and know that I am God. ~Psalm 46:10a
Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. ~Mark 9:24b
How can I make my ambition Your ambition?
Every now and then, unworldly inspiration and imagination penetrates
this sin-chained mind, this bone-bound spirit,
and I rejoice,
respond;
but just as quickly, flesh presses in—
pride presses in,
puffing me up, showing me what a wonderful thing I did for God.
Is there any hope to live a pure life,
a noble life,
when wriggling in skin and bone, a soul enslaved?
But to be free.
In the dark, most of the world is asleep,
but not me.
I hear and feel every heartbeat, and
thoughts ping here and there, mixing with dreams as I slip into sleep
and wake again.
It is a lonely place on my pillow
in the dark
in my head
with my beating heart and my beating head.
