I weary of worthless words
in a discount world
intent upon commodifying all.
Slogans, op-eds, even sermons
weave words into ads
for Wall Street, their maker god,
trying to capture and sell us like slaves.
Meanwhile, Light reveals
beauty resting silent all around—
in that certain slant of sun
through the early morning window
providing a pad for stretching cat
with tips of fur afire;
in the way our beloved’s face shines
with delight when we enter a room;
when the baby’s insistent wails
dissolve into giggling smiles;
when sunflowers someone planted
by the interstate long ago
stand at attention
saluting the One who bids them rise
and live into their name.
The spider sits in her glistening web
broadcasting intricacies of connection.
Wind rustles through birches,
as birds sing out praise
over katydid drone
and children squeal in distant games.
Here is life’s true background
in which we live and move and have our being.
Yet we choose to foreground
incessant squawks
of artificial TV hawks
greased by Oxy-Clean ads
convincing us that we need more light.
No wonder
no bushes blaze for anyone anymore
beneath this sacred canopy
scorched by the profane hole in its ozone layer.
We extinguish true prophets for profits,
leaving them to kill themselves
out of despair
underneath Cedar-O broom trees,
forgetting that angels of light come
with comfort food made by hands of love
that cradle all in robust songs of praise.
There’s only so much
a person can take, Lord.
Murder, abuse, abandonment,
and then self-punishment
because surely you wouldn’t
allow someone to go through all this
unless they deserved it, right?
At least if we punish ourselves
we get to control
when the shit hits the fan
so we can take cover ahead of time.
Didn’t you say
you wouldn’t put anyone
through more than they can handle?
Well, you lied!
I did all the work.
I sought your wisdom,
and I didn’t turn aside
to the women calling to me
to come play in the marketplace.
I stayed faithful,
though too often love went unmade.
I stood up for what was right,
but I wasn’t blessed
when I was persecuted
for your name’s sake.
Instead, I was fired,
and most of my loved ones died.
Evidently your providence
only seems to cover your elect.
And I’m not one.
I’m sorry, but the whole thing
seems fixed somehow,
fixed against me.
Yes, I hear how this lament
is centered on me,
not you.
IT’S A LAMENT, DAMMIT!
I know how purposeless it is
to bring you to my court
when you are Justice itself
working mysteriously in surprising ways
I cannot foresee
only go with,
surfing whatever comes next.
I am no lawyer,
only innocent guilty plaintiff
who’s been wiped out
time and time again,
going under for the last time.
But if it please the court,
can we dispense with closing arguments
about Job’s ostrich parenting
and the mighty wild animals of your creation?
I know who I am
in your grand scheme.
But, please, will you assign me an Advocate
and call off your behemoth Adversary now?
I know my place—solely at your mercy—
and I am grateful to be alive
to raise this lament at all.
But I’m still pissed.
Just don’t go away, please.
Let me have this tantrum.
I’ll get back to you soon.
And yes, I know, I know . . .
You are God, and I am not.
Sometimes, though, that really sucks.
I curse my inability to rise
out of this bed of humanity
to go to the bathroom
where I can eliminate
from all eyes
the waste of my life.
Yet again I have lost control
and soiled myself.
Full of pride and shame,
I lie in my filth
hoping someone will just come
to take it all away
and clean me up.
But they don’t. Who would?
And who can blame?
I am not worthy.
When I can stand it no longer,
I finally call for you,
and you come quickly.
You are gentle--not scolding
as with a petulant child
refusing to be potty trained.
You understand the situation
and sense my shame.
Quietly, you get to work,
calling two others to help lift me
while you strip away the filthy sheets,
then fill a basin with warm water
and, soaping up a soft cloth,
cleanse my most private parts.
I cling to you and cry like a baby
exposed to die, picked up by saving hands.
“There, there, now” you console.
“It’s alright. That’s what I’m here for.”
And you are not rough or rushed
as though I am a chore,
but with the wonder of a mother
delighting in the joy of her baby
even in the changing of diapers,
you care for me.
Again, lifting, scrubbing all down,
like Christ, you clothe me
in cleanliness I cannot do for myself,
until once again I lie
in crisp white sheets
if only for a little while.
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We paid to go see the psychic tell us about our lives,
with her gift from God that cost $45 per person—
and that was for the cheap seats.
The slick sybil dressed in glittery robes
accessorized by an infinity necklace
(that could be ours for $29.99) packed us in
like sardine suckers, then peeled the room open
serving up slices of our lives on a cracker,
telling us everything we ever wanted to hear
about angels watching over us,
spirit guides conferring all knowledge,
and an opportunity to cruise mystic lands
on her tour of Egypt for a mere 3000 bucks.
Locked in our own solipsistic worlds,
we avoided eye contact with one another,
embarrassed that someone might recognize us,
or out of fear of discovering audience plants
who would reveal all as trickery.
We pay for the half-truths, the music, the hype,
glad to think there’s someone watching over us
who will give us what we want with minimal cost—
a gospel with no cross,
good news without bother of church.
Meanwhile, the Old Ship of Zion sails on,
its wave-battered vessel inching steadily toward
an eternally verbose sermonic promise
of a land shimmering on dawn’s horizon,
each day closer yet farther away.
On deck, a motley crew laughs and sings
and fights together—all with passion
beneath the cross where blank canvas
catches winds of Spirit
too mysterious to master.
Working hand over blistered hand,
they live together in spacious weathered truth
of human deception and experience
divine grace even when no angels come in death
and life just slips away
like a boat sliding silently into a dark river
on a moonless night.
At the helm stands no glamour—
just a soft-spoken preacher
whose stories ramble beyond any preset program of prophecy,
and cover wide fields of God’s disordered grace
without need of sound equipment or glitz,
no 8 x 10 signed glossies or tapes for sale in the lobby.
There is nothing shiny about this pastor
except his balding head haloing a glare.
The tattered robe his mother bought years ago
upon ordination is necklaced by the yoke of Christ,
a stole embroidered with the love of parishioners
in uneven stitches—a gift of thanks
for the times he held their lives up
in God’s darkly shining light of terrible glory
and saw through their guise of sin
the divine future of obscure eternity.
There is a joy stirring up
like Bethsaida’s pool
bubbling up
to a slow rolling boil
that cannot help but overflow
with laughter’s astonishment
that You are here
smiling in delight,
beaming upon us
like a grandparent
looking upon a grandchild.
In the pleasure of this double gaze
we are both lost and found,
as if falling down a well—
dark, alone, disoriented—
only to find ourselves
more deeply dug
in the eternal well-spring
from whence all bursts forth
into the Light
of sheer, unadulterated praise.
The six of us settle in
on the uncomfortable metal chairs
around the wiped-clean folding table
between the damp concrete walls
painted institutional green
underneath narrow glass block windows
in the basement of the church
after the worship service.
We've come to track God.
Paper bags unfurl sandwiches,
Styrofoam contains take-out
brought in last-minute
by a harried wife, hair askew.
Someone even creaks open a rusty old
Superman lunch box from a kid
long gone from home
just because "it's fun, you know."
Eleanor dispenses coffee waiting for us.
"So where did you perceive God
in worship this morning?" the pastor asks.
We talk of how little Briana
in her lavender frou-frou dress, face alight,
ran to greet Elder Jim who hadn't been
to church since his gallbladder surgery
last winter, and how he had a peppermint
in his pocket waiting for her, as he always did.
"When she leapt into his arms . . . " We nodded.
Bob mentions the teens noisily passing notes
on the back pew, and when the woman they call
Fish Lips who turned to stare at them, as she usually did,
had a slight smile behind the finger
raised to her usually-pursed lips to hush, she winked.
"I think grace might be getting in there at last."
"Well, I actually heard the assurance of pardon
for the first time ever, despite hearing it week in, week out,
and it gobsmacked me. 'The old is finished, gone.'
Think about that. We don't have to carry our past
around like an old beat-up trunk full of bricks or books.
We can lay our burdens down, as the hymn sings.
I think I've just kept hauling it all around not believing
that God really wipes the slate clean so I can be new.
It's me who keeps returning to pick up that trunk
instead of leaving it at the foot of the cross."
"God spoke to me in that sermon illustration
of the actress who regularly attended worship in her old age
but who was buried outside the church graveyard,
as all actors were, because of their presumed dissolute life.
When the parishioners went out and moved the fence
to include her grave among the saints, I started crying.
We all belong in God's grace, don't we? Even me."
Silence falls as the tissue box gets passed around.
"I saw God when we took communion
shoulder-to-shoulder kneeling at the rail.
I thought about those who've been shot in that position
before mass graves down through history.
Then I had an image of cattle pulling together in a yoke,
and I saw the church down through time just plodding along,
despite oppression for their resistance to the powers-that-be,
being fed by little pieces of hope handed out by the risen Christ.
If God isn't among us,
how could we have survived all this time?"
Our work for the day finished,
fragments of leftovers are wrapped up
and tossed into trash.
Remaining coffee gets poured down the drain.
We didn't know that before turning out the light,
the pastor, who hadn't seen even a glimpse of glory
in the rush of the morning services,
marveled at how this gathering was like writing a poem
by committee in community
where words piled up in witness to mark
the holy conjured Word moving obscurely
through words and actions of ordinary people
snuggled deep in the hills of Appalachia
who eat from Superman's lunch.