Part Two

                   Two warm edges have soaked the rags

                   as we peel back this layered fleshy heart.

                   We find two organic fingers there

                   pointing in opposite directions.

                   The coy moon lubricates our walls like a

                   pale slug on her nightly trek west

                   and down, only this time she carries

                   a heavy bag.

                   She will not glow here again, but leaves

                   a glistening trail for us to follow,

                   a scratchy stale beam of words that

                   carries us into our exilic solitudes.

                   You laugh away and I cannot breathe.

                   The pulling tides have become confused.  They ebb

                   when they should flow.  This drought is darker

                   than before, the pavement more torn.

                   There is no easy start from here, the engine

                   has grown cold, the shaken map destroyed.

                   This river flows both toward us and away.                

         

                   We have games to play later in the day,

                   and we’ll push for unrelated victories. 

                   Your dark oracle runs to you like coffee,

                   mine is river water I chase with an empty cup.

                   I’m not allowed your romantic secrets,

                   banished only into mine.  You have become

                   a beautiful golden harvest and I,

                   an ever turning golden key. 

                   9-22-11

Open Window

                   Ours is a house without glass.

                   Soft sentences lie folded on the table,

                   secret thoughts in unlabeled empty jars.

                   We wait for gentle curtains to whisper them.

                   Summer air inhales our dull and open spaces.

                   We channel unspoken words into piano music

                   and morning runs and occasional cleaning.

                   We marry these all together, you and I,

                   in the strength of our waiting.

                   Spirits and lovers with adequate space

                   move forward into one other.  They cover

                   themselves in the evenings with sidewalks

                   and trees, the way good neighbors with dogs

                   walk intently from place to place.

                   I remember the afternoon sounds

                   of your breath when we descended

                   from the highest dune.  We never

                   spilled family words on family words, or

                   sang songs that rattled from the dashboard.

                   We have only stiff solitude now, whipped along

                   in a thick dark breathing river, with no place

                   else to be.  We have big holes in our days

                   filled with mindless blue sketches of the sky.

                   A quiet quarter moon slips promises through

                   square holes in our outer walls, and passes

                   a fading glance at the beautiful red dress

                   you are saving for another kind of day.           

                  

                   8-18-11

                   Baptism

                   I believe

                   we may never understand

                   the splashing cool water,

                   the gaudy artificial blue of

                   summer carnival popsicles,

                   or the heaving dark blue-gray

                   of an approaching squall line.

                   I believe we will be upended

                   like broken flowers pitched

                   into a mess on the floor;

                   like looming clouds filled

                   with heavy pelting rain;

                   like lovers torn to pieces

                   after falling in melted wet drops. 

                   I believe we are being pared down

                   into handfuls of blued steel and clay

                   and cedar wood shavings, which is

                   the closest we can bring ourselves

                   to the smell of God. 

                   And when the storm passes,

                   after water has poured down

                   our faces and dribbled beyond

                   our understanding, I believe

                   the wind will feel more real

                   and tug at our wet white sleeves  

                   and dissolve our pretty songs and

                   the artful candle flames we thought

                   we needed to understand.

                   We will soon be cradled,

                   as if by nursing mothers

                   after hard labor, waiting

                   as one for first light.    

                  

                   8-12-11

                  

Inspired by a mother

                             Another

                             Love does not come in stacks of flat words but

                             drains like dirty oil into a single hush of being.

                             Love does not guarantee happiness,

                             only the hard choice to grow or die. 

                             Love is a seedling whose flesh

                             crawls deep into our earth

                             to show us how to break

                             from the surface of our seeds. 

                             Love has twin souls—not just the one

                             who utters candied incantations,

                             who conducts great symphonies,

                             who cuts long carrots into sticks, but also

                             the one who recalculates directions

                             after mistakes are made and who

                             scrubs incontinent floors and

                             sways with us in contaminated silence. 

                             Love is not alone in the forest, is not a

                             pool of sunlight that bathes a cold sterile room,

                             is not a metal cadre of earth moving machines. 

                             Love is not a harvest, but the field that waits

                             as we fall out of ourselves, finally parted

                             from our hard outer shells. 

                            

                             5-8-11, Mother’s Day

                                                                  

                            

Faith Floats

The more miles I log on this winding spiritual journey of mine, the more I realize what I don’t know—and that what I don’t know is far less important than I used to think it was.  Faith isn’t really a head game, after all.  Faith is all about unknowing. 

Faith as I see it is a little like paddling down an uncharted river.  With time and practice (and plenty of mistakes), we learn to read the currents in the river and figure out where they might take us, to listen in the stillness for signs of rushing water ahead.  In truth, we enter every turn utterly blind to what may be around the next bend.  In faith, it's impossible to know where we are until we're there. 

As we travel down our faith rivers, we might stir up a couple of whitetail does grazing along the riverbank, or a blue heron roosting, or a row of box turtles sunning themselves on a downed tree limb.  We won’t find them unless we look.  How often we fail to look!  It’s conceivable we might spot an elusive bobcat or a moose.  Maybe we’ll encounter a boulder, or a sandbar or fallen trees that block our way.  If we’re not paying attention, we may find ourselves heading toward a waterfall—or over it.  We really can’t know until we get there.  We only know where we are when we pay attention. 

Faith is all about relationships.  Each relationship with God is entirely unique.  And each relationship matters.  Each relationship means everything—to us, and to God.  In faith, we really don’t know what we’re in for until we’re in it.  Until we learn to look and see and sense and wonder, we miss out on a lot.  In fact, I think most of us miss the hints and scents and hidden presence of God in us and around us most of the time.  It’s not because God isn’t there.  It’s because we’re not paying close enough attention.

If nothing else, the Information Age has taught us that we’re in charge of everything that we know.  If we push the right button, we get what we want.  If we push the wrong button or don’t get the results we were hoping for, we try again.  We have created lots of options for ourselves.  Some of us treat our faith, our religion, our churches, as a set of choices over which we have control.  We come to believe that if we push the right buttons, or say the right words, or find the right community, or read the right books, that we’ll get what we’re looking for—that we’ll arrive where we hope to arrive.  We treat the Bible as a book of definitive answers that point us where we want to go.   However, when we read scripture more carefully, attentively, faithfully, we find that it simply urges us further into our journeys.  What we fail to realize is that our religious words and traditions and songs and prayers make up the river of God upon which our faith floats.  Sometimes we confuse the river for the journey.  We don’t move the river—the river moves us.  We can only know where we are by paying close attention.

The older I get, the more I respect the mystics—those witnesses who, more than anything, practice paying close attention to God.  Mystics don’t try to explain God.  They certainly don’t try to control God.  They simply paddle their way down the currents, paying grateful attention to the God-full sights and sounds they encounter along the way.  Sometimes mystics encounter God directly.  But most often they—and we—simply find evidence that God is near.  We recognize the Artist by the artwork.  Mystics don’t try to analyze or explain the properties of God as much as simply floating in God’s mystery.  They don’t try to fight the currents of God that carry them around various curves and bends in the journey—they simply do their best to read the currents and allow themselves to flow into God, and allow God to flow into them. 

If we learned to view ourselves more clearly as the ground in which the currents of God flow, and if believers learned to read these currents more closely and to follow them, I think we might discover closer intimacy with God.  The 13^th century German Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart, reminds us that God is God IN US.  The apostle Paul reminds us that our one God and father of all is above all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6).  As soon as we let the currents of God carry us, and trust in God’s buoyancy, our faith journeys can continue—into the mystery of the God who awaits us, with us, around the next bend in the river.  It takes courage and trust to lift our feet off the ground and let the currents of God carry us away into The Mystery.  This is faith.  This is the journey to which God calls us.  We can’t move into God until we let ourselves go and let God take us how and where God will.

Treasure and Pain

They say the only sure things in life are death and taxes.  Well, I’d like to suggest one more sure thing:  pain.  Pain, that soul-sapping, self-demoralizing scourge that regularly invades our lives, heaping coal like burning iron ingots on our soft and vulnerable heads.  What the hell have we done to deserve THAT?  Why must we suffer?!  Why must pain exist?! 

Birth.  That’s why we suffer pain.  Living, growing, learning all bring pain.  Life is full of pain.  Pain is one law of living.  Emotions come as a full dinner platter—you can’t substitute  a side dish of despair for a cup of bliss.  Life delivers the full package, and we don't always get to choose what comes.  Life doesn’t work any other way. 

Think about it.  Try to imagine life as nothing but bliss: no pain, no effort, just floating around happy all the time.  If this perpetual bliss had no counterpart, no contrast, nothing to compare, how in the world could we possibly notice or appreciate happiness or contentment?!  Could we even identify happiness or contentment in such an existential vacuum?  Life without pain would be pure white on white.  Everything would be white.  No shadows, no dark outlines.  No contrast—nothing but happy blissful white.  Would such a life really have any value?  Without pain, how could we possibly experience resolution or healing or accomplishment?  Without contrast, how could we define joy?  I propose that pain is a necessary part of life which provides the contrast we need to understand and experience joy and excitement.  Pain arrives as a full spectrum, and we often don't get to pick the intensity of the pain and suffering we must face.  Pain, as much as it stinks, provides necessary balance which gives life value.   

So wouldn’t life be better without pain?  I mean, REALLY.  Suffering SUCKS!  It haunts us.  It harms us.  What good is it?!  Sometimes, we choose to suffer pain for known reward.  You know—the “no pain, no gain” philosophy?  Some choose to endure the pain of running, for instance, to get in shape—or they choose the pain of chemotherapy to stomp the living crap out of the cancer that is trying to kill them.  Some endure the "agony" of algebra or chemistry homework in order to learn something—or at least earn academic credit (or not, as in my case).  Some endure crappy jobs for the sake of a paycheck to keep them alive.  Some suffer the embarrassments and betrayals of abusive relationships to reap the rewards of companionship—or maybe because the pain of abuse is easier than the pain of starting over.  Some suffering we choose to endure, because option B often causes more suffering than option A.  Without pain, we simply wouldn’t exist.  You don’t agree?  Go consult your mother who endured unspeakable labor pains so you could live.

Yeah, OK.  So some pain is necessary for birth and growth and balance and all that.  I get that.  But what about random violence?  What about Mark, the coolest kid in my youth group who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 14?  What about Greg, my friend and fellow youth leader who died a few years later from a brain tumor—after a long period of suffering and struggle?  What about divorce?  What about murder?  What about genocide and starvation?  What about child trafficking and rape and poverty?  What about school shootings?  What about the holocaust?  Explain THESE to me. 

We could go on and on about all the suffering we endure.  Some worthy, some not.  Some pains more excruciating than others.  Some of us, in our ridiculously comfortable lives, have the audacity to define a dropped cell call, or a leaky roof, or homework as “suffering.”  I think there’s a huge and critical difference between inconvenience and struggle and suffering, and we need to pay attention to the differences.  The pain of a dropped cell call is far different than the pain of a murdered child.  All pain is an opportunity to learn and grow--if not for us, then for someone else.  We are not alone in this global village.  Nor do we suffer alone.

Maybe we get so hung up on the lack of result or reward from the suffering we endure that we neglect to notice the rewards others may gain from it.  Think of the national response to the Columbine shooting, or Virginia Tech—the hope that emerged across the country and the world out of the smoldering rubble on 9/11.  Think about how the world has changed because of the holocaust.  Because of genocide.  Because of terrorism.  Because of world hunger.  When we pay attention to the suffering of others, good people are compelled to respond with goodness.  Others attempt to answer suffering with more suffering:  “if you make me suffer, I’ll make you suffer,” they say.  Hardly a healthy response.  This is not compassion.  Revenge does NOT eliminate or erase the suffering, nor does it justify or explain it.  But goodness and mercy DO emerge when good people observe the suffering of others and choose to act with compassion.   

The word compassion comes from the Latin, cum passio, which means “to suffer with.”  At the very least, the suffering we endure is an invitation and a plea to those around us to suffer with us, to ease our pain as best they can, to increase the depth and quality of community and of our personal relationships.  I think part of a healthy response to suffering is to seek help from others.  Asking for help places us more deeply into relationships and into community, which brings value to our lives. 

Hospice workers don’t prevent death—they share the suffering of the dying and their families, which is compassion.  Compassion happens at personal and communal levels.  We express compassion to our kids, our friends, our lovers when they suffer—or at least we should.  We can also express compassion to complete strangers and foreigners.  We can donate food to local food banks to ease the suffering of the hungry.  We can read an article about child soldiers in Sudan, for instance, rather than wasting all our time in selfish pleasure.  Knowledge is the first step in compassion, and is the seed of change.  We can’t share the pain of another unless we know about it.  The best compassion comes when we enter the suffering of another. 

Does this mean we should desire or manufacture pain in ourselves or others—just so we can reap the benefits?  No!  Pain might be inevitable in our lives, but it certainly isn’t desirable!  We should avoid pain and help others do the same.  We should protest against its causes.  We should exercise compassion before pain erupts, and do what we can to help avoid or prevent it.  Once pain comes, we certainly shouldn’t deny it.  We should embrace it and peel it apart and learn from it and use it as an opportunity to show compassion with those who suffer.  Japanese poet, Kenji Miazawa, urges us to burn pain as fuel for our journeys.  If this isn’t brilliant and penetrating advice, I don’t know what is.   

Theologians have argued for centuries about God’s role in pain.  They ponder why in the world God allows pain at all, why God doesn’t swoop in and stop terrorists in their tracks before they blow up another child, another sister, another neighbor.  Why DIDN’T God stop the holocaust?  the Rwandan genocide?  world hunger?  child trafficking?  Why doesn’t God prevent floods and earthquakes and mudslides?  Why doesn’t God answer our prayers and bring healing to our loved ones and friends who struggle with cancer, or Alzheimer’s or debilitating arthritis?  Why doesn’t God prevent kitchen fires or electrical outages?  Why doesn’t God prevent the idiot in the parking lot from backing into our car?  . . . 

I believe God avoids playing favorites.  If God prevented one war, wouldn’t we expect God to prevent ALL wars?  If God prevented one divorce, wouldn’t we expect God to intervene in EVERY divorce?  If God prevented the holocaust and somehow thwarted Hitler’s evil, wouldn’t it only be fair for God to thwart our little brother’s evil effort to slug us unjustly—or to stop US from committing big or little evils?  For God to intervene would be to eliminate God’s gift of free will given to us at Creation.  God's partial intervention would contradict God's love for ALL Creation.  Anything less than free will would mean humans would be pre-programmed automatons.  What would love mean if it didn’t take effort—and yes, in some ways, suffering?  What would human existence mean if we didn’t suffer along the way?  How could we possibly cherish our children if life was automatic and filled with perpetual bliss and carried no risk?

Living in the knowledge that every day could be my last brings a perspective that simply wouldn’t be possible without suffering.  In a round-about way, the threat or real experience of suffering brings value and balance to life.  Pain truly sucks.  But when it comes, it brings the potential to humble us and strengthen us and teach us.  It moves us to show compassion towards others who suffer, and to renew and strengthen our love in personal and communal relationships.  When we show compassion to one another, we strengthen community—and in the process, we strengthen ourselves.  Pain is not the mother of love, but love grows stronger when we respond in love to pain.  I think God understood this before Creation, and I think God understands this now.  How ironic and odd to think that the pain we abhor pushes us to exercise the love and compassion we most crave.