Adventures in the Word

Mining Fire

2011-12-17T22:28:00.000-05:00

Faint at first, I got a whiff and choked —
a burning stench. I looked outside and there,
just beside our backyard oak,
the smoke effluviated in the air.
I ran to get my shovel to contend
and start to dig where smoke was coming through
the grass, but only stirred it up and made it thicken.
My eyes refused to see, my lips turned blue.
And now I’d dug until, drenched in grime
and deep inside the hole, I’d made my bed,
yet couldn’t recline or even try to climb.
I stood and craned my neck, then hung my head.
I’d sought the source, but still was blind.
The fire is far below and can’t be mined.

Gutless

2011-10-19T20:35:00.000-04:00

My gut hangs out above the scale that calculates —
it couldn’t just estimate my weight —
but once, just for laughs, I wish it’d scan
a one-forty-five, a slender, gutless man.
But no — heartless, refusing to prevaricate,
it shows an anal one-sixty-nine point eight.
I curse that extra brownie that I ate
last night; my belt slips a notch as I expand,
and my gut hangs out.
I glance askance at my profile silhouette
mocking from the window glass and rate
my rounded waistband (which I can’t stand)
against the washboard abs I have in candyland.
So sucking in until I’m past, I re-inflate,
and my gut hangs out.

Labyrinth

2011-09-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

No one wants to say it,
at least not right away,
but it’s true — we’re lost.
Even if we found a map,
it doesn’t mean we’re not.
We live in a labyrinth —
a maze of halls and doors,
and on the walls are scenes:
a waterfall of tears,
the bloody maimed of wars,
the drone of huge machines.
Were the walls of time
erected by mistake?
Were they spoken into
being with a curse?
We tread the same routines.
Still, can you remember
when you started here?
Did you count the cost?
Will we ever see
when the end is near?
Will it come this year?
I don’t know — I’m lost,
though it doesn’t really matter —
I know the Overseer.
He whispers in my ear.

View from the Attic

2011-09-18T22:13:00.000-04:00

In your house, perhaps inside your walls,
live creatures, hiding, buzzing, murmuring,
rarely seen, their bodiless heads talk
and fuse to form a global brain.
Non-descript, chameleon, they slur
their scowls and sneers to then assume
a sophisticate, affected air.
They’ve drilled small holes to peer at us,
mocking, hissing, laughing at us.
Their puppets dangle on a string.
If you ever found them hiding
there in the basement, slithering through
the ducts, underneath the floor,
you’d scream running and never come back.
But the puppeteers don’t see their Enemy
watching, listening from the attic.

Body Language

2011-09-18T22:09:00.001-04:00

I listen to the
body languages
we all speak,
ethereal
and corporeal,
sometimes with words —
regardless we heard.
The tongues we learned
without us trying,
without us knowing
we even needed to,
but couldn’t stop
if we tried — an
involuntary telling
of all our lives. It’s
what’s really going on.
But the words hitch along,
they interrupt, they try
to cloud and clarify,
they go high and low.
So do you or don’t you
want me to know you?
— yeah, I thought so.

Non-fiction

2011-06-29T16:22:00.001-04:00

I stack non-fiction books by my bed
in hopes that all that print, though unread,
will somehow by mysterious spell —
by them being near enough to smell —
to send the words themselves and spread
them through the air into my head.
Ah, words of science, art, philosophy; I’m wed
to poetry and music — can you tell
I stack non-fiction books?
Some cover graphics especially intrigued
me — after pulling up the covers I read
a few more pages in, that is, before I fell
asleep and had to mark page twelve
again, and see it’s overdue; so instead
I stack non-fiction books.

Bottom bunk

2011-06-09T12:45:00.001-04:00

Me on the bottom bunk,
my sister on the top —
the room is dark and shapes
of familiar furniture
feign benign monsters.
Outside the door I hear
the TV laugh track drone
and someone sings Moon River.
I hear the muffled words
of mom and dad and try
to stay awake to piece
together arguments
from random words I get —
‘money . . . help . . .God . . .
the kids . . . tomorrow . . . can’t.’
They filter through the door,
kept ajar to let
a little light in.
The voices finally fade,
the darkness settles in.
They’ve gone to bed themselves.
I’ll have to wait ’til morning.

Descending

2011-06-09T12:42:00.000-04:00

I saw the summit, not
a hundred yards away,
but had to turn around
and start going down —
the light was nearly gone,
my legs had nothing left.
Regrets fell like leaves,
shaken from a tree:
I should have worked out more,
pushed myself beyond
the normal breaking point.
What if I had done
just one more lap around,
or lost a few more pounds,
acted more like a man?
But coming down I saw
the panorama spread,
and had to bow my head.

A few more pages

2011-02-06T17:50:00.000-05:00

You stand tall, slender,
at the library counter,
checking out your own books,
your honey hair pulled back
into a top ponytail,
a picture of poise for
all your thirteen years.

Arms full, you carry home
a stack of bridal magazines
and comic books; others
you read are thick and thin,
hard and paperback,
pictures and prose.

I still read aloud to you
in bed; the winter chill
stiffens you to pull
the covers to your chin;
other times you sit
Indian-style, leaning back
against the headboard,
barefoot in your flannel pj’s.

I stop and close the book.

“Oh, read more, please! —”
“It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“just a few more pages?”
“ . . . okay, just a few more.”

David: Late (or early) for his anointing

2011-01-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

David, son of Jesse,
I know where you’ve been —
laying with your lambs.
You nearly missed the man
of God; he’s waiting word.
You clearly hadn’t heard.
Were you content to graze
those few sheep alone?
Don’t the nights get cold?
The sun burns holes
and fades and frays your robe.
All your brothers passed
by Samuel, one by one,
too scared to say a word,
barely looking up.
His eyes scrutinized.
We thought, surely Shammah
was the one chosen
by the prophet’s eye —
he only shook his head,
he’d heard another voice.
Abinadab, Eliab passed
but not a drop of oil.
All were left to stand
alone and hang their heads,
scattered around the room.

You ran in ruddy-faced
and walked right up to him.
You matched and held his gaze.
He wasted no more time,
he pushed your shoulder down.
You knelt and waited there.
The prophet grabbed the horn
and drenched your head with oil.
The anointing left a sheen.
Your hands rose up in praise.
You’ve learned to be alone
to realize you’re not,
to know you never were.

Coffee Rounds

2011-01-09T18:39:00.000-05:00

I drink my coffee black with style and esteem
unlike those shlubs who dump their cream
and sugar in and pour it down their gullet.
All they care is that it’s brown and wet.
They even drink it when it has no steam.
The problem is they haven’t seen
a pro who uses premium Arabica beans.
Sunken in my dream, in my armchair respite,
I drink my coffee.
I grind my roast precisely fifteen
seconds, then from my stainless press I screen
and pour in distilled water to brew. I set
the oven timer too for just two minutes.
then pour my cup and — admiring my routine —
I drink my coffee.

Yes (nos)

2010-11-18T19:48:00.000-05:00

No yes is an island.
Every reckless uh-huh
echoes in a thousand murmurs.
Each guilty nod tries but fails
to limp away ashamed from
untold wagging heads.
Every limp salute commissions
fleets of ships, they set
their sails, their colors flying high,
but shipwreck in the night
in scores of shuns and scorns,
out in never-heard-of
archipelagoes.

Nicodemus

2010-11-05T16:24:00.001-04:00

The breeze is warm tonight, Nicodemus.
‘Just another backwoods rabbi stirred
up from Nazareth,’ or so you supposed
until you saw the signs and crowds disturb
the status quo, your secret thoughts upset,
your dreams a torrent — you, Teacher of Israel!
Huddled with the graybeards, checking The Prophets’
scrolls. ‘Could Messiah be such a rebel?’
You hear the voices echo, but don’t presume
to raise your staff against the storm.
Listen! Wild winds have formed your womb —
they push and birth you to a world you couldn’t fathom.
Feel the pulses of your new umbilical cord.
Suck in the alpine air, the breath of God.

Portals

2010-10-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

Handheld portals on the world,
microscoping telescopes that
dizzy us in the nanosecond trek
of mine shaft to Everest and back.
Canyon whispers promise a pixel-hinged
quasi/omniscient-potent presence —
the massage McLuhan never saw:
a neural-sucking, squashing inertia
that hollows men as shells of themselves,
then flung, strung up on nothing but ether,
wafers of faceless human origami,
the slightest breeze blows them free
and down they flit and float and finally
nestle onto mounds of tangled figurines,
absently holding stiffened hands.

The Power of Spoken Conviction and the Spirit of God, Gianna Jessen, Abortion Survivor

2010-10-04T12:36:00.001-04:00

Thanks to my niece Jennifer Mayes for alerting us to this on her blog:

Click on these links right now and watch both videos. Just do it!

Part 1 of 2 Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor speaks at Queen's Hall, Parliament House, Victoria. Australia - on the eve of the debate to decriminalize abortion in Victoria.
Gianna's visit was sponsored by the Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee.

Part 2 of 2 Gianna Jessen

Gianna Jessen is an abortion survivor. Her mother's attempted abortion in 1977 left her with cerebral palsy, which she now calls “my gift of cerebral palsy.” She speaks with such a conviction and power, I was truly blown away!

I agree with her advocacy for the unborn, but my point here is to show just how powerful the truth is when spoken with conviction, fearlessness, and the true experience of suffering. It is impossible to refute this with any remaining credibility. She is an inspiration extraordinaire to men and women.

Let this be a lesson to us all, especially to us men. To the men she says: “I am tired of doing your job.” So men, let’s make her load a little lighter and SPEAK UP! (I speak this to myself.)

Branching

2010-10-02T14:50:00.001-04:00

Under the graying apple
tree’s branches, concealing,
spreading over, around me,
streams of autumn sunlight
shimmer in the leafy,
numinous shade —
the foliage so close
its leaves touch my face.
I see a cluster but
it’s just beyond my reach.
I hear the voices of
the kids playing ’round me,
chatting, laughing under
other apple trees —
they’re old enough to be
content awhile, they know
I’m here. It’s just that, right now,
they can’t see me.

Impatient atmospheres

2010-09-15T15:14:00.001-04:00

A hazy, humid afternoon in May
turned the azure caldron up to boil
and tipped the pot to froth away.
The cook stirred and whipped until it roiled.
The winds fumed, the leaves shook and flailed
their arms and sent an urgent portent:
‘All creation groans and travails’ —
not the wrath of God, but the pent
up cries of atmospheres grown impatient
for the sons of God. The brooding clouds,
charged electric, cracked the air. I went
to my door — time to leave the house.
I walked out in the yard and braced
myself and let the rains lash my face.

The Safe

2010-08-28T13:09:00.000-04:00

I need to tell you that I’ve got my stack
of notebooks put away. Each page and line
is crammed with scribbled thoughts of a maniac.
And in those reams of words reclines
a secret – it better not escape – but just
in case, I’ve slipped it in my safe.
If anybody had a trace of impetus
they’d find the mystery’s a man, no epitaph
just yet. He’s lying there, between the lines.
The shadow man, of course, is me — unmanned
and suffocating, claustrophobic, confined;
the books are squared there, their leaves like folded hands
are poised for when it’s safe to take them out
and peruse what my life was all about.

Giants in Windsor Grove

2010-08-17T20:02:00.000-04:00

The faces of Jamaica glow
and warm us in the island sun.
Their easy smiles relax us
as they walk along the road
and wave to us in our van.
Walking, we pass a machetied man
who rests a banana stalk across
his boney shoulder, striding long
along the knobby, hardened path.
He passes and looks us in the eye.
Barefoot children run across
a field, proud with tufts of grasses,
as goats graze along the edges.
Other children roam the grove
to climb and slay their giants using
just the earnest of their eyes
and slender arms. The giants turn,
but put up little fight.

Balancing act

2010-07-26T07:33:00.000-04:00

The body: an act of balance.
Its arms are at its sides,
its head is on its top,
its legs are stilts
to prop itself up.
An equilibrium
of twos and ones and fives
would be spoiled by threes —
an obvious superfluity.
Not purely symmetry,
but surely symphonies
of walking, turning, yearning,
and endless compositions
of talking, cooking, looking;
all hinging on the inverse
fulcrum which beats and grooves,
yet buried, never moves,
content to feel the dance of
swirls and swings, it learns
the art of resurrecting.

Ten reasons NOT to fast

2010-07-25T08:36:00.000-04:00

Lately I’ve been thinking about returning to a regular fast. Some years ago I had done this, but not with a lot of ‘success,’ whatever that might look like. But I’ve been challenged by Dallas Willard to enter into this discipline again. But I think for me the problem has not been so much the prospect of going without food (although I do, like all of us, love to eat, and there’s usually no shortage of it where I live), but not thinking clearly on why TO fast. I’ve been muddled and that muddled thinking has translated to the other spiritual disciples, like prayer, meditation, solitude, study, etc; consequently, I have not practiced them with any vigor either.

So let’s clear these out of the way. Here are ten reasons that are NOT valid for fasting: (listed in no particular order)

to impress or please God
to appear better than I am to myself or to others
to earn God’s favor, or preference, priority, position, etc
to assuage my guilt for not fasting
to lose weight — surely a desperate measure
to show that I’m really getting serious now (so watch out)
to persuade God to, for example, give me something or get me out of something
to feel more spiritual
to keep myself out of trouble
to torture myself, just say no to asceticism.

So, now that those are out of the way, why SHOULD we fast or discipline ourselves at all? To help answer that question, let’s take a practical example that I think is analogous to this question. Let’s relate all of this to the ‘kingdom of music.’ Let’s say you want to enter that ‘kingdom’ and participate in its beautiful, wonderful domain. What should you do? Well, listening to your iPod should help, but will likely only get you so far. So you decide to take up an instrument: the piano. What should you do now?

PRACTICE of course! That’s a no brainer. And tell me why should you practice, would it be to:

to impress God or others on how well you can play? It may come to that, but that surely is not the best reason to do so.
to earn some brownie points with God? . . . Huh?
to make myself feel better for not having played or learned to play before now?
to lose weight? That would require, for example, playing Rachmaninoff for twelve hours straight at a time.
to demonstrate that you’re properly serious now about music?
to feel more musical or to be able to acquire or conjure up a musical mood when ‘needed’ or when the fancy strikes you?
to keep out of trouble?

I’ll stop there.
I think you get the point. The obvious answer to all these questions is NO.
So why should you practice piano? The answer is also obvious isn’t it?: to learn to play piano, of course. But why? Why learn to play piano at all? Wouldn’t it be for the sheer joy of the music itself? That’s why I learned to play. By the way, before I took up piano, I learned to play saxophone and clarinet, but only because my parents signed me up to play in the high school marching band. There I learned that I could learn an instrument and bring benefit to others through it, but I really didn’t care all that much about the saxophone itself. Later, it was because a piano was readily accessible in our home that I learned to play. I would hear my mother play and would be fascinated by the fact that she could synchronize her hands and fingers to play such fabulous sounds. That motivated me. So I started to practice so that I could do the same.

Of course, there may be other more practical reasons to learn – the organist recently passed on, etc. But these would only amount to consequential benefits. The reason to practice is pure and simple to be able to participate, and even lead others into that ‘domain of music,’ that is, to enjoy music and help others to enjoy it. (I won’t get into the whole arena here of why music is good to enjoy, but suffice it to say that, music, good music, glorifies God and helps us to worship and praise him.)

We could go through any number of ‘domains’ or ‘kingdoms’: sport, medicine, the arts, education, food, etc. But they would all tell us the same basic thing: we practice (tennis, painting, cooking, etc) so that we can learn to participate more fully in that domain and to help others gain benefit from it.

It is for this same basic reason that we should fast or do any of the other so-called ‘spiritual disciplines.’ We practice them because doing so will help us connect to, participate and lead others into the Domain or Kingdom of which it is part and parcel.

Specifically in fasting, that is, by regularly withdrawing from food, we learn to ‘eat’ another kind of food and gain the nourishment found only in that kingdom.

So the disciples are ‘practices’, practicing what a life could be like if our lives were wedded to that Kingdom that cannot be shaken — to be able to understand the depths and resources that are available to us from that Kingdom and to learn how to effectively draw upon them for our life now. Wow. What an opportunity!
Now, happy fasting!

Avocados

2010-07-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

There’s something odd
about an avocado —
the pimpled, thin rind
that wraps the green flesh,
verdant, smooth, fresh,
until, that is, you find
the wooden-eyed pit,
ensconced and gripped
as if it needed a defense —
so dense, it closes on itself.
Good bye, good riddance.
So, now, slice the hull in half,
dispose its hardened heart,
and scoop the ripened fruit.

Christian Exclusiveness

2010-07-15T20:55:00.002-04:00

The Christians in my circle, including me, talk about how Christ is the only way of salvation and the fact that we have to vigilantly preserve the teaching that without the Son we cannot have the Father either (I Jn 2:23). All true. But before we get too hot around the collar, we need to hear the sane words of Dallas Willard. This is from The Great Omission, Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship.

“The proper Christian exclusiveness will also be largely taken care of, I believe, by Christian spiritual formation centered on obedience to Christ from transformed personality. This will have the exclusiveness of the ‘God who answers by fire.’ Let the other spiritualities be equal to that which flowers into obedience to Christ if they can, and let the others themselves be the judges. ‘Their rock is not like our Rock, our enemies being the judge’ (Deut 32:31).

The real issue relating to exclusiveness is whether the Christian actually has a relationship with God, a presence of God, that non-Christians do not have. Apart from Christian spiritual formation as described here [in the book], I believe there is little value in claiming exclusiveness for the Christian way.

The realization of this may be what is reflected in the current mass abandonment of the exclusiveness of Christianity that is going on among Western Christians now, especially in its academic centers. Why should one insist on the exclusiveness of Christianity if all it is is one more cultural form? But let the reality of Christian spiritual formation come to its fullness, and exclusiveness will take care of itself. If the witch and the warlock, the Buddhist and the Muslim, can truly walk in a holiness and power equal to that of Jesus Christ and his devoted followers, there is nothing more to say. But Christ himself, and not Christianity as a form of human culture, is the standard by which ‘we’ as well as ‘they’ are to be measured (Acts 17:31).”

In other words, in contrast to Willard’s erudition: ‘put up or shut up.’ I can hear the world saying under their breath, Methinks thou dost protest too much. Perhaps we’re making it worse for ourselves and the Name of Christ if we don’t have the power to back up our insistence on Christ’s exclusiveness.

Some of you may think from this that I doubt that Jesus is THE Way. I do not doubt it. I only want to sharpen the point.

The larger point though is that we really do have a far superior gospel — which is actually the ONLY good news. But unless we live it — and not just as a cultural alternative — it does no good to talk about it. Dallas Willard is convinced, and I am too, that true discipleship and the accompanying obedience to Jesus is the main point that we cannot afford to neglect any more.

Cathedral of Trees

2010-06-28T21:42:00.000-04:00

To hear the quiet now,
and feel the breeze across my arm;
to see the scurry of the ant
and the oak branches wave,
the subtle gestures of the page —
I’ve missed you,
though you’ve never left.
I recollect your rhythms now,
I’d grown deaf to your whispers,
hypnotized by the din
and flashing lights, the adrenalin.
Arouse the sleeping giant.
Break the spell of the arcade
that spins and drums and thumbs
me around the stage.
Seat me in a cathedral of trees,
and form me, conform me to
the posture of their limbs and leaves.

Drops

2010-05-01T23:11:00.000-04:00

Suspended from
petals and leaves,
dog tails and eaves,
they condense, they
adhere and appear
everywhere. They droop,
they drip, we sip a world
in a drop, a clear tear.
Monumental moments
hang in the atmosphere,
they don’t interfere,
before they disappear.
The crystal spheres
clearly mirror a wide
miniature world
full of eyes on
an ephemeral film,
a membrane thin
yet still somehow
it holds the whole.
So drink deep before
they explode or
decompose.