October at 7-Eleven

These roads embrace with a silent, torrid
pace; encourage want and waste; spread wide,
opening the distance to (God forbid!)
anonymous escape. For I have lied

about destination. Pressing fear of
unselfish hands forcing my hands to steer
in directions I would know little of.
The unknown, the untrusted. A sincere

wave, a gentle nod, slight acknowledgement
that I do see and hear; I just crumble
underneath your gazing voice, your judgment
of decisions made in haste. The rumble

strips beat at my tires and beat me awake
with tones of avoidance in streets I take.

Hmmm...

What do you do to remember someone you can't possibly forget? (but still do)

It's not about who you are, that kind of thinking has made you what you are. It's about who God is and what He is making with you.

Ideas

- What we, in the modern age, are looking for are people and methods we can imitate. That we can be just like. But in the Bible, all we see are humans who tell a story, who show us the way, not models to imitate and procedures to replicate.

- The way that dad running across the stage reminded me that the disciples were real people

- Something about the word into, God's way into the world was Jesus, our way into God is Jesus

My Hezekiah

The living, the living,
humble life demands little notice.
Demands influence existence,
but in the instants between
abuse and abusing, we are given
a chance to regain our breathing.
Yet you are taking my chance away.
You are taking my breath away.

And what can I say?
Lord, come to my aid?
From unchanging to unchanging,
You spoke, and so as I know
You, rigid and but honest:
Where is my hope?

While I walk humbly, with voice
like a thrush and otherwise hushed.
With gentle hand my living soul
is brushed like breathless,
heartless, formless dust
behind your back, oh the grounded lack
spirit to fill their lungs
and exhale Your name aloud.

With eyes that roam the fields
and hands that harvest earth,
do You ever pause, do You reflect,
do You consider the swept up speck
that longs for life, to sing alive,
that has wept and wept and wept?

Now what is the melody coming down
as the sun backs up the ten steps,
to dry the tears where I sat and wept.
Restoration, light through the vines
round the almond tree, light for me.

And so have You, have You changed?
Or have You heard a mourning dove
moving toward its final evening,
and have You wept?

Patient, til dawn, You have taken a broken song
and put it to strings,
new life to its wings, and made it rise.
The perfect renewal of a rhythmic chorus,
taken up by the first tree and still
sung by steaming fig leaves,
the perfect crescendo, the reason to hope.

Yes, the Word of the Lord stands forever,
but it bends to bring voice.
For the grave cannot praise you,
cannot remember the sin You've left behind,
cannot even hope You'll change Your mind.
Beyond and above, majesty misunderstood,
the living, the living --- they praise You!

Zechariah's Song

- Zechariah's song in Luke 1:67-79 and the idea of salvation in deliverance, covenant (who God is), know (that God is God), and serving God.

Zechariah's Song --> Luke 1:68-79
"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
{DELIVERANCE}salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
to show mercy to our fathers
{COMMUNITY} and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
{KNOWLEDGE}to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
{LAND}to guide our feet into the path of peace."

Here

The sunset is said,
the whisper of night drifts
through the stereo of my Toyota.

Oh heavy fear, heavenly fear,
I want you to be somewhere else.
It's much scarier that You are here.

And the red lights flashed,
and the semis passed, and the head-
lights kept shaking in my rearview mirror.

Over the hum of rubber,
pavement, and silence of the
nothing that happened and still happens.

Awareness flickered and
died, like every lit and then
driven by sign that lines these lines.

Words short but lost,
face seen but then forgot,
the dreadful, unnoticed God.

I Sing a New Song

The hymn has not submerged, for once,
these splintered sticks and slabs,
these boards more fit for trash,
have scarcely and trepidly held tin above,
and below escaped the thickening mud.

You have raised up and held this strength,
this salvation through this house.
From Hungarian plains may come rain,
thus the ever-threatening mud, or through it
plunge the wheels of messengers. Please come.

The satellite sits, rattles in Spanish,
preparing the way for words.
Speech intermittent, prophetic, pathetic,
curious and pushing, a chance and a promise,
"Please, take my picture now."

Sebastian, I can't pray for you.
The unknown, but you've been left on a step
just paces away from the open market,
where deliverance is offered for less than a cent.
But in spirit, these only come out in prayer.

We could whittle away time at the cave,
but I've been up all night, and trinkets might
be the least of concerns. Tim, how do
we let him into us? Into God? With nothing,
no connections, what will you grow in?

Sebastian? I have held watch for you,
I've held you when you couldn't ask or answer.
The opening in the heavens, they finally broke.
Six months old, this pressing down,
this lifting up, this tearing off, you'll never know.

In the desert, in the weight of the mud,
with faltering, foreign lip, doubtless misunderstood...
Abel could live but he is dying,
and on the tenth floor, she should die but lives.
In my presence let them know: He is.

My camera still holds the site, the little girl
with Irish hair, wide open, begging eyes.
My knees have got a list of longings, but who
must I prepare the way for? Only coming through
prayer, the one I've nothing but prayer for.

A Kingdom of Leaves

A silver maple guiltless,
silhouette against industrial sky.
Still but neighbor to the pillar,
Manufactured cloud, directing life.
High, unholy hands, a twisted community,
limbs in bending wind that
imparts the river upon the roots.
Roots that grasp, intricate beneath the grass,
sewn and interlaced, like prayer tassels
in holy knots, fastened in holy soil,
and though we did not know
the ground here is never ungracious,
never dry.
This body of unhallowed parts, set away
and set apart, intentionally separate from the
sated hollow, vacated, for gods of these woods
believe not in the life of the water.
Oh… the city dies as well,
painting gray the green in monotony of gain.
With production, the instruction becomes to straighten,
to contain beauty to rows
that do not wind or weave or contemplate or believe
a tale of overwhelming canopy.
Cities and trees, they do not leave
surroundings of self, saturated with ease.
Along these paths, both shallow and ragged,
success springs quickly and is scorched.
The freshness of water, life to all seeds,
instead suffer along parched pavement,
roll into the weeds, and there, in agony,
they forget to breathe.
Shall we call you with creation, with color,
with blessing bloomed from these crooked stems,
promising bright and light, but pale against gloom.
Ah single leaf, alight for relief,
call others to beautifully line the streets.
All pile together, decompose to compose
a cover in hot weather, a love proposed
in refreshing new soil, a deepening of prose of
the words which ground us, the water that flows,
now over the dam, now up forest hills,
now flooding with life all it seeps in and fills…

On Giving Up

Aware of altars, there is much I would compel
into the binding. Into ropes,
into knots, entanglements of selfish scopes
revelling in lusts; may they dispel.
Weak, I admit, sin does not submit well.
Oh my zealous knife, invitation slopes
away from coercion, banishing hopes
of forcing pain to meakly wave farewell.

In splinters, in spite of the face of the word,
In sacrifice, dryest breath misheard.

Cords lie untied, imperfection finds
itself paved into souls on the way;
enlivened by paradox that binds
both Spirit and life to redeem the enslaved.

Returning from the Church

An artless brown fence sits against the bland
Indiana spring, half and half, green and tan.
The black lab sprung up proud and ran
in stark, brash contrast to the gentle land.

In the breaking, this blessing, the morning sun began
to enkindle meditation and a mild appreciation
for a blessing yet to come and a strong anticipation
of a love sprung up and running throughout our age's span.

Broken but distinct, the tail light's illumination,
flushing imagination with the red of reflecting,
the dog, the brakes, a collision without detecting.
Tragic and torn; reality mocks manipulation.

Tossed against the fence, and down in imperfection,
head meekly lain on the tamest grass, hollow as sorrow.
I slowed my dreams as I passed, a pause in my tomorrow,
but swallowed hard, for upon paws, a swift resurrection,

darting back across its death, with eyes of fear now knowing;
the colliding of our lives with life, uncontrolled but never slowing.

The Stain

The question is endlessly insistent
upon entrance to this hall without decoration.
A bland, blue wall necessitates conversation
that pushes blushes into unshaven faces,
but prevents worse fears, though the worst will come.

The eyes of my quiet desperation, endlessly pacing,
posing the question, then erasing and rolling on
in frustration. Persistent in lacking participation,
a stubborn generation must want to be taught,
as my beard is pulled, though short, young, but wrought.

Shabby t-shirts and jeans, endlessly worn.
More faithful, more remembered than friends they hold
in bonds bound with laughable things, for deeper
connections may move in maturity, which is fear...
for it is thoughtful and loyal, silent and sincere.

And seeking isolation in noise that is endlessly slinging
the stain of entertainment against pure walls,
and standing on the line, for boredom is banished
by the exciting threat of my terse attention
and life that is richer when wrapped up in tension.

In the Waiting Room

Your chatter, loose and enormous,
numerous depths, wondrous heights,
and weight. The chatter of wanderers,
chairs and walls, crammed with aesthetics
competing for the glory of the eye,
while all too softly falls the weight.
While we wait, we grow old,
for our wait if heavy with worry,
and that won't add what nothing can,
yet I know that lest Your hand
be cover we would all kneel, then
all but disappear as we
spill upon each other in breaths of fear.
Here is plenty of explaining and
unexplaining, hands wrung and deals done
and muttered prayers offered lightly.
For pretty pictures, black and white
and unevenly spaced, bring not peace,
but instead the forceful image of it.
Under all such lie the opposite.
Under silent talk lies louder chatter
of many a more weighty matter,
And beneath this haunting sticky film;
this airy fear of death belies
a still heavier fear of life.

The Beauty of Tension

Off wooden beam ceilings bounce readings
nervously holy with rolling meaning.
A tightening in the beauty of tension,
between the yes and the yes,
between bowing and relaxation,
of strained continuation till
we’re drawn to the space where the Lord,
the Lord God is one.

And thus being undone,
being like a shamed man flung
in all disgrace between the One
who holds the justice of life and death,
the same One who with every breath
hopes to graciously harbor fear.
The promise of heaven drawn near
despite the reverence from always offending,
of rending ourselves from the unending
wonder in Your balance sincere.

God of covenantal reality,
the God in the paradox, in actuality
the unity. The completeness of all things,
the restoration Your blessing brings
rings in praise and penance, knees bowed,
heads down and hands peacefully high.
The God of the sky, the ashes, the earth,
guarding the grave, giving forth birth.
Both hearing and acting, present now
and afar, in the sound of pews creaking
and the orphans bleak cry,
in organs ascending and the circles beneath
the bare widow’s eyes, empty relief,
on my coldest hands or all hardened hearts.
A beckoning cracking and bounding within
liturgical groans, a Lent filled with sin,
but never escaping the stained glass of men
and forever coming despite separation,
forever longing to lead in salvation.

We are Movement

We are movement, little more.
With sun, we may lay still,
but we are not still.
We are instead the sitting,
indeed, the hearing of wiser men,
all carefully inattentive,
each respectively reflective
of the doing and the being
that we will finally become
when we finally are done.

We are pushing shopping carts,
are forever waiting, are made
of lists and lines, lustfully defined,
and we are the thinking.
We are nails driven, boxes moved,
deliveries unintended, mute
monies cold and unrelenting.
We are the musts that must be used,
names purposely and privately
and piously removed.

And how our earthen hands attend
to the weed of thought within
and entered in our dusty minds.
Our eyes roam to fill time.
We are but movement of sands,
our clay packed about stone.
We are trumpets spouting out
songs of comfortable triumph,
but to what gain if our hearts,
the breath of God, is silence?

With Her Head on My Shoulder

Splitting the living air, this silence that grows;
The rumbled breath of the plow through the snow,
The rustling breeze of the cars and their beams,
The name of the Lord on your lips as you sleep.

Speak out of the space that surrounds my time,
As salvation and righteousness mingle inside,
The movements of spirit are grounded in place,
Those high and holy and those low and base

A Garden Walking

Weak knees, ankle deep in the mud of my planting.
Cracking shells of seeds with a clenched jaw,
all the while we’ve been bent low, dug in worship,
rows sowed with humble woes, you simply weren’t.
So what will you water with, with what will you draw
the strength of remembrance? Oh, our common griefless
altar, peppered with whisper and laughter.
Oh! Clear this temple of blasphemous talk,
of those who simply will not walk with intent,
with lament, of those who drown out the soil,
of those who recoil from the unpreventable touch,
intimate, unsettling, refusing painful wrestling with a fearful Presence.
Approaching fields of wheat, of substance,
there is a seriousness to the harvest, and to the planting.
Ah, you’ve beaten a shameful path through our slower garden,
choking all the growing wheat with faster, popping, pretty weeds.
So now who will this field feed? (And certainly my
idle hands are not producing) still,
this is not what I planted.

I Cannot Stop

Do not cup Your hands,
for the overflow You will receive
is naught but baby screams,
rain, worry, and drenching insecurity.
I should not be alone,
for the stream of self-focusing
is neither remotely useful
and is, in fact, intensely unhealthy.
Oh, why do not Your hands move
to stop the sins that I cannot.
Daily tempted to tell temptation
I am on top, or at least in thought,
my dedication such that I can cry
when in confession, when in conscience,
actions hold bitter oppression
but my selfishness requests Your silence.
For if You speak, it will be
like a pouring, enduring rain.
The dryness cannot resist,
overcome and by the essence,
the presence, of change and texture
runs, soft to mud, and moldable since
You have let loose a torrent,
and with hands above head, umbrellas,
prayers and shouts, I cannot stop it.
Only a storm to sit and to tell
that all within, all discipline, not well.
Despite the way I press on,
despite the goodness of the song,
I fear my thirst will linger on,
for only You can quench it.

Opening

Consolation is to look out,
and solace is to see.
Celestial in the slender,
the common impacts heavily.
When heavenly hands swing
simpler here below,
when looking up is to open wide
and taste the falling snow,
when celebration intimate
is to caress your fault filled wife,
when forgiveness is to forget
the wrong that wrecks your life,
when the flawed substance of creation
collides with Eden’s hoping,
then selfish stress subsides
at the clouds of heaven opening.

Silently

But You seem significantly silent.
Distortion, clean, switching channels
sensing tautness of panic, switching
fears that overflow my dams of
poetry, sleep, Scripture and mediocrity.
Assured that with intentions good
my fear would dissipate, abate, would
bring revelations and motivate. Could
I be wrong? Could psalms and songs,
tin cans and moving hands, morning
readings and restless evenings
not be the way You lead. I have
felt this thought, but I forgot. I have
taken the Spirit for a passenger, a
long-limbed gentle friend graciously
forced into my dirty little accord.
Has fear of tightness snapped the chord?
We want You to walk, but salvation,
we still want You to remove situations
sharp and hot, and if You will not,
we still worry and fear and grow
silently cold, senseless and resenting.
But You seem significantly silent today.
And in silence what remains?
Stay, Presence in wrestling, and fight
fearful, timid spirits preferring night
and all the black and white, scared
that living in questions might never
bring the answers we cleverly expect.
Silence, do You call me to take steps,
or wait, wait, perfect love of redemption
reclaim my doubt, remove shouts of dread
that drench and drown out,
and re-teach of fear, of reverence in
living, praying, acting, reacting
silently and listening, saving my mixture
of love, future, fear for my G-d,
my Rock of salvation come near.

Down : Face

My Father, my question,
who drives the snow sideways,
and life, in motion or in pause.
My friends, my temple,
this altar is life itself.
Opposite of depths, astride
wingtips, cautiously covering
the temptation to control.
Extol my God, my heart, my soul,
in wisdom of intention.
With robes, with order, with offerings,
in worship all-encompassing,
purposefully lead, deliberately design
time, if only Your desires mine.
Where my prophet, my unveiler,
with eyes of stone, unenticed
by the promise of spice, unbought
and unaffected by my aim,
ascertain the plain call,
the simple plan, henceforth
I follow and follow fain,
prone and extending fingertips
under wingtips gold in flame.
Seeking never leaving, my heart
in a constant display,
stretched with face near
to the silvery door,
the carpeted floor, to Your ear.
Oh, Name above names,
I dare not call You to insist
on audience for my claims.
No, instead, in Spirit, silence me.
In truth, let me hear You
speak to us, speak through us,
amen.