Friday, December 21, 2018

Who We Are in the Dark

A flash, a whisper, a spark, a star,
echoes and gossamer chains.
Of dreams that entice
the sleeper's delight,
we know nothing but
the patter of raindrops on glass.
A slow-kindled flame
atop long-simmering embers;
spectral desires eluding love's grasp.
A mist, a veil,
a well-festooned face
primped and predictably fashioned.
Though with the light of the day
all pretense fades away,
our lies belied,
our tepid souls revealed.
Bloodied knees covered in scars
of a reprobate heart
bowed to its gods of provision,
of ease, and allure.
We cast prayers before
in the light of the wavering moon.

O Watchman, look not,
or, we pray, willfully conceal
our lives of casual condescension.
Achingly, the hours prolonged,
cast their torturous tendrils among us
to lash and ensnare,
to wither and subdue,
while we await the light,
the dawn, the incarnation.
Grant to us this consolation and draw near,
for we are burdened and weary,
and from your horizon break finally.

End of Man

What is the end of man?
To acknowledge and honor,
To worship and serve
the Lord (YHWH) made known
through Scripture and fully
incarnated in Christ,
by whom was our admittance
purchased, our futures secured,
and our desires realized most completely.





This isn't really a poem, per se, but rather I was trying to define what it meant to follow the Lord (since it isn't defined solely by what acts we do, where we go, what we read, or what we intellectually assent to.) I figured I'd forget what I had written if I didn't make it stand out in some way. So, I changed a few words and set it to a modified poetic meter.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Humbled are We of Lowly Birth

Humbled, we are of lowly birth
conceived of Divine breath and earth,
cannot entreat our hearts to trust
are destined to return to dust,

but You, El Roi, O God who sees
we, creatures, low with dignity,
for in Your image we were made
in Your likeness on that sixth day.

Virtue, Your Divine eyes demand
though we appear more beast than man.
While we deserve only just wrath
Your grace speaks ever on our behalf.

Hagar's dire plight did not escape
Your piercing gaze, O God who waits.
Nor will our daily cares elude
He who works all things for our good. 

Two kinds apart in majesty
yet bound togeth'r in mystery
expressed most fully in Christ who
changed the old man into the new;

who obeyed the Father's will while
among us sinners came to dwell
that all with breath on the earth must
adore the great God who sees us.

Habeo auctoritatis



We enumerate them on monuments,
silent ossuaries to the past.
We struggle over nomenclature
and search for heroes 
to soothe our wounds.
We stack them like cordwood
beside the borrowed tomb
until their names carry no meaning:
San Ysidro and Killeen.

We weep deep into the shadowy night
but lament not our true loss.
The mourner's sackcloth
transformed into the toreador's cape.
We fashion grief into grenades;
our sorrow into salvos.
Our necks bent
with the weight of our words.
We march, as if our footsteps in procession
can silence the throbbing drumbeat within.
Columbine and Fort Hood.

We launched, with microphones as mortars;
turning our rage to the mirror.
'Murderers' we named.
'A return to tyranny' we predicted.
We posted and commiserated
to our cheering tribes
til our ears, satiated by the cacophony,
fell deaf into the realm of dream.

Ashes and despair
over Siloam and upon those
souls beneath
yet the world spins ever on.
Tyre and Sidon repent
while we dance
to the enchanting melody
of complacency and self-righteousness,
content in our moral superiority.
We are mentors, not monsters, after all.
Sandy Hook and Orlando.

If one were to walk
down the stone-lined archways tonight
beside those tear-stained ebenezers and solemn masonry
and by chance paused to read
a name:
Las Vegas and Parkland,
what would he hear?
Silence.
No mourner's wail.
no children's laughter,
only the still, small, pestilent
beat of our own degenerate heart.

The Purpose of the Exodus





Moses was certainly in a confusing situation. On one hand, his predicament was simple, he had encountered a miraculous bush in the wilderness that spoke with power and claimed to be the God worshiped and experienced by his ancestors. The meeting was obviously powerful and the task this God proposed was explicitly laid out: God back to Egypt and entreat Pharaoh to allow the Hebrew people to go worship their God in the desert. Given the directness of the command and the power of the speaker we would like to think that we too would be willing to follow. In addition, objectively it made sense that Moses, a Hebrew raised by the Egyptian royalty and thus familiar with Egyptian culture would be the messenger sent to make this request. He had his foot in both camps as it were.
However, the Lord throws in a curve ball just at the end of Moses’ commissioning, “When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.” (Exodus 4:21)
We don’t know what Moses’ reaction was to this caveat. The text is silent but it begs a question of the reader: if the Lord knew that Pharaoh would not let the people go (and in fact, caused it), why send Moses to speak at all? The text begins to answer that question in a second telling of Moses’ commissioning, “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring out my hosts, my people the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt by great judgments. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.” (Ex 7:3b-5)
The story follows its familiar (now) course. Moses (via Aaron) obeys, with some griping and reluctance, Pharaoh remains firmly opposed. Miracles ensue. Pharaoh makes capitulatory offers but breaks his promises (like so many politicians throughout history) until finally the Lord promises one final plague, the death of the first born. While the previous plagues spared the Hebrew people from their effects, the did so tacitly. Nothing was required of the Israelites to escape hail or gnats or frogs. The text indicates that sparing them was further proof that a mighty God was favoring this people. I mean the plagues’ effects were one thing but to see that they seemed to deliberately sparing one portion of the community spoke to the dominance of this God Moses was claiming to be a messenger of. The final plague, the death of the first born, however, forced the Hebrew people had to do something. In fact, Exodus spends a considerable amount of time (ch 12-13) outlining how the people are to celebrate and remember the salvation that is about the happen in the ordinance we now know of as the Passover. Why?
There is one final clue evidenced in the encounter between the people of Israel after they had been released by a grieving Pharaoh and the Egyptian army at the coast of the Red Sea. With the people trembling before the approaching army and griping to Moses that they were better off in the oppression of Egypt (don’t be too harsh on them, our hearts easily wane as well) Moses is given further instructions by the Lord. “Why are you crying out to me? [I love the indignation the Lord responds with] Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. As for you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, and the sons of Israel shall go through the midst of the sea on dry land. As for me, behold I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen.” (Ex 14:15-18)
Our twenty-first century minds steeped in traditions of monotheism cause us to miss the thrust of what the first fourteen chapters of Exodus are trying to tell us. We look at the story as God calling Moses to be his mouthpiece and to free the people of Israel. We however, are not used to living in cultures where polytheism is common. The belief and worship of multiple gods was common through not only Egyptian culture but also in the world of the Patriarchs prior to Israel’s enslavement. It would not have shocked Pharaoh that the Hebrew people were claiming a god of their own, just as it would not have seemed odd for Abraham to encounter a new god who called him to follow. Looking back with our full view of the Old Testament (let alone that of the New) we bring a theology that was not developed at the time of these encounters. That a god existed was not a primary concern for the people of these cultures. The question was, ‘what kind of god was it?’
While the Patriarchs experienced and worshiped the Lord, the did so with incomplete knowledge of his character and attributes (just as the Jews worshiped with incomplete knowledge of the full plan of salvation). They knew that a god had chosen them and worshiped that god. Similarly, the Egyptians worshiped a whole host of gods who reigned (in their view) over the various elements of everyday life (fertility, harvest, death, ex.). When the Lord reveals himself to Moses at Horeb, he announces that not only is he the same god who Moses’ ancestors worshiped, he also reveals his personal name, YHWH. [There is a whole host of textual questions about this revelation that are interesting but I don’t believe change the thrust or importance of this revelation]. God begins, in the revealing of his personal name, to provide a theology to the Hebrew people. Who is this God? What is he like?
The conclusion that I see in the story of the Exodus is that the events that take place do not solely take place to free the Hebrew people from slavery. If this were the case, the Lord didn’t need Moses. We know this because Pharaoh didn’t listen to him anyway. The Lord was manipulating Pharaoh behind the scenes. To what end? I believe his purpose was to demonstrate who He was and what He was like. The children of Abraham had lived in slavery four hundred years steeped in a culture of polytheism with no recorded encounters with the God of their forefathers. It was quite likely that they had drifted from the orthodox worship of their ancestors. Moses' appearance was their reintroduction to the Lord of their fathers. Remember too that Moses' initial request was not emancipation but simply that the Hebrews could make the voyage to the desert to worship their god. Further, the exodus serves another purpose as well. In addition to calling His people back to Him and demonstrating His character to them, the witness of Moses, plagues, and division of the Red Sea also was aimed at proclaiming the supremacy of YHWH to the Egyptians. While we might not see the oppressors as the primary audience of the Lord's display of power, Scripture explicitly states that, "Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen." [Presumably, this was aimed at those soldiers not crushed or drowned by the returning waters.] The exodus, then, is not solely the Lord's rescue mission for his covenant people but also a display of power and faithfulness aimed at eliciting worship. The exodus is a call to praise the King of kings.
It would seem then that the purpose of the exodus was 1) to fulfill His promise to Abraham and rescue the Hebrew people from slavery 2) reintroduce the people of Israel to the Lord and His character and 3) that the Lord might be honored by both Israel AND Egypt.
As is always the case, the Lord was working on numerous levels. In accordance with His character, which is both purely faithful and just (among other things) He sought both the redemption of His people and the honor of all people. The ordeal of the rescue (plagues, Passover, Egypt's pursuit, etc) was orchestrated in such a way as to draw the unavoidable conclusion that this god is the one true God. The aim was adoration.


I wonder then, what of the the trials in our own lives? So often we see struggles and trouble as something for the Lord to remove or bring us through. We act as if it is His duty to plot for us a life free from discomfort and trial. This was certainly not true for the Hebrew people. Instead, throughout Scripture we see the Lord designing situations that demonstrate His power and push His people to trust in His faithfulness. Perhaps, as with the Exodus, our trials are designed not as an obstacle to be removed from our path but as an opportunity to trust and honor the Lord. What would our lives look like if we saw trials not as inconveniences but as opportunities to acknowledge Him and put our trust not in the saving necessarily but in who He is: faithful, powerful, and just. Let our struggles become an opportunity to honor the Lord.

Friday, November 16, 2018

The Gray Season

The thick grey clouds rode
like surf assailing the barren coast
bringing to bear its full might
against the late-autumn sky.
The eclipsing gloom, the shadow
of some ill portent
drove deep icy spikes
into the heart of the day.
A dry rattle echoing down the pavement
bespoke the certainty of entropy and decay.
We bore it all
with dry, cracked hands
and aching bones, laboring outdoors
beneath the chill and threat of snow.
In defiance, we removed our coats
and let the breeze dry the sweat
from our flagging flesh.
With each pull and exertion
we made our revolt
---our silent revolution,
against all manner of powers and principalities.
Resting only by mutual,
wordless assent we watched
the fall of the last stubborn leaves
and the smoke
rising in distinct plumes
to call home the wounded and weary.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

XXV.



















The autumn tonic awakens
sinews and muscle,
tendon and bone,
born onward by
breezes high and unfelt
save to the boughs
of beech and maple
which twist and toil.

In the cool shade of the cedar,
where in summer,
a veil of mosquitoes swarmed,
only the persistent gurgle of the river
drowns the boisterous world
with its aching need for attention
and pursuit of the unattainable;
the unnecessary.
Here a leaf falls
and alights the water
and is swept away to be seen no more
save perchance
by the industrious eyes of the beaver
furiously fortifying his homely lodge
before the snows of November fall.
Here life persists purer but unadorned,
cognizant of necessity
and impervious to the designs
of lustful impertinence.
The bespeckled sky
reflected in the crisp amber waters
invites pause
and introspection
of a healthy sort
with an eye toward our own
transitory essence and impiety.
Yet it speaks too 
of the grandness of existence
witnessed in the colorful palette
of the tide of leaves
and the value of our own presence,
short as it may be, upon this earth.
Soft whispers there are as well
singing wispy psalms
of a grander consolation.

We know, though, we cannot remain.
As the leaves,
which flourish then falter,
we are compelled,
by gravity or by need
to return.
Yet by straining but a little;
by bucking against the reins of resignation,
we may retain the Moment,
to return grasping in our worn palm
a measure of knowledge of the holy;
our ebinezer,
our testament.
For there is no wisdom in fear;
nor virtue in compulsion.

Our feet may bear us on
another hour
another mile
filled with a thousand interruptions
that emerge like gnarled roots
aimed at tender ankles.
Little will they prevail
against the one whose mind is as stilled
as the mighty trunks
of oak and pine
whose canopies flail in the storm
but who remain firmly rooted amid the tumult;
or who strive for the purity
of those clear waters which bear,
in time, all their sins to the sea;
or to the one
whose hope is in the Lord,
Creator and Liberator.

We train our eyes, then,
on the skein of geese
fleeing southward
til they disappear behind a golden stand of aspen.
We marvel at their fortitude,
their memory and perseverance.
Even out of sight we hear their
fading honks bearing away into the quickening night.
We sink.
And we breathe
and we pray.
We hear the song of autumn.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

XVIII.

From her vantage they sail as ghosts,
cavernous and lost.
Upon this she lingers for a
moment but soon finds
herself betrayed by memory
returning again
to the sly comfort of fiction
and the empty glass.
Better to stifle such query
than to risk the price
of more fully acknowledging---
clever delusions
in the precipitous half-light.

Sunday, September 30, 2018

XXVI.

Somebody might ask, 'Why do you write
of pines and peaks and flowering things,
is not man the crowning of creation, framed
in the image of God?' "Yes," I admit but
I struggle to believe and my heart is oft troubled, troubled indeed.

XXVII.

The song of the world is jealousy couched as justice and liberty a guise for dominion.
O, Grant us not only justice, great judge, but mercy also, though we deserve it not. Bear us up on wings of liberty crowned with selflessness. Open our eyes that we might see the peace and promise of both.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

XXV.

Of the North we knew but little,
only the scant recollections and gleanings
won of observation: the rush of leaves, the pale arc of the moon, the chill of the evening.
Perceiving much, we understood yet fragments, as little as we knew of ourselves.
With half-intentions skittering around the corners of our minds we walked on,
our hopes and prayers and dreams
borne endlessly upward towards the quickening sky; our restless feet plodding on
beneath the silhouettes of phantom limbs.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Firstlove

Return, my dear, to your first love
Let not your heart grow cold
Remember the fervor of youth;
Your salvation of old.

Love of the world grows thick on you
comforts subtle and sly
Stand! Lest you these trifles pursue
and you grow dim of eye.

How will you stand when none surround,
none but the eyes of God?
When no Joshua cheers beside:
"Courage man, be on guard?"

Let no gauzy nostalgic thought
steal the call of this day.
The Spirit calls perpetually.
Take caution lest you stray.

Pray the blistering winter winds
make tepid not your soul.
Thaw anew this twice-frozen heart
and from you take control.

Quench not your thirst for holy word
with boredom or deceit
but with patience in sacred space
with zeal and passion meet.

Ready your wick with steady hand
stray not your dogged gaze
whether it near or far do not
ignore these waning days.

Fill your lungs with the richest fare
savor grace undeserved---
breath and the blessed peace of God
and find yourself preserved.

Saturday, September 1, 2018

XIV.

my friends are getting cancer
and while I pray for healing
against this fleeting advance of decay,
I pray to burn again
in these twilight hours,
kindling passions untold;
to wake like crimson sunrise
cresting the day.

From a Spring Day

From a spring day
the smell of marine diesel
rose over the intervening lilacs.
The revving of the lethargic engine
broke the hot, illusionary silence.
From the yawning window
this acoustic and olfactory alchemy 
evaporated behind the distinct veil of sound,
the inescapable
the ubiquitous.

April 28th, 1994,
the Tigers and Royals,
similarly cursed
engaged an exercise in futility
playing
          playing,
not for crown or acclaim
but rather for the sake of a small boy
perched at a windowsill;
a boy who hears the seasons in the static,
for whom music, yes music
of faint crowd chatter 
and the muffled crack of leather on wood
ensconced in undulating hiss
would forever entice. 

Objectively: a banal narrative,
a collection of statistics,
anecdotes bordering on mundane
---and altogether disposable,
yet in such strange array
they mirror the seasons and stars,
ever-present guide to sojourners and travelers
with compass and sextant
replaced by finicky dials of the transistor radio.

They play not for the thrill of the day
but for the compounding aggregate of history,
building, as it were,
stalactites and stalagmite formations
to be observed and ruminated on by men and women,
for whom, their names would exist
as mere perfunctory labels in expanding indicies.
Yet which,
when stoked,
like smoldering coals,
would burst to vibrant life,
extolling,
          expelling,
                    expanding.

They play
as individuals
bound inextricably within the confines of providence
exercising full dominion
yet predestined
to construct some greater cathedral draped in grandeur
from which issue forth rhythms of consistency
of stability in the face of chaotic indifference.

They play,
let those who have ears to hear, hear.

Theirs is a world of ghosts,
where each patch of dirt haunts a spectral cloud of witnesses,
ever watchful.
A stark dichotomy:
each man for himself
and each man together.
Rugged individualism
and relentless tribalism
bound together with insoluble fetters.
A world of knights and pontiffs
arrayied on the shining green fields of battle.

Babe Ruth calls his shot and
Moses parts the Red Sea.
Gehrig claims to be the luckiest man alive and
Joshua tells each man to choose who he will serve.
The White Socks are banned
and Israel is taken in chains to Babylon.

each man stands,
shining in the pantheon history
like living statues bound for ever to serve as examples and cautions.
Reflecting both the exultation and the futility of mortality.

They play
Not as paragons of virtue
But prophets of permanence
And the legacies we sow
Even once our bodies pass from tissue to dust.

They play
And the heartbeat of creation beats on
Issuing it's familiar humbling tones to those willing to hear.

From windows and workplaces
They play
drawing back the curtains of indifference
Pulling down the bulwarks of cynicism.
In the heat and the cold
The day and the night
In the spring and the autumn
They play
Spinning their unpredictable narratives
Into legend and lore.
They play.
          They play.

Infirmity

Infirmity
O bitter tonic
removing dross
like refining fire;
cleansing palate and conscience
til remains only the bones of faith
hitherto only imagined.
Absence
of chaff and frivolity
living only the wriggling germ of hope
fragile and raw
yet fertile
in burgeoning soil
---a mustard seed
in stark contrast set
to flourish or fail
free of the trappings of anxiety and latent desire---
purity unmanaged;
clarity in dependence.
Here resides only life and Lord
no fitter pair to meet
in such and hour.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

XXII

I met a toad along the path,
wet and glistening from the rain,
he gave to me a sideways glance
and I to him the same.

He bore no quarrels, toil, or strife
but the sundries of the day
and with a sly, contented eye, he shrugged
and quickly sped away.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

She Speaks in Whispers

She speaks in whispers,
low and sweet,
a melodic whistling through the trees.

She sings in violence,
-thrashing cry,
harsh and bitter, tempestuous breeze.

My lover strips the
mountains bare
and drives what there dwells away, away,

yet stirs she the bough
'neath autumn's 
rays to swirl the leaf to rain, to rain.

"Fickle bride," some say,
"Why should you
wed yourself to this chaotic child?"

"Alas, I confess,
I cannot
bear the thought of a love more plain but mild."

So I bear her scars,
fury bound,
and bear torment the best that I can,

but bask in beauty
as ocean
driven hard by current meets the land.

There is no sunset
sweeter than
the one that emerges from the rain

so I'll gaze at cloudless night,
stars above,
forbearing touch of a moment's pain.

In alpine fields her
kisses sweet
fall lightly upon the meadow fair

I will not depart
this holy
place but dwell within forever there.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

XXI

To watch the sun rise over the escarpment
invokes some primeval victory
of light over the shadowy depth of stone and gloom;
of beauty over the infernal forces of degradation and entropy.
Too easy it would be
to embrace the perpetual binding and rending
as all there is
or ever will be,
but hope, like earth, stirs,
outlasting the bitter construct of destruction and melee
promise beats still within the bosom of the earth
-a bastion of redemption birthed out of the bitter dregs of despair.
Long in coming, creeping
like the great glaciers that sculpted the land
-the fingertips of God,
ponderous yet unrelenting; unyielding,
weaving in providential array
a gorgeous tapestry into which suffering and wavering
are but mere strands of contrast among oceans of color.
We witness it now-
this divine topography
these peaks and valleys
bearing the scars of flame and flood
yet unfolding over the land a vast panorama 
made richer and fuller in the breaking
through which rivers course like veins
unseen, yielding verdant beauty.
So we dread not the moment but in its passing
welcome the persistent spark
-the coals unstoked yet simmering.
We stand boldly on the cusp of eternity
in hearty defiance of despair
fretting not the cacophony but in its chaos
recognizing the strains of sovereignty.
We bear harsh discipline
but lament not the whirlwind for its sake
but relish the fresh shoots in the absence, 
the fauna that graze,
and the cry of the hawk echoing above,
unburdened and unadulterated,
freely greeting the burgeoning dawn in joy.