alleluia waits

what moved me to tears
was an unnamed longing

why would i seek more than
the safety and warmth of home,

the everyday litany of ordinary things,
and so generous a share of this gracious earth?

but there are cold places inside creeping toward the heart,
stealing wholeness and warmth and the spirit's bounty...

miraculous and steadfast resolution must begin in these 40 days, now as then...
...and, now as then, all but the unconditional love of angels depends on it.

ginny

but she was just here, laughing...
i called to see how she was doing...
took the phone
walked out on the driveway
listening to that drawl
and that low chuckle
on that odd springlike day
in february,
then so soon after, she was gone...
i'm so glad that part of her is still here
in my world,
that her laugh is still a warm place
in the air...

and someday
in the hours just before i leave
i want to laugh
like ginny

the promise

and so up through the void of things not said
a tiny shrug of love's light is still there

the slight toss of its warmth
might as well be a thousand suns

the distress of the last few months is not unwelcome...

fear is not an enemy so much as it is a balance understood

the pain i feel resonates with loving you
the same as turning away is always to return

we thrive in a dance of darkness and light
moving together and apart in nature's swirl

such is the beauty of i and thou formed
from the Sound that cries over each new soul,

and as that Breath breathed us out from the infinitely profound
so does love always come and is never not ours

for rhea, my valentine

i love this day...but not because it is beautiful, nor because it is valentines'...

not because i can stand over there and look out and see the tiny flowering quince you planted, all pink-orange, winking back at me from down by the road...

not because there might be a warbler migrating by...

nor because we might go fill up the truck with dirt and haul it back here to put in a new bed on this spring-like weekend.....no,

it is because this day stretches out into
f o r e v e r with possible moments,

and because i see these possible moments all queued up, one behind the next, each waiting its turn to come be filled up and over the brim

with loving you

xiv.
when i am mist
and no longer must pretend to be
just a dusty body in a dusty world
i will smile back at you from within
your own memory
of a rare fine night,
immersed in a stream
running deep between us,
when we not only celebrated
the beauty we share as souls,
in awkward limbs and moments,
but you smiled yes with your eyes

for doxy and her dear friend

what if, at the end,
it was all just haze in a glass
a life of well-tended quiet
savored in little sips
love safely endured



be in me supple spirit
an ever cleansing breath
intimate with life's urgencies
moments held like diamonds
love's risk taken in full measure

nowhere, fast

i.
love is common as clouds
and about as inconstant
astonishingly there,
or not there,
depending

ii.
love is rock, paper, scissors
mostly you never know what you're gonna get
so you keep playing
or not

iii.
love is not for everybody
if you're a loon, say
but the water is nice,
and laps all around, so
i guess for a loon
the pond could pass for love

iv.
i'm aware that you don't really think about it
and so i'll either get lucky or i won't
if that's really what it's all about
rock, paper, scissors

v.
where are my things
maybe it's time to go
but i only just got here

gettin dark
thanks anyway

like water for chocolate redux

this contrary life, unjust, often bitter
yet beautiful and fiercely loved

this leisure time in a body, haphazardly
sampling the lessons of love's ambiguities

if only our souls were welded to vessel and sword
instead of these languorous, complicated hearts

then our passions would ignite as we could only experience
once upon a time in eden's garden...

but, frankly, i'd take an eternal miss on the sweet bread of angels
to be drunk on the sweaty wine of just one hour with you

benediction for an extraordinary day

..."help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right."

rev lowery's riff on ''black brown and white" by big bill broonzy was a bit of humor to remind us how far we've come down the road from racism to to ''embrace-ism''...in fact, i learned that for a long time, back in the '50's, this song was not allowed to be played in the U.S.

unfortunately, from reading some of the blogs today, there are a lot of people just flat silly with infuriation about rev lowery including these words at the end of his prayer...they didn't get it that this was humor about racism, and were most especially not racist remarks.

'tell you what... i'm going to work for the day when we don't have to explain this stuff.

and especially will i not only pray but also work for a day when everyone, all over the world, can live just such an extraordinary day, and laugh

miracle on the hudson

...you know, something about calling an extraordinary event a 'miracle' makes people think it was by the Grace of God that all 155 survived ...as if to imply that, had any perished, it would have been a case of Divine Abandonment. Why would we think that?

Why would we not believe that God is with everyone, all of the time? do we really think that God still kills some and spares others, old testament style? where does the new covenant apply? or are there only certain times when God is Love? why ever would we think the Eternal Mind would dumb down to embrace some human notion of 'divine justice' ....divine 'grace' for some and divine 'too bad' for others?

Perhaps the only miraculous aspect to this life is our spiritual stubbornness....our refusal to celebrate the presence of the unseen-but-felt--the presence of angels, or sudden insight or intuition, and always that still, small voice--in ordinary everyday things until all of life is experienced as sacred. Until all of life is an ongoing, intimately accessible experience of God...and if this should not be our experience of God--or Tao, or Presence, or whatever is our spiritual tonality--then what is our little human explanation for that?

but breathing

forty people, a few straight, all of us christian, filled this living room last saturday with an intensity of well-articulated disappointment, observations and mystifications where lately had been sleighbells ring, the holly and the ivy, silent night and a 10' tree...

some spoke with historical perspective, some religious, some political--all were relieved to be together to talk and listen with others of like mind and soul on what obama meant by choosing ''pastor'' warren...but mostly, it was just good to be in the same room...comforting even, with the common issues of frustration spilled out all over the floor...it took the better part of the evening to mop that up with the episcopal lexicon of uncommon understanding, if not actual forgiveness...

my take-away was that i don't need to focus on mr obama any more on this issue...i believe in hope, and i believe that, given enough time, he will get there as a leader....

instead, my task is to educate mr warren, perhaps first by loving him--always the hardest part of any communication, even with those who are like me...and sometimes especially with those who are like me

so i'm going to write an old fashioned letter to the pastor of saddleback church -- the presupposed altar ego of brokeback mountain -- to start a conversation...and to do so in such a way that i cannot be mistaken for anyone other than a member of the body of Christ, perhaps asking him to celebrate L0VE-is-the-purpose-driven-Eucharist at my table, where we are all God-made humans in the presence of the Holy Spirit...

because when i look at you with my soul's eyes,
i see the Love in you, rick warren,
because It is in me too

after that the rest is up to you
to see the Love in me,
with Her help, of course

xiii.
paperwhites,
wistful with grace
in a glass dish
in a sunny window,
faces turned up
looking over the trees
seeking the sweet
northwest grasses which
nod heavily, feeling the distant
tiny warmth, but bowed
under the weight of too much
sadness in the rain...
and so it is that
the hours are shared
and simply held
in the quiet ways
of winter, fading

vi.
the sun warms up the bugs
in the scraggly elm out front
and now a chickadee
lands on a branch
to score some breakfast
in the ball moss

and here i sit
near slack with dread
since you did not call
or ewrite last night

huh

i could do better
scratching up
a warm bug to eat

v.
two tiny paper boats
are set softly on the water
one resists the wind
the other catches on fire

ashes and shreds
scatter into the air
then lightly fall back
like snow

melting together
into the warm
serenity
of the pond

and so we learned
what is unnecessary
to love

held by a child's hand

there were times this year
when you wanted to quit
and some of it was dangerous stuff

such as preparing to be homeless, even looking forward to it,
and rejecting the value of your own life in this culture...
abandoning self

and on a smaller scale but no less deeply felt,
threatening to walk away from the production...
abandoning others

and your foot was almost out the door, but for lili...
you couldn't scar that innocent heart,
even if your life depended on it

and in a way, it did--and still does...
so you stayed on in this difficult world
and remained to play it out on the small stage as well...

i could imagine her eyes wide and full of you
as she sat cross legged on the floor, charmed like a rabbit,
watching her grandfather acting and interacting with the crowd...

and your voice was so animated and full of her,
retelling how she ran to you at the end of the play...
i could see then how it all was...in that moment--

the whole world in a small body,
a source of your being, a take of your measure...
and so love fulfills its purpose

in a child's face that lights up because she loves you
and claims you...a small hand holds you
to life and meaning.

i don't know how the celebrated christmas child will
touch me this year...it gets a little harder each time to see
past the angels and shepherds to get there, to find new meaning...

often what inspired a story about the miraculous birth of jesus
is more easily grasped in a story about saving tiny tim...
it all depends on what you believe jesus was about...

for christians, the light accorded to this child
is the candescence of a savior, the star of human
striving for reconciliation with the divine soul

for the feral christian, it is the same end --
oneness--by different means...by learning to love
and to claim the sacredness in ourselves and others

clarity

nothing was sacred before i understood
before i was moved and made my own peace

now as then i see that what passes for thought
is cherished far more than what passes for love

make me clear so that i risk with my whole being
not hiding behind words, but breaking open with song

make me clear so that i dance with change
unmasked of fear's piety and revealed in love's mercy

these are such thin little words posing as thoughts
mere sighs compared to the poems you once read to me

you were my rexroth, i your marichiko
two sides of one coin, two faces one soul

now i seek your warmth in the russet autumn
in the caol ila and the coals in the grate

truth is, you are always present in this room
in the sanctuary of my lonely hours

i feel your forgiveness in a hugged pillow
when things i could have said sit cold by my bed

every few minutes i look up at the clock
only to see your face smeared by my own tears

such are the dark nights of my heart's disarray
to know the sadness that deepens inside us

'though i cannot be there to love us through this
stubbornness wills me to find another way

so i call out my muse to make taut these lines
to pull your lovesoul to me and hold you fast

and then read back to you, to heal and to warm
us both with words that once set our hearts on fire

for old and new friends...for rhea and brooke, don and steve and david and john and joe and especially paige

full of thanks
and looking ahead at a new road we must walk as a people,

i wish for you a rare fine fallish day
all orangeyred with freedom's courage

and deepyellow with the soul's fire
in this broad vale of Her generous bounty

from here to there

if there were ways
to be wise about these things
i would be wise

if there were ways
to know beyond all doubt
i would smile assured

but there are no rules where we are
where life is web thin
where instincts overrule
and wisdom is silent
because we are beyond
the world we know with our eyes

there is only this love with you
nothing smart or certain
no good reason to hold on
except for what i feel
when i make you laugh
or delight you out of my own delight
then the music comes up inside
and the dusky light softens and bends
around the steps on the front porch
where i sit with you in another time
we are rare fine...we are far...

and although we are nothing more
than a shared smile in a conversation
at the end of this day
we are real
and we are there
in a room in the sky
on a gossamer afternoon
in november

all that aside,
sometimes
a poet's love
is terrifying
in its absence
as there can be no
counterweight
to endless joy...
only endless
free fall
through
endless
black
of
endless
silence

aspiring to scribble superiorly

oh man....remember what it felt like to finally finally stay on the bicycle long enough to actually pedal once or twice before wobbling the handlebars and falling over? this is like that--i'm quite new at this poem-as-voice thing, and have the inside tremblies about putting my 'stuff' out there, you know?...and then my new bloggie friend of wormwood's doxy came by, who is the real thing, a professional writer/editor/author/faithy thinker ...whose stuff reads like she for sure never had wobbly handlebars...and she gifted me with this scribbler's award...what a loving thing to do! thanks doxy. ....there are some formalities that come with this award, very cool, so here are the rules as writ:

• each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
• each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
• each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to this post, which explains The Award.
• each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
• each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

...and so This Prestigious Honor is passed on to [ta - DA] Bob Carlton -- The Corner Bob Carlton reads/thinks/writes more and flat out does more in this community as an aware human Christian than any 10 other brilliant aware Christians combined. Okay, maybe only 9. Coffee and a chat with Bob is conversation with an eagle on the hunt at mach 1. He has focus like you wouldn't believe. His larger community is populated with an array of spiritual leaders from local to global. He's slightly more conservative than I am--almost everyone is to my right-- a counterweight to my intense lean to the left. His post today [Nov 22/08] is a great example of his artful--and often wry-- gathering of views and thinking on things post-Prop 8. Go. Read. Experience Bob's take on who we are when we actualize our faith. Susan Russell -- An Inch At A Time Here is the strong left tug I feel most days, and it is always so satisfying to read every jot and tittle of Susan's blog. If you want to get inside the mind of a deeply passionate, deeply centered Christian activist with all of the theological trimmings, this blog's for you. and then after [or before] the Episcopalians there's always the cry of the Baptist Gordon Atkinson -- real live preacher Gordon is pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio. He is also a Real Live Serious Writer and has a ''doozie'' of a 3-part story going at this juncture. His writing reads like effortless honesty, clear and cool. And he actually takes the time to respond to comments on his thoughts and essays, which is going a ways because there are several faithful readers and sometimes they are all questions and opinions that want something more. and now for something really different Krista Tippett -- Krista's Journal I suppose it's cheating to put up a public radio show host for your consideration, and it's not exactly a blog, per se, since there isn't provision for commentary, but then maybe it's just my definition of a bona fide blog. But Krista's voice is something special, and the topics she explores on''Speaking of Faith'' --and her additional insights found in her journal--are stunning in reach and depth...stress and new findings from science on the mind/body connection, the roots and impact of pentecostalism, on the human side of being autistic, the forgiveness intuition...and her reflections on a beautiful conversation with Studs Terkel talking about faith and life and death...throughout, truly superior thinkings and askings and scribblings Casey Kochmer -- Personal Tao Musings Kochmer's blog entry for Nov 4th was: Home We just became home owners again. Now time to begin building a temple. Thing is, this was an actual micro event --the author had just purchased a home and was looking for a spot to put the temple-- on the same day of a rare macro event in the election of a democratic Congressional majority, and a democratic President who by the fortune of birth is black, which some would say was occasion for growing spiritually as a nation ...so it happens to be beautiful haiku on both levels... ...since no one can define Tao-- it just i s --right away there is a spiritual mystery that cannot be resolved... this is the kind of beauty I strive to live within. Kochmer provides an opportunity to self-reveal [very taoist, that] ...sometimes the blog entry is haiku, or a single photo from an experience such as a day at the beach, or a note on current thinking or teaching. Peace. Be well. Go Play.

doxyanddichotomyanddialogue, oh my

tonight i'm ruminating on doxy's comment that
"...those folks on the other side of this issue
are as sure they know what God wants as I am.
Since the two things are mutually exclusive,
we can't both be right."

[i have repented of neglecting the context here--the discussion was on prop 8 and i am in full accord with the position doxy took...i also confess that the point i discuss below is nowhere near as interesting as what inspired it, so check out her blog at wormwood's doxy]

it happens a lot...the perception of an either/or-ness of things...
good/bad, light/dark, right/wrong, i/thou, liberal/conservative...

but aren't all of these actually on a continuummmmmm
that ultimately arcs and comes full circle? for example...

... we have so recently lived through a few very odd
tea-party-with-the-red-queen moments
wherein the far left is actually saying the same thing as the far right...
holy congruence, batpeople!

... i becomes thou
in communion,
prayer,
the state of grace,
the erased lines of forgiveness

...right is wrong
and good is bad
and vice becomes versa
in different contexts
and who gets to say anyway?

...neither light nor dark exists without the other
neither has definition without the other,
both are locked within the same cohesive sphere
creating the energy of life

...and what is that theory of physics that i can never remember..
something about how a mere thought of defining a point influences/moves the point....
or something...see what i mean? it moved...i can't remember it...

...so now we come to the big IT in polarity...
God/Devil....Good/Evil
what if there is no such dichotomous thing?
what is free will but the gift of God?
what separates the ordinary from the divine?
is not all of God's creation sacred?
...nothing is not of God...
...if there is a Devil, then God created it
and by being part of God's creation
it is of God...the ultimate infinite continuum

so, let us consider the possibility
that everyone is ''right''
about what God wants,
about who God is
and what that means in the context of our lives...

for me, it is always that
to mature in love is the only thing we are here to do...
and regardless of what we perceive as ''evil'' or ''other''
it is somehow to be loved/forgiven/graced/alleluia-ed/amen-ed
and in learning to love/forgive it
we are smoothing out another wrinkle in our soul

learning to wait

what if i wanted to be your new story
sitting in our chairs at the edge of the pond
feeling the light soften each year that goes by
sipping lagavulin in bell-shaped glasses

today i found this great blue hunched in the wind
and i felt my own back bowed up against change...

although what we have is all that you longed for
i try to tell you but no words will come out

if love marked as true can never be undone
then all that i need is this moment i hold
and all that you need is the silence i keep

good news page 2

no one was writing it all down when jesus was talking
..not too many note takers among those fishermen he recruited
so, the first gospel telling was spread by joy and fish signs and whispers

but after that,
the good news
was wrestled to the ground
and mushed into a religion


it is uncharitable to speculate
on the ambitions, understandings or
spiritual gifts of 5th century men
dealing with mystical events and
cobbling together letters and history books
attempting to conform the stories, old and new, to a single message...

but now, as then, using the same book
doesn't mean everyone is on the same page

so, 'comes quietly 2000 years later
the recorded observations of
thousands of witnesses
on where we go after this life
and what we do in our spiritual home...
each substantiating the same experiences between lives...
innocently corroborating parts of the greatest story ever told


that is to say,
some of the biblical truths spoken by a humble hebrew lord
are also revealed in the work of an unassuming scientist...
like a place prepared for you,
and seeing face to face...
and being held accountable for your life...
these things are found in the words and works of
both lord and scientist
who also share a common mission: spiritual healing

no doubt after reading these few lines the fearful will crucify him all over again
just to be sure they are saved and justified by the red letters of the new testament
...but let us try to read new words in the light of old ones without losing either love or sensibility


the modern messenger is a hypnotherapist
a doctor counseling his patients
a reluctant reporter in metaphysics
a skeptical scientist
recording data, not writing dogma...
there is no jesus-saves in what he reveals...
but at the end of the day
both the bible and his book of talking souls
say many of the same things
about how we get here
what we're trying to do on earth
and where we go between lives...
here...go read about it...

jesus has backup
his name is michael

grace

the desert knew
its own stark beauty
before it knew rain--
then it came
a ferocity
of life unimagined
a genius
of radiance
a luminosity
of self

which
with time
returned again
to the long dry quiet
the vast stillness of time
the ancient wisdom of great emptiness

of itself the desert does not dwell
on the experience of sun or rain or nightfall
does not look back on nor anticipate nor regret
does nothing but accept the deep hidden magnifications
of its being

we are not so fortunate
as eaters of the tree of knowledge
once having received
the unimaginable
unasked for
brilliance of love,
we know the terrible beauty of longing
the inevitability of loss

and so it is that,
living within the memory
of love's reign,
we seek endlessly in the heavens
for the grace that has always been here--
a nascent lover and shield--
deep within our own soul

sandhill cranes on the pond -- bosque del apache wildlife refuge, nm

if too much beauty can blind the soul,
it must be why God gave peacocks
a piercing little nell minidrama for a call: "no! no! no!"...

for that, the sand hill crane is a humble counterpart--
communal gabbling in the marsh mud
foraging at leisure
sweet awkwardness in slow motion
large almond-shaped brown bodies
balancing on tall sturdy legsticks

the annual gathering at the pond seems to be sort of an avian advent,
a time of communal remembrance of life's lessons and carols
that they share with us, as both we and they are inspired
awaiting the moment they are borne aloft
on their epiphanic spring migration...

where the numinous

where the numinous pulses in the shadows
many truths are embraced 
as different lights
and different darknesses
of the same truth

here is the sky where we first learned to dance
moving in and out of the gray 
here are the secret half-lights of stars
aside the black and white world of capitalized souls

as i sit on the porch steps,
looking up through the trees,
we are out there
a refracted radiance of hearts unbound
faceted as we are, all shimmers and speckles,
'joyous as the clapping cottonwood leaves in the night wind

here is the language and nuance of home
here is the surety and warmth of sanctuary
here we shed the separateness of who we were
and become the holy oneness of who we are

on the misty white

on the misty white corner
of a poet's mind
where you stand with your bowl
your words in your fingers
your love on your lips
facing out toward the gray edge
of where you must go
ahead of me,
fear and love meet...

how can i not be where you are...
everything i am
inside of you
all of you
inside of me
a circle
of love, flow, breath, being...

all you want
is simplicity
holding the quiet
holding life
holding the words
you receive
in a bowl

all i want
is to hold today
and you

Dark Song

sharing a glass of islay tonight
with you my love
with you

making our own dark eucharist tonight
with you my love
with you

lying across your table
the chalice is filled
the sacrament sweet
my fire on your lips
my amber, your tongue
you cradle my heart
in your hand
my love
you cradle my heart
in your hand

and we enter the silence
as one
my love
we lie in each other as one

is there another dark song tonight
for you my love
for you

is there some other offering tonight
for you my love
for you

i sense a shift in your shadow
you take up her glass of wine bittersweet
her trace on your mouth
your scent on her cheek
and you carry her heart
in your hands
my love
you carry her heart
in your hands

yet we enter the silence
as one
my love
we breathe in the silence
as one

we live in the silence
as one
my love
we die in each other as one

while pain is bright

while pain is bright
my soul pressed against the wall of despair
where should you go from me that is not already charted on my heart
where should i go from you that i could not feel your skin as my own
my soul holds fast to yours
and i am on fire with you
so i do not hope for less pain, but more
until love's intensity
radiates my being into yours
to live always within the contours 
of the soft blue warmth of your eyes
the slow corner of your smile
the sweet wetness of your mouth