Advent: Day Sixteen

Random

Rising piano keys, hand bells,
and wind chimes. Worn beige storm windows
have been painted white for the season,
going up to keep our heat in.

Candles, presence, and acoustic
guitars. We put up these worn words
to capture You. Despite my mother-in-law's
fight, the warm light escapes

beneath the crack in the half-painted
door. Or as our one year-old patters
to the back and grasps the handle to
go and see the new falling snow.

His eyes wide, he knows You snuck out
from under our songs and signs.
You've become grander and beautiful
now falling around everyone,

coating driveways, salted walks,
tree limbs and enveloping all landscape.
You will not sit where we set You,
but move. As we live, You fall where we are.

Advent: Day Eleven

Psalm 31

"Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord..."

A snowflake pushed by the lake's winds
winks at me as it continues down,
"Do you think you can count on me?"
I am, I think, I am.,
Pavement may be pleasant there beneath
my surest steps, and yet
you will never find your rest.
Dissolving, here only to arrive again,
blow back in each winter's wind.

Advent: Day Eight

Isaiah 5

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter..."

i fear no handshake,
no skittle plucked off the gym's wooden boards,
nor the stained and grainy contours
of any unwashed morning grail.
so neither do i hesitate to taste
what masses claim as sweet; evenings
with feet up and eyes on,
entertainment swept off of factory floors
and bored deep into every synapse.
If i collapse, do not blame the germ
of immorality, for i disregard warnings
of vice and always choose to bite.
Blame the switch,
the lack of purpose, for they have put
the darkness for the light.

Advent: Day Eight

Psalm 26

"...I have led a blameless life...I have trusted in the LORD without wavering...I walk continually in Your truth..."

Coughing and shifting,
hymnals and heads buried
in the hunched up folds of
my downy blanket of blank devotion.

Hoodies and pencil scratchings,
but they are so unburdened by surety.

Life is supposed to lie
there, senselessly next to them,
then suddenly roll over and crush them.
It is expected and i tell them so.

It in certainty can crush me, so
i long to stay away from giving reasons...

But my chair rolls and my computer
has keys, and my arrogance can't make
bold statements because of itself.
Nothing is continual, it's shifting and wavering.

Advent: Day Six

Psalm 115

Forging silver, hammering out
the hollow hands of gods.
Melting down our precious gold,
removed from the dainty boxes

that sing to us simple songs
of praise, power, and possession
when the wooden tops are lifted off.
Hold the hands of our idols above

the hot, half-melted, viscous gold
and then dip them to declare them
holy. But these idols, they are dead,
they have mouths but they never speak truth,

these idols have eyes that never see.
Ears but pridefully they won't hear,
Noses pierced but useless to the
building aroma of their own burning stench.

Laziness concretes their listless feet,
as they have ability but never walk.
And as the vanity hardens on their hands,
it is sealed that they will never feel.

These gods we cast in metals bright,
the next metaphor for our stiff necks.
But this is direct, we no longer build idols
from the clay, the sticks, or the dust,

no, the modern idols are us.

Advent: Day Five

Prophets, you who bare words
to their loveliest curves and lines,
bring honeyed apples in bent cursive
to quivering lips. For hearts burn out

for want of flame. Sometimes you should
stand in the flat blacktopped corner
of the local church parking lot, become a
garden of Eden in violets and golds,

a silent stream of created beauty,
rushing courageous over all boxed ears,
and you should just be. Pencil lead
on tablets leaves the arguments of ultimate

pointedness inside the practical glass.
But if you wrap up your hands, and you
forever stay a sight, if you are not a place
for the tired bees to alight and more than not

find renewal of life, then the moving world
will toss you aside. All tulip tipped and unfortunate,
gorgeous and useless, one purpose without point,
misunderstood now kindle unintended god's lights.

Advent: Day Two

Psalm 119

"Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!"

Smoke is the taste of my fingertips
as i lie under the duvet, and bite
the brittle nails. Scared as northern
fruit flies that circle my coffee,
dying in the sweetness that calls them,
i am certainly crying beneath
the sweet warmth of blessings disregarded
for the promise of temptation.

Confession then, i will drink my coffee
without sugar for several weeks.
At least until You come and answer me,
i will face my mornings cloaked in
black and bitterness. i have sinned,
i have hidden, and i have been cleaned.
What more shall be asked of me than
grimacing sorrow and humility?

Advent: Day One (2)

1 Thessalonians 1

"We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ..."

My continuance depends on yours.

Sweatered arms with rolled sleeves
press the edge of a laminate desk,
risking exposure of a tired mind
they extend, reaching for caffeine,

for quarters to support, for something
to hold, to hold them.
To hold up a sweaty head and speak
of dialogues and curriculums, to speak

God in circles around the sweaty heads
held on eighth grade shoulders. Buzzed
and lacking sleep, bare arms with icy
dryness press yawningly on the plastic edge

and hold up dreary words and patently
disinterested sarcasm. How can hope survive
in the drowsy chasms of these eyes?
Endurance inspired by our labors together in Christ.

My continuance depends on yours.

Advent: Day One

Isaiah 1

"When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean."

i scratch through december grass,
gathers in small patches,
gathers to stretch toward sky
with green hands groaning for snowfall.

Unraked ground cannot receive
the purest of precipitation,
the crystals will cling to the edge of the leaf
and leave muck in wicked mounds.

To cry to the God of heaven
and clear what remains beneath,
that is the waiting,
the joining of remorseful removal
and bowing for the expectant approval,

i churn out the wet and decaying
while praying for purest renewal.

A Note

As I read, I found the Pauline letters to be much less inspiring than my previous cycle. This probably has to do with the books of Psalms and Isaiah being poetic already, and the book of Matthew is about the most inspiring figure in all of history, God himself in the flesh. I also found that this time as I tried to write, I felt distant from my Father. This cycle of poems is not complete, I must come back to Paul's letters. But for now, I move on to Advent...

Day 8: Morning

1 Corinthians 1

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are..."

i have no fears.
My steps shake up the staircase
with complete certainty on knees
weak with exhausting hours.

But i do not doubt
the powers of reason and order.
For the record, the arduous duties
of early mornings and unattended evenings

do not register a ripple
in the cauldron where my emotion
tends to grow thick and black,
dark from the corner that it sits in.

In its uselessness, it is
unrecognized as the only useful part of me
left. Unadmitted, but without weakness
i am worthless.

But i will bottle the shame,
deep and outwardly forgotten,
so i cannot be shamed, i cannot be wrong,
i may never join in God's foolish song.

Day 5: Mid-Day

1 Thessalonians 4

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands..."

Quiet minds, discomposed and misled
in pursuit of distraction, a passive-aggressive
search to turn from Presence.
It calls for change, and they cocoon themselves
well within irrevelant laughter
and purely irreverent disquiet.

These abstractions, illusions of life
anger me. i have always desired reality.
Brothers and sisters, ambitions for acknowledgement
are as devilish as aspiring to murder.
A knife drips reality onto the hands,
avoidance escapes and dies in the air.

My quiet mind is stirred by raucous hands,
not mine, certainly not Yours, but unsound,
inexperienced theologians in Liverpool jerseys.
It is my business to mind their business,
as the blow from silence i grasp, bend, and extend
in attempt to graft the chaos to the Close.

When i close my eyes, Father, remind
me that i have waded into waters unfamiliar
and boggy. i am digging into the marsh while the
stagnantly seeping rises over my palms. i offer
a letter, a poem, an idea with salvation in the distasteful...
At least can i be certain in my quiet mind?

Day 5: Morning (2)

Romans 8

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Not the yellow of cigarettes
on your hands, nor the smell
left on patchwork couches.
Not the despair that lurks in
frazzled voices, caffeine eyes,
and seeps forth from every
sagging shag-carpeted corner.
Not your excommunicated past,
nor mistakes that made them
lay hands on your head, shake
theirs lowly and in self proclaimed
holiness send you away.
Not your daughters left in
Lafayette, not yet able to deal
with the dreadful understanding.
Not the unpaid bills, the
snow that sweeps in underneath
a battered doorway, nor the
tattered heater that fails to heat.
No, shambles have not the last word.
Instead, it is the circle
of semi-strangers, stomping
the snow off their boots, tossing
their coats on the plaid couches,
taking a knee with hands grasping
the tiny shoots of the shag.
You will never be separated from
the true last word, love.

Day 5: Morning

Romans 8

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory..."

An acrylic nail sketches out my tension
between my waxed eyebrows, powder tapped temple
the place now traced with my worry. Will he
storm backstage and give me another dressing down?

Under the lights of the filtered cylinders, i am hiding
but i am comfortable there. My fear and my pulse race when
the applause is at my back, the curtains are pulled back
and he is standing arms crossed and forehead creased.

He speaks very differently than i hear, words
wrapped in makeup of love and grace. When i imagine his
face, anger like lightning streaks from the spots
where softer tears should fall like rain. But candidly,

i've never actually seen him. Earnestly i strive to play
my part for his praise, but unlike on stage my real life character
seems a fake. Bit parts for joy, but mostly i am cast in shame.
The spotlights frame my first entrance, the auditorium

is wide and expansive. i can't see the back, like entering
my parents closet as a wide eyed child. It is enticing me
into hiding, escaping down the front of the scene,
into the crowd that is clapping aloud, just to not face him.

As i leap into the arms of applauding audience, i glance into
the depths. His eyes are not glaring, his fists are not clenched,
he is not back there. But among the ticketed, i see he leans back
illuminated by the exit sign. He is here among us, and he smiles.

Day 2: Evening

1 Timothy 2

"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God..."

Between the broken doors leading to the spacious home
and the city blacktop beckoning to the sensuous beyond,
i began to build.

Piles of Tennessee Bluestone, thrown on sandy assurances
of quantity and smiles of the choicest quality, half modestly
you accept banter and praise.

Saturdays frame anticipation, raise the expectations.
Dirty nails, spreading sand, dumping wheelbarrows of braided grass,
i am meditative, you are beauty.

True, singularly i saw you, focused you as the centerpiece because of
that rippled ridge of orange and rust tinting your edge like an
exposed photo, bent corners crinkled.

Unique and deep you drew me, but when you were secured and entrenched
i unearthed a new attraction: your strength that held my maze stable,
a confidence in your surety.

Where i perceive shifting silt and lack, i can lead forth and stand,
your value an immutable foundation. Not always dazzling jewels but a foothold
from where i proceed.

Day 1: Mid-Day

1 Thessalonians 1

"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers..."

Your passion pushed you in,
into a circle of comforting coffee cups
filled with the laziness of frustration.
But you sip tamarind and horchata,
cold and clear, with a grimace of suffering,
coruscations of concern, sensing
tiredness and bitterness among brothers.
In weakness, these induce the worst
of splits, spills and messes.
But you, through fragments sharp as
cracked ceramics, you've been provoked
by love. Your taste
is not for ease, but pushing boundaries.
You have not sought you in between
cramped particle board rolled white,
or pounding nails and picking weeds despite
other paying obligations. Your inspiration
was us, back when we believed.
Now we are the ones who must receive.

Day 1: Morning

Romans 2

"If you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth — you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?"

Just like crude youth rooms,
colors rolled in the spirit of the seventies,
purples, pinks, a gold ceiling,
always dusted with a bright and sickening
lime green, we youthful spirited
teachers lack the whole tasteful Word.
The graceful story is bounced around
tattered couches, dirtied basketballs,
spun off the concrete block walls
and somewhere loses cohesion and
separates from our hearts.
A part of You is knowledge,
that we have, admittedly scrambled
and fairly inaccessible to our hands.
Our heads have long tingled with thoughts
of the intricacy of Your truth,
like the gentle, accented voice over
cracking radio signals that isn't clear
but compels you to keep listening.
Will our limbs join ideas,
embody the Word, in all its fullness?
Floating into the heavens of knowledge,
gnostically spiritual, practically empty,
as barren as the bricked up factory
where we desire worship breaking.
Glass, facade and faded writing,
beautiful but rotting.
We talk and think, but riding donkeys,
spitting into mud, eating with heretics,
destroying our very life to find it,
These have been our teachings...

Day 66: Morning

Psalm 131

At the end of this day,
i will lean back on Your breast;
and i will rest. Father, i will not

ponder politic or purpose,
but my fingertips will rise and fall
like gentle breaths, softly

across Your bearded countenance.
i will bury bloodshot eyes,
rubbed red, raw, and stressed,

into the crook of Your neck.
i will run grasping hands,
opening and closing in pursuit

of affection, through the lightest
locks that fall from Your hushed head.
i will lay down in that bed

and neither toss nor turn,
as You lay a blanket over me,
renewing me with sleep.

Day 65: Morning

Isaiah 65

"They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit..."

My hand longs to lift
off these keys for weeks.
My eyes long to look
away from other men's sons.
i have long been brother,
finally let me be father.
i would gladly trade in
struggling to stop the talking
for struggling to understand small
babblings, tears, and waving hands.
Am i putting in the work?
Or am i plowing fields
that i do not own,
where i don't see harvest,
do not taste the fruit,
do not enjoy the rest
because i have my own home
where i must move stone
lay sand, pave it flat,
and watch the wheelbarrows haul
the dirt back and back.
There is still a lack
of blessing of my choosing.
Losing time and losing sleep
and losing chances to play
nursery games, say his name,
catch his head, put him
to bed, jump and smile,
all while building love in
the home where i dwell.

Day 65: Morning

Isaiah 64

"Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down..."

She speaks becomingly,
with youthful common sense orthodoxy,
in these diagonal halls of change
we must rearrange our books
and look to do the impossibly dull.

She listens unbendingly,
but like the rigid twigs leaning
by the thousands on the rails,
being uncompromising only breaks
and cracks her, each piece smaller
and more inferior. That's the
feeling that makes her speak.

She prays a universal paradox:
If You are here, where are You?
She cannot see You rallying,
drinking Monster, getting dared,
being close like a sleepover night
that has been shared. And if
she can't see You, You're not there.

She is the request,
a cry from the drained soul
of change, a prayer for presence.
They reach up but You must
unveil heaven to simple us.

Day 62: Mid-Day

Isaiah 62

They will be called the Holy People,
the Redeemed of the LORD;
and you will be called Sought After,
the City No Longer Deserted.

Clinging, desperate, empty.
Between my eyes, i can feel.
Your appeal is that you walk;

drags me to scramble after you.
Head up, eyes forward,
seeing streets of green promise.

Environmental renewal or
energy inefficient seaside resorts,
you have a vision

and i am always seeking one.
i consist of depths, walled in
muddied sand, colors bland

and blending together in continuing
labyrinthine cascades of
self-searching contemplation.

Am i so sure? For i need
knotty hands to join with me,
nodding heads for security,

even intellectuals who agree.
i can stand separate, but even trees
grow in groves, can we not

cleave ideologies? Can you not
believe? Can you not stop
and have some coffee,

and stay and talk with me?
Can you not see the empty
hope i have, the hollow joy?

How can i hold my head
above ground if it is not
held by steadfast hands?

You might. But what
would you call me?
What would you call me?

Clinging?
Desperate?
Empty?
Redeemed?

Day 60: Morning

Psalm 119

"Turn my eyes away from worthless things..."

Dualistic options of who to be
faced with ancient written word:
believe, be warned, find sustainability,
or believe after suffering similar failure.
Nobody listens, we all pursue
Solomon's same path, running the ruthless
ruts of gain, aspiring to the repetitive new,
unsettled to find everything still worthless.

Day 57: Evening

Isaiah 57

"And it will be said: 'Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.'"

Before sunrise these hours
grow in silence; without speech
and slouched into lonely basement couches.
In the dark, below the feet
of my daily love and company,
i wrestle with all that i truly need to leave.
Bitter juices in tumblers
replace sweet bowls of wheat,
grain, berries, and honey i choose not to eat.
Legal pad and a plain
white pen, chewed in jagged crooks,
blankly sitting and staring at holy books.
Minutes unspeaking,
hours alone, days without eating,
expurgate all but my feeble heart beating.
Denial is building,
to remove to prepare,
and invite Your breath to the emptiness there.

Day 54: Morning

Psalm 108

"I will awaken the dawn"

My morning praise makes no sound,
many newfound apperceptions
are only written down with the syncopation
of keyboard clicks, pauses, yawns
and page turns. If you pry long enough,
pour over coffee and leather,
through eyes rubbed red you can find harmony.
That blessing, that lucidity, like the intimacy
of the first evening spent sleeping
head to heart, hand in hand.
It is a shout that catches in the throat
and never makes it out, never sounds aloud,
but the inner secret causes waves
that shake the silent ground.
Tremors through the dark wood trees,
my morning lantern leads
the rising of the eastern sun
and certains my refreshed peace.

Day 52: Morning

Psalm 106

In the desert they gave in to their craving;
in the wasteland they put God to the test.
So he gave them what they asked for,
but sent a wasting disease upon them.

They exchanged their Glory
for an image of a bull, which eats grass.

We eat chinese on the floor
right next to our prayers.
Amazonians walk miles,
all the while eyes stay
fixed ahead, asking.
We nail mezuzahs to the door
right next to the unpainted.
We stained the symbol,
chiseled the word,
expect blessing.
We ask the wind what its for
and whom it winnows away.
The Elkhart ends in
the Lake Michigan,
we jump in.
We rise again and praise our
buoyancy, our lucky stars,
all that is "ours" screams
that we are missing
all the Glory.

Day 50: Evening

i have faith
the world works as such:
the Word spoken into
swiftly shifting situations,
absolutes starkly lacking
any absolute condition.

A sleepless resolution:
treat the world as such.
Every ageless rock and stone,
set in rigid position;
yet altars must reshape
and restack, the renewal
of generations.

Day 45: Morning

i do a lot of speaking,
saying nothing,
asking much and praying little.
And even as i break sticks
to symbolize release,
i realize i rarely
ask that You would hear
my rambling speech.

i do a lot of speaking,
but little hoping,
and less trusting. if i must
be honest,
You teach lessons too often
for my liking. Instead,
answer my supplication
with vindication, or victory,

or success, or blessing,
not simple listening.
Your frightening lack of
predictability makes You
frighteningly difficult to fear.
Give me more than ear;
respond, react, move.
Make me recognize,

still my speaking,
spread my eyes over
the fullness of glory.
Reality is only spoken
into being by the Word,
by Your breath.
Nevertheless, i continue to speak;
this morning, hear me.

Day 43: Evening

Mark 15

This story has been mined,
this quarry chipped at from every angle.
The cry to crucify has been
recrystalized through the generations,
and under the pressure of important eyes
turned generic, not jagged.
Not cutting as it was, jarring,
it's very meaning was defeat.
How sentiments compress and
compositions change in structure,
so that crucify and victory are
now entwined and the suffering
has been purified from the process.
A rolled rock, portentous and imposing,
established as immovable warning,
now is simply the pretense of hope.
Lest we forget the truth of despair,
the chapter ends in stone.

Day 43: Morning

Isaiah 42

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out."

There You are:
August oak leaf, fallen and crinkled,
dry and crushed.
The wind that spins it across concrete,
scratching by unmindful feet,
tossing it in the winding creek.
The drooping backyard dahlia,
staring meekly at cypress clippings,
where an assembly of prostrate petals
sing posthumously of beauty.
The dazzling and the daily,
the sun's ascent and coronation.
The clouds that sometimes confine
the brilliance to inner, sacred courts.
The sharp, brown and short,
grasses stressed until death,
lacking and longing and waiting.
The plants in the cracks
of the tilted sidewalk, i forgot
to spray them, so feebly they live.
The bruised reeds that i feel
an anarchic need to break,
float the pieces in fountains,
splintered but unsinkable.
Why do i see the deteriorating,
the dryness, the dying, the weak?
Why do i see You there?

Day 42: Morning

When i don't see heaven awhile,
i hasten to the shadows
and i scamper to hide.

If i am absent many hours,
and return to release our
pekinese mixed poodle

from the comfortable but oversized
canine chateau that he knows as bed,
but we know is cage;

well, in his release he runs.
i don't know if he perceives danger
or freedom, or simply choice,

but he doesn't stay near to me.
He has missed me, thus sprints madly
over bared floor boards

skidding into cupboards and doors,
in his craze racing onto fashionable
chairs and throw pillows, threatening holes.

The circling is pointless, fruitless, desecrating,
concludes with crawling into some lightless
corner, under the guest room bed

or instead into chosen captivity.
i shake my head;
come to me little one.

comfort, comfort, Holy One,
i have not sensed presence,
that's why i run.

Day 40: Morning

Psalms 79 & 80

"They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead."
"Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved."

The balance of my mind is disturbed:
You attempt to bury the undead.
Pinched nerves and broken hands,
slackening belief stirred with unabashed doubt,
despite that we think and act.

Songs rise with movement, slow to repose.
Who knows the pattern to the merging
flow of work and prayers, repair and hope
that will bring attainment of victory?
Oh how I wish it were that way...

Day 36: Random

My feet unclothed,
grassy path uncut
but warm under dusk,
and well walked and worn.
Fresh wooden steps
propped up against
the ever eroding shore.
Guide my wide-eyed son,
support facing the waves,
digging his wondering toes
in shallow pools of wet sand.
Mother-in-law reads pop fiction
with her pen in hand.
Inspired by trite, we
witness the grand
so lightly.
Thunderheads over Erie trimmed
in battling blues and grays,
they chase away clouds over silos
crowned in oranges and sun.
The storm leaves behind stars
over Madison, exploding across the dark,
brilliant as celebrated rockets
springing over Beijing.
i stretch out beneath
this full and unreachable sky,
and wonder why i wonder why.

Day 35: Random

Stripped and elegant,
i have not been.
i am not ashamed;
i just speak
from the sides of my mouth.
This humble excuse
is not honed or rehearsed
as an excuse;
frank words, where do i
find time?
Frivolous sleep, unwantingly
it keeps me
from my days and nights.
From You.
Success under seeming curse,
oh perverse desire,
it's sirens sing inane and vain
into my ears.
The steady beat and the prose,
the higher notes
rose into my heart, yes,
the pursuit
is pushing You out.
i must ask:
what will i sing back?
Will meditation
lack the beauty to capture me?
i opened
the austere doors of these
"days and nights"
knowing that they would be
less inviting
than the trivial, the easy.
Commitment
waned in reality,
in the lack
of Your wind in my face.
Thus, it must
like Nicodemus be
born again.
Forget the places that i have been,
empty mind
and holding onto dryness,
search
for the waters giving life
once again.

Day 31: Morning

Psalm 62 & Isaiah 30

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength..."
"My soul finds rest in God alone..."

Holy desire heaves itself against
the cage of my soul. O my restless,
rigid soul, which burrows and busies
itself like bees that seek a hidden home,
beneath or between the concrete
bricks that wall our small tulip garden.
The shame is that their work is exposed,
it's shallow and the product of that effort
is easily plucked out, a small twig picks
the busy hive from where it fails to stick.
If not a human weld branch then
that nest naturally would have washed
away in the elements. The fragments
already dust the pavement's cracks, as
the wind that comes and goes beyond control
has whipped through, ungluing
the last hour's industry. Seemingly Your wind
blows unjustly, for i toiled for salvation and strength,
and the blessed eats the fruit
of his labor. The cursed mills the ground
and never looks around, never sees, never can
just be; stills churns and mills even now.
i, the cursed, hurry for the value of the
extrinsic, production of the hive. While
the blessed, they find quietness inside.

Day 23: Random

A Short Meditation for the Hours

At sunrise, we praise You.
In morning, free us.
At noon, sustain us.
In afternoon, work with us.
At supper, we celebrate You.
In closing our eyes, we rest in You.

Day 21: Morning

Psalm 42

"Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?"

Where are You?
i've sensed that You often hide face
from me. Asked desperately, why?
i wantonly search for personal
seclusion in the private nooks of
Your vaulting sanctuary.
i've looked for You in books,
prayers, rituals, and layers of
silence, stillness and fasting.
El Shaddai, send forth your light!
Let Your face be uncovered!
If wickedness dwells deep in me,
certainly it is unshrouded, i am sure,
for i've visited every veiled corner
of my soul and torn all cloaks in two,
searching for You. Instead unmasked
unflattering darkness, so i still seek
Your shine. Where do You lie?
How long must i wait, wait, wait?
Delay tints my countenance,
my soul becomes downcast
when asked to be content with simply this:
what is hidden must exist.

Day 20: Evening

Matthew 20

"About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing..."
"Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, 'Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!'"

i do a lot of standing,
doing nothing,
making mental checklists
of the nothing that i want.
It's the spoils of materialism,
to stand in the marketplace
doing nothing
and still believe your entitled
to receive something.

i do a lot of sitting,
shouting things,
"Lord, Son of David,
have mercy on me!
What have i done to deserve
this present calamity?"
Nothing, you stood in the marketplace,
bored and staring,
doing nothing.

"What do you want from me?"
You ask.
Good question! Makes me think
of something...
What is it i've been wanting?
i've wanted entertainment and prosperity
but somehow i'd don't think
that will be answered with mercy;
mercy is more like a sparing

than a giving.
But since You asked, i'll ponder,
probe the depths of my desire.
So, if mercy is a reprieve,
then i'd like a complimentary
release from the consequences
i've accrued and from accompanying pain
of doing nothing,
and, maybe... something to do?

Day 19: Morning

Psalm 37

"Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him..."

Be still before the LORD, o envious me,
even forceful uneasy stillness.
i would settle for that success,
like the cool promise coming on
in the ascending shine of the dawn.
perhaps this morning of quiet,
amidst the garden in shadows,
beneath the oaks dripping with midnight rain;
perhaps this dawning in devotion
is rising to my midday pain.
Worry and fear infringe on my wide open
fields of joy and peace and i must abide
with them side by side, for they have become
too entwined. So difficult to distinguish
what is fear and what is joy. When i walk
through my meadow, my movement
deprives me my discernment. But still,
the morning light is making life visible,
peace possible, You attainable.
Yes, be still, o little, busy eyes,
the LORD spreads before you in sunrise.

Day 18: Evening

Matthew 18

From the unmerciful servant...

i've decided, when fear dwells within,
mercy is neither perceptible nor performable.
Only in infamy did i realize, but then, well,
i'd already been titled the unmerciful.
The economy shook, unstabled by
the steadfast taxes of the empire, and i
had to sturdy my family in the face
of the gripping fear of hunger, thirst and worse.
Under the constant economic storm,
business rusted and cracked. Leaking funds
and racking up receipts of debt, small bills stopped
coming in, large ones i stopped paying out.
In circles, i crumbled. Money tempts with promise
of surety and shelter. So when pennyless,
panic became a scattered sanctuary that
perilously saved me from mental homelessness.
In fear, the mind is never present, never really
home, for it rests in a refuge for which
the foundation is always shifting with the uncertainty
of future. You can't control that which you dread.
I felt alone but I wasn't, when everyone worships
the denarius in a city of failed empire building,
then yielding to the frenzy of fear is a community
cancer. Everyone is after the next coin owed.
In this cyclone economy, practicality reigns, and
rarely do we imagine something rare as mercy,
for it displays weakness. In a culture of cowardice,
like ours, the weak are ground like flour.
My master exists as force, a weighty tower
amidst the powerless, mighty hands set to mighty works.
i was timid, eyes down, in his audience
murmuring of excuse and of future obedience;
i barely heard the reprieve.
Still my forehead on the floor, muttering how poor,
how mistaken, how deceived. His servants dragged me up
to the door, repeated that i was free.
Oh captive soul, i didn't know, i didn't know
what had happened! i was not constrained, yet debt
remained, still obligation to be paid, lest i fall
again before my daunting, merciful master.
i had survived, i must survive, my life was caught in
tension. And the only path, the only path,
to have to that could keep my head from wrath,
the fairest way on my behalf. To exact the debt
that others owe, to bring my fear into their souls;
make them sorry as those left to the flood,
to threaten their blood or imprison in pain.
All to make gain and pay what was forgiven.
If i had been reflective... still how do you slow down
when you are being chased by ghosts?
If i had thought... but how do you think
when bills continue to show up unpaid?
No, you cannot escape, i would not allow
rescue, no, i reacted in my raging mind.
i grasped his collar, oh the regret, but i remember
how raptured the release, in finding one more hopeless than me.
Now chained, i see the motion of mercy,
how it was to envelop and inspire me.
But the vision failed here: that mercy requires
what is not there in fear, both hope and creativity.
So, now i watch and speak warning,
a failure turned prophet in pitiful exile.
i watch others bow down before need, feed fear with
unbelieving practicality, and live with blind eye to raining mercy.

Day 10: Morning

Psalms 19 & 20

"The fear-of-the-LORD is pure, enduring forever..."

You see, i want a lot.
The darkness and the light,
to really know the shimmering
depths. i have places to go,
now, if possible, please.

i fill prayers with complaints
of unanswered wants the way
that You fill the spaces of the earth
with flowers, fruits, and vines.
They just spring up, pop out,
then sway the landscape.

Bearing the weight of a hundred
half-wants my body heaves and groans,
and lusts for purity. To want one thing.
That will that lightly flowers. Fear-of-the-Lord
flourishes annually because Your will

lives on forever. Forever undone by
us, the constantly dividing. i need
to be concentrated. Grafted into the all-
encompassing, given to the good.
i should, but i want a lot.

Day 8: Evening

Matthew 8

"For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes..."

"Just say the word."

i wasn't even in attendance, but
that sermon sang as memorably as
Mary. And though her Magnificant isn't
wordy, it's still not quite as distilled as
the word. Jesus used the same word
when He spoke to the demons that
He sent into the pigs. It seems good faith
and good poetry have something
in common, power in one word. One
word gives sturdy simplicity. Go.

i can see why the centurion wanted just
one word. It was more powerful that way.
We remember smallest speeches much
more than a multiplying of words. Pagans
believe that there is more force in perpetual
babbling, that they might be more heard with
use of more words. Jesus says no, We know
what you need. Use less, be simple. He could of
compacted the Lord's Prayer into one: Come.

i think i'll erase this poem. It could be said with less.

Day 8: Mid-Day

Isaiah 8

"Do not call conspiracy
everything that these people call conspiracy;
do not fear what they fear,
and do not dread it.

The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,
he is the one you are to fear,
he is the one you are to dread..."

i know why we believe heaven is above
(though You incessantly send it down).
You rise out of everything; we fumble
around and bang our knees on theology,
structure, and bland practicality.

In helicopter seeds i have seen
oneness, a holiness of combinations.
In its spiraling fall, permeations
of death, fear in the dry, brittle wings
that glide down toward landing.

In grounding, hope springs from
the rotting of the leaves, in the sprouting
of the seed. You rise out of everything.
Fear of decay is, underneath all things,
promise of newness, a singular oneness.

What the seed dreads is what it hopes in,
for it can only find purpose in what
it also finds powerful. What we hold
as almighty will be, what we fear as the only
will be, therefore i hope You will be.

Day 7: Evening

Matthew 7

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it..."

The old and aged entered between the whitest blooms,
between the spring and summer.
The last garden spread before them.

We, brimming with our new life,
had entered on the side of dying,
and death: the fall and the winter.

It made me think of the gates,
of hell and of heaven.
We think we get in based on how

we thought that we had lived.
i wonder, is it the way that we died
that leads to new life;

what we die to resurrects anew.
They came in from the bright sun,
the path one sees as wide.

Their faces shone upon living
orchids, vibrant orange lilies,
and highest, efflorescing hydrangeas;

But despite rain, sun and soil
they are headed toward death.
December plants now are brown twigs cut down,

and we are empty, hungry and poor,
but skinny kids fit through narrow doors,
and so we are heading toward life.

Day 6: Mid-Day

Isaiah 6

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory..."

The Romanian room was meager, and we were moderately worn
out from a day of holding. We met God at the cradle, and from our lips
He ordained praise in awe of infants. Now lightning was striking;

they were alone and we were alone, we perceived. But in a grave bass,
dread welled up within us. Holy! Holy! Holy
Fear! Intense and bottomless, ringing these beds, round our feet,

and climbing. We felt at one, in sparseness, with our quarters
and quickly looked to conceal ourselves amid garments, pillows, and
blankets. We lay as helpless as crying babies in cribs,

and confessed to our lack of knowledge. How presumptuous we had been!
Holy heaviness covers those who we leave with hearts in tears. i have failed
to trust that You are there as You are here.

And then where does that leave hands that can no longer hold? Folded,
i suppose. Intercession is a lesson taught in times of terror, grown
beneath overwhelming, awful love, that we can no longer think so little of.

Day 5: Morning

Psalms 9 & 10

i could say i love You,
but that is hardly specific.
O expectant One of immensity,
You are the completeness of love...

You are the intimacy of tracing
unintelligible love letters on my wife's back.
You are words that hold my head when
tears threaten to drag it down to my hands.

You are the joy in the giving, the fulfillment
of silence, the euphoria in the erasure of need.
Erasure so complete,
even the memory of need has left me.

So love is the word i use when i'm out of words,
when i look upon Your fairness

and am found distracted,
what did i ask for last week?

Ah, was it peace? For in the presence
of this present prayer, i could say i feel at peace.

Day 5: Random

A day dawns,
the stainless shower rod squeaks as
stainless curtain rungs skid over it.
There is friction even in a morning,
a self waiting to live for self.
i went down into waters,
and came back alive.
Now water crashes down,
a rainwater spout at just the right pressure
to rinse the death from me;
if only i commit to remembrance.

Car parked beneath trees planted purposely,
bringing life to brick buildings and wide cement.
Silent drops dot my shirt,
folder, books and threaten my Scripture.
Slip them beneath my tee,
now safe, but there's no place to
save my face. The rain runs through
my unkempt hair, through my unclipped beard,
into the corners of my mouth.
Taste and see nature's rebirth,
remind me of mine.

Only nine a.m.
and with garden leaves
a third sacrament is sprinkled over me.
A simple blue bowl as symbol;
speak of clothing, color, community,
and transformation.
A trinitarian renewal,
human-made and God-created,
then the combination.
As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
refresh vows that bring me to Him.

Day 4: Evening

Matthew 4

Tonight it was rice cereal
spilled following a tired ride.
Ominously my eyes follow
yours closed anyway, but I know:
the devils will come tomorrow.

They came for Jesus, promising
that which He would have by way of
pain and patience. Devils always
flaunt temptation as fulfillment.
When they stand me on the mountain

they are offering everything:
first the sex that we did not have,
then the affirmation i feel
i lack, and finally they push
me to senseless intimacy.

Devils half-deliver and we
usually live half-satisfied.
But not Christ, He denied the ease,
chose a way of costly waiting,
and then wept bitterly with joy;

for much travail transcends much ease.
And only the path through real life
leads to ascension. My reality,
though full of your sighs, will climax
in true touch and in pure delight.

Day 4: Mid-Day

Isaiah 4

Refreshed by water flung from
a branch, a twisted sprig of lavender.
Not false twigs that had been crafted
by hand, a forged instrument for

the blessing, but an offshoot snipped
from creation. Full of dew's scent,
fresh with violet lines, fresh with life;
a renewal of my promise to die to come alive,

a reminder that Creator is best conveyed
in the very earthly existance He has made;
His permanance like stone, His sustenace in fields,
refreshing in the lavender sprinkle that we feel.

Day 3: Evening

Matthew 3

And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

Slave to sin and to You;
but the Lord God is one.
The ritual is learned,
in mornings discipline done.
Daily into the waters,
needing daily release.
"This is my son,
I am well pleased."

Day 3: Mid-Day

Isaiah 3

"You have a cloak, you be our leader; take charge of this heap of ruins!"

i am in charge of these ruins. i walk
on crumbled
rocks and speak the face of
God into the cracks
in
the wall, pressing electronic papers
with encouragement into
the tiny
slits, hoping they will be read
and sink in.
My city staggers,
it is falling...
There is a stench of guilt, loss of hope,
and broken hearts that hangs low
over our heads, almost shaped as a
noose.
It is menacing, with each intentional
tread we take over
balding stones we may certainly slip
and catch our necks and lose
our breath.
Sackcloth patches the past,
ashes no longer in
use, but their appearance is seen
throughout the ground down slabs;
we are covered
in dust. And yet, and yet...
We are branded by a Name
that doesn't fail,
yet we look as if crushed in failure
daily.
Ah, how redemption will turn
this weak to the
Strong.

Day 3: Morning

Psalms 5 & 6

"I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears..."

Lord, my linens have not been imperiled
by a flood of coursing tears. My pillow,
at its core, is parched for tactiled

sorrow, weeping it could feel. No, hollow,
unspecific pleas drown our conversation;
my soul is not in anguish, although

i do lament, "how long, how long!" Reaction
to what i have found more awful than agony,
the place of muteness and the unspoken

that my soul dreads eternally:
distance. It appears all my wailing
and groaning are a prepackaged dirge, easy

to program with exclamations failing
to evoke response: neither from You
nor from me. Should i deliberate exhaling

or quickest action, what would these do?
Bowing, becoming low to the ground,
laying petitions down and waiting for You...

but i expect You to answer this humble sound,
these practiced replies and rehearsed lies.
You should answer, it should be profound,

but it should be as i desired. All the whys
of my prayer, arrogant beliefs, lacking amour,
will You consider my bored sighs?

Will You accept this common prayer of the poor?
Of the one who should fling himself on mercy
but instead sits detached in the downpour?

Day 3: Random

This isn't really a poem so much as it is a meditation. I heard a story listening to a sermon from Mars Hill about a lady who worked at Calvin College. There is a mantle that is carved with the inscription "Be Still and Know that I Am God." The lady said that she had meditated on that for years by simply taking one word off at a time. I have done the same, but sometimes with phrases.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning, God created.
In the beginning, God.

In the ending, God reigns in the heavens and the earth.
In the ending, God reigns.
In the ending, God.

Day 2: Evening

Matthew 2

"Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
'A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted...'"

When all are called
together, violence and
discontent fall
around the edges, offhand
and unsaid. Responsibility,
formulation and
execution fall on me,
burdens, bags of sand
on my aching chest.
It pressures down
the ephod; though rest
is coveted, this gown
is not for sleeping,
instead it makes me bleed.
For it is written,
"i am the lead."

And I've more to escape
than the ecclesial, mind
obliged to reshape.
To grow anew, refined
and now designed to
refine and design more,
to be filled true
and then to pour
like the waters of Baptismal
pitchers, cleansing all
who step through the abysmal
door, and stare at the white wall
while I talk of hope refilled,
the joy of incarnation.
And so was fulfilled,
"out of my obligation."

But where obligation fades,
makes room for play
and passion. i get paid
to lead the way
that these children grow
and strive to win,
and the hours there know
that they are shackles in
locked mode, combination
lost to my competitive drive,
the seat of all frustration;
the need to compare. i contrive
to kill me along the way,
as a means to get ahead.
thus what was said is fulfilled,
"mourning, for i refuse to be comforted."

Day 2: Mid-Day

Isaiah 2

In the fulfillment of the anointing,
shamans and priests puzzlingly pause,
watch each other's winking eyes,
and waltz together into wide, everlasting hills.

In those final, fulgent hours,
asses and elephants agree and release
the right to vote, to disagree, like
a child setting a captive balloon free.

The capitalist will say, "Come, let us go,
let us fold fifty dollar bills for use
as origami spoons, so we can eat sweet
ice cream," smiling at the socialist.

In the day of the anointed,
our humbled hands and haughty ideology
will be ashamed of arrogance and antipathy,
while praising face down at the feet of Peace.

Day 2: Morning

Psalms 3 & 4

"I will lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD,
make me dwell in safety..."

Dance through my heart, oh, with loud claps remove
the formless from my liturgy. If found
without color, wanting for life, or browned,
then banish the artless. In beauty, You've
wrapped a garden round me, I dare not move.
But lie down in this peace, rituals resound
and reflect rhythms of sleep and unbound
joy in working. Drier grounds must improve,
therefore supply text to the wordless way
Your ceremony mystically transforms
Augusts into Septembers, a Tuesday
into weekend nights; all the darkest storms
are turned for good, to water not dismay
meaningless life in all its dreadful forms.

Day 1: Mid-Day

Isaiah 1

"Stop doing wrong,
learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow..."

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...

My hands spread out but prayer-less,
pumpkin, for there is resistance.
Guilt in my insistence of constraints,

time, son, money, uneasy conversation
leads to an uneasy comfort.
Painting walls a poor excuse for presence,

but undoubtedly it pacifies my doubt.
Self-doubt, in any case, wasted
on my conscience instead of your hopelessness

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...

i'm becoming religious about Sabbath,
less contradictory in sacrifice,
with shorter stipulations on presents,

but injustice? Like an incredulous
one diseased, shown a dim prognosis,
i can no longer dispute my ignorance.

Turn to Christ by turning to you, pumpkin.
Will i let you fade like used tees, broken toys?
Oh, you boys, climb my shoulders with joy

the fatherless, pumpkin, my fatherless...

Day 1: Morning

Psalms 1 & 2

"But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night..."

Stripped and elegant,
i long to be.
Honest and unashamed;
but honesty
exposes nudity as it is,
less often romantic,
less utopian than utilitarian,
less poetic.
My mediation, days and nights,
the heights
of novelty and creation,
the original lights
through the darkness of forthright life,
i rarely find.
But when i walk, stand, then sit,
and often bind
myself to vain plots and inane
amusing crafts,
then my meditation, nights and days,
i must have.
For i cannot break chains, throw fetters
off as of yet.
But in trembling, rejoicing stillness
i am not beset
by a mocking slavery of what has
made me weak.
no, in meditation, i am loosed
because You speak.