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...