Sufficient

I think we find this fleeting hour sufficient for our labor,
    in the wisdom of your reckoning,
    you set your grace on us,
    in not one, but many,
    ways.
             We shall be better for it, when we wake. The
              laborer needs rest,
              this, too, reckoned since the first.
Why would you lower yourself,
    for us? Why bear concern for us, the dust, 
    take our shoes and walk, not a mile, but
    build a road? Nay, do so and heal our legs,
    too?
              We shall be better for it, when we wake, to
               be sure.
               And you? Blessed be you for your patience,
               and glory reflected in our faces.

Stream of Conscience

I drove, willing my thoughts to be absent,

noticed you in loose clothes, a smudged white t-shirt—

like the one you get for donating blood,

only, maybe ten years ago.

I was about to make a mental note about your life,

and its hardship, when you yawned.

I yawned, too, swallowed my thought, and continued driving. 

Father

That boy, “Abraham’s son,”

I don’t think was ever rightly called.

                  There is that flame,

that kindling, in the story of

the son-that-should-have-died.

Fate played no part. God himself

came down. There is no surer word.

The covenant could stand

and Isaac die and Abraham knew it.

He spent three days knowing it,

each step a mustard seed

to fell the mountain in his heart.

The knife. Did he shudder as he lifted it,

                  the sinews, muscles tense

Did he calm himself with words as shallow as his breath

                  I’ve done this before

                  a goat, a dove, an ox,

                  my

                  son.

An old sinner,

longing to obey.

And Isaac died to Abraham. In between the knife’s up and stop,

Isaac became a son of God. 

truth

A man pointed to a robin saying 'look
at that fat one.'
I kept a smile in my head wondering
if he knew all robins are that size.

For your Easter.

Sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, body of Christ, this is for you. That you remember what our brother, Savior, Lord has done, and that death has no victory.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas At Easter,” 1964

Unintelligible

"I know my blessings by their cost"-W. Berry

What does he mean?

   II

(Old Man Jayber Crow)

Many I loved as man and boy
Are gone beyond all that I know,
Fallen leaves under falling rain,
Except Christ raise them up again.
I know my blessings by their cost,
Thus is the pride of man made low.
To ease the sorrow of my thought
Though I'm too weary now and slow,
I'd need to dance all night for joy.


I do not know what the poet says. It seems an Ecclesiastes thought,
that our blessings have such costs that cause us to know them.
But perhaps the cost is needed to point us 
to the blessing. Hm. 

Sabbaths, 2001 by Wendell Berry

What has been termed a joyless summer

Well, you have stuck with me this summer as I wrestled through some difficult experiences and how to best convey them in writing. You have prayed for me and for Jeff. Street, and you have supported me verbally, financially, and otherwise. Thank you.

I find it necessary to continue writing and processing the summer, but I can do that in private. I can do that where I am comfortable, where I can use poor grammar and bad punctuation. Where I can insert some Spanish-English hybrid words that seem to describe that which I want to remember. I said I could process the summer for my own sake. But I am not called to live for my “own sake.” Even in my writing I desire to minister, and right now, I am writing to address an issue that may have concerned a few people—the apparent lack of joy in my updates. The summer was difficult. Agreed. But it was a summer I would never trade for an easier one—for God grew me. (It is difficult to grow in intimacy with God through ease. Why is it that we often need to be pushed toward God by our circumstances or trials?) And friends, do not find that “difficult” must mean “lacking joy” or even that I was weighed down the entire summer with my sin and the sin around me. This is never what I wish to convey! (Nor is it true)

What you have seen and I have written has been called by some “the sobriety of life.” As W. H. Auden writes,

We can only
do what it seems to us we were made for, look at
this world with a happy eye
but from a sober perspective.

The desire for everything to seem superficially fine, good, and happy seems to be the very thing we fight in conveying the whole of the Gospel. We do not merely say that God is love…precisely because we humans need to know why it is important that God show His love. We need to have a sober perspective, knowing that His justice that destroys sin is fearsome…and that we are neck-deep in sin. Aye, and then the happiness comes. That, despite the sin that permeates our being, we are not destroyed—for God came in human flesh to be destroyed for our sin. (And the grave could not contain Him, for He is life.) What can we say then? That life on earth should not reflect the good news that, though there is death, God has conquered? Sometimes, we just see that death and decay a little more. And because we have been recreated to receive life and light, we actually notice the wretched place from which we come.

In Louisville, I saw more clearly the wretched place from which I come. Why do you think the program in which I participated is called Hope? Because sometimes we get so stuck between light and dark—what we call the grey areas—that we need to be reminded that dark is really dark and light is really light. We need to be able to say once again, “if Christ came into this dark, He can truly conquer any darkness.” Maybe it is because in our hopelessness and weakest state, we are taught to remember that we need Christ. For real need him. None of this license plate Christianity. We remember that we need to drink, eat, and breathe the life Christ demands when He says “follow me.” We need to remember that He provides the power to do so. Sobering? yes. Happy? yes.

I John 5:19-20 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Are we brave enough to keep on going in?

Friend,

“Sometimes our life reminds me/of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
…
The forest is mostly dark, its ways/to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,/provided we stay brave/enough to keep on going in.” (W. Berry)

“Remind me, remind me of the vision You gave me…”

I can only wonder why I am allowed to be here. Why I am given the privilege of being among these women who have found such strength in Christ, when I only last week was bowed under the weight of pain caused by not knowing how to best love my family and my close friends, how to deal with apparent lack of encouragement, and with loneliness. I have no right. But then again, I have forgiveness, as do they.

These seven women with whom I am living this summer as part of the HOPE team have already played a crucial part in God’s reviving of His vision within me. I admit, we have not been living together long enough to get on each others’ nerves, but it is a blessing to see like-minded sisters pushing forward in the hope of the Gospel.

Hope has already been seen during training. Training to serve the homeless in the day shelter at Jefferson Street Baptist Center. Training to serve the residents in the Fresh Start program. Training to meet our neighbors here in the Smoketown/Shelby Park area of Louisville. Laughing with a neighbor as she made fun of me not being able to parallel park. Grieving with a neighbor as she told us about the anniversary of her 10-year-old son’s death, and how she copes and encourages others in their losses. Handing that ice water to a day shelter guest who came in from the 95 degree, humid heat. The hope is not, of course, inherent in any of these instances. Rather, it is there when the light of the Gospel shines through love. The truth that while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ died for us, and in His resurrection, we too, through repentance and faith, will be raised to newness of life. This reality drives us. Love commands us.

“When my soul was dry, oh God, Your Spirit came like water
To drown me with Your love, and cover me with life
And Your waves were stronger than my faith could ever be” (Sojourn Music, “Mourning into Dancing”)

What is this life that I have been given? Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest that is mostly dark…a dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in.

Are we brave enough to keep on going in?

Obedience when God seems not present has seemed the over-arching lesson of this past semester. And that sometimes, I think I am obeying, when what I am doing is trying to carry my own sin until it breaks me. I think I am obeying, but instead, I am trying to give people myself instead of Christ. I say I do not have time for more than short prayers throughout the day and a token verse...and then I expect joyful obedience. Praise God that neither my salvation nor ultimately, my sanctification is on my shoulders.

And praise God for community that is willing to show us that we need to fellowship with God through Scripture, prayer, and meeting together with one another. Praise be to the God who uses others to convict us when we are not searching for God, and then throwing up our hands and bemoaning our befuddled minds and hearts, and His seeming distance!

Dear God.

You turn my mourning into dancing, my sadness into laughter
My sorrow into joy,

“Halleluiah” is my song

The Vision – By Pete Greig

So this guy comes up to me and says:
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.

They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision ?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners. Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

Inside.

On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives – swap seats with the man on death row – guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.

Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.

How do I know?

Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

La Oración

Cuando la oración de los santos
estaba enviado,
los flores del cielo,
los nubes,
se cayieron.
La voz de Dios fue oído.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold William Carlos Williams

Worship

Job lay his hand upon the lamb’s
head, familiarity with this
sacrifice not dulling the sobriety
of his face. This life spilt for
his offspring’s seven days of sin,
if indeed they’d sinned.
And the crimson melded with the altar.

Job’s servants came a’runnin’
yelling of the gory raid, and the slave
did report the death of all
the sons.
Job’s knees did bend,
crackling with age, as he fell.
His crimson, beating heart did cease
for half a beat, the breath
of a young man left him
for a breath of humid, choked weeping.
The dust around his prostrate body
turned grey with sorrow, acting
as the humble veil of man’s dishonor.
Shook, Job’s hands, with anguish,
as he tore his robes.
The knife was still embedded in the sacrifice.

“Then Job arose…and worshiped” (Job 1:20)

Sunrise, sunset

Written the second week of school

Sep. 14

Fiddler on the Roof-they sing the mournful rhythm sunrise, sunset. sunrise, sunset. An inhalation, an exhalation. A breath, a moment, a day. The circle of the planet sailing forth without Your blessing. Ten days did something to me. My friend, sallied forth from primal recess are the instincts base and strong. Temptation is not to be pushed aside -it is to be knifed in the heart. Sometimes I confuse this with my heart itself. I have laid it on the table, only to have pieces of my heart strewn instead of this or that temptation. But I think my heart returns.

Annie Dillard

"It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind"

-from Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk

a rough poem

I didn't realize that my last post about Ukraine was my 100th post...interesting.

A very rough poem about a scene in Gilmore Girls...yes, I'm addicted, but yes, the show makes me frustrated.

She kissed him, the legitimacy of love versus loyalty

splayed in my head, as a butterfly--

pinned, but still fluttering.

She told him not to speak-my mouth opened

closed knowing silence is best before wisdom.

She ran, saying "welcome" she ran away

and of course the sun shone unpolluted.

A shame too, because I wanted only

warehouse light--you know, the warehouses

with trapped sparrows in the rafters?

If her life was like a warehouse, I 

would see real love acknowledge pollution--

yet, 

the opening and closing of wisdom was

better for meeting me. 

Under the Harvest Moon

UNDER the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

by Carl Sandburg